The U.S. elections provided a boost to a President who has overseen climate action, world leaders are gathering in Egypt for COP27 to discuss our climate future, and what could be the next Enron has crashed crypto.
What does it all mean for the business of carbon removal?? Join us this week to learn more-
Susan thinks this election was a big win for climate voters, and provides some data about the unexpected impact that bloc has begun to have.
Na’im reflects on the lesson’s of the FTX collapse and what carbon removal and climate tech communities should learn from it.
The panelists also talk about the people, organizations, and trends they’re thankful for this year in the world of CDR.
Our regular business panel Susan Su and Na’im Merchant join host Radhika Moolgavkar.
On This Episode
Susan Su
Na’im Merchant
Radhika Moolgavkar
Resources
NY Voters pass Environmental Bond in the midterms
Subscribe to Climate Workers Anonymous
My other show, Reversing Climate Change
Books referenced in the podcasts, at Bookshop
Full Transcript
Announcer: You’re listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom, a weekly show about current events in the world of carbon removal, from technology and innovation to policymaking and job growth. Brought to you by Nori, the carbon removal marketplace.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Hello, everybody, and welcome to the November 17th edition of Carbon Removal Newsroom. Today, we’re focusing on business, and it’s also our last episode before Thanksgiving. So to all of our listeners out there, have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you are in the US, of course. As always, I have with me Susan Su, who is a partner focused on climate investing at Toba Capital. She also serves as a board member at the Carbon Business Council and a board advisor to the Environmental Voter Project. Hello, Susan.
Susan Su: Hello.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And we have Na’im Merchant, who runs Carbon Curve, a consultancy that works with NGOs and startups on scaling up carbon removal solutions. He publishes the Carbon Curve newsletter and podcast about the carbon removal industry and the new carbon economy. Hello, Na'im.
Na’im Merchant: Hey, good to be on.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And as a resident Canadian, do you celebrate American or Canadian Thanksgiving?
Na’im Merchant: I celebrate both.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Oh, that’s nice. Cool.
Susan Su: I love it.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And as always, Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. So today we’re going to talk about what I’m sure everybody has been thinking a little bit about in the environmental world. World leaders were gathered in Egypt for COP27 to discuss our climate future. The US elections provided a boost to the president who has overseen climate action and what could be the next Enron crash of crypto. So we’re going to look at what this means for the business of carbon removal. And we’re going to start with the US election.
So Susan, you work with the Environmental Voter Project. What’s your reaction to this week’s election?
Susan Su: That’s right, Radhika. I am a board advisor to the Environmental Voter Project, which is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to first identifying and then engaging seldom voting environmentalists to participate, particularly in All of the down-ballot elections that we’re increasingly coming to understand make up the vast majority of how our country actually works and gets things done. I took this cheat sheet straight from Nathaniel Stinnett, who is EVP’s executive director. I asked him to contribute some thoughts for today’s episode, and EVP has had a banner a couple of years. The organization uses data science to identify people who say that climate and environment are their number one issue, but yet do not vote.
And it’s actually surprisingly, believe it or not, it is millions upon millions of eligible registered voters. It’s not even we’re not even talking about people who aren’t registered. It’s over 16 million. It’s been following any of the elections of the past few years, you know that our elections have been decided by far fewer than 16 million votes. So it’s actually a very large constituency that’s actually sort of sitting on the sidelines and needing to be activated. And there are many reasons why people don’t vote. From you know kind of structural barriers to they find it confusing they don’t know how to they don’t think it makes difference.
And so this is really not focused on changing their opinion about whom to vote for it’s more focused on changing their behavior of actually getting to the polls or mailing in their ballot on time. That behavior of voting and particularly voting in down ballot elections, which is something I’ll get to in a moment. So, you know, I think that there, it’s interesting because if you look at the exit polls from this election, you will see that around 9% of voters listed climate as their top priority, which sounds really small. If you look at the ranking of issues, that actually ties it at third place, tied with immigration.
We hear so much about immigration from politicians. We hear so much about immigration driving voting behavior, but rarely do you hear climate driving voter behavior. Now, this year, it is tied, or this recent election has been tied with immigration. Abortion. A huge issue that we’ve been hearing so much about this year, 10% of voters said that abortion was their top issue. Now, compare that with 9% who said that climate was their top issue. That is so close. It’s a squeaker. Now, 48% said that economy and jobs was their top issue.
So that makes a ton of sense. But, you know, we have first place economy, second place abortion, third place immigration and climate tied. I mean, that is unbelievable, Radhika. I never... In my life would have expected this because, you know, for those of us who’ve been caring about this and working on this for a while, it always feels like you’re kind of shouting into the void and nobody’s listening. Well, that is not true anymore. And so while 9% sounds small, it is huge because in the past, for example, recent past for the 2020 presidential election, only 4% of voters said that climate was a top issue for them.
So now we’re over double where we were just two years ago at the last major election. So I think climate is making huge strides and it’s really starting to show up in the election now. There have been some pieces out in the media about, you know, we’ve all heard about the red wave that wasn’t. And there have been some pieces about the green wave that actually was. And I think this is, you know, check back for more. This story is still developing. Thank you so much. Climate first voters who had never in their lives, these are, again, people who are registered to vote, they never in their lives had ever voted in a midterm before.
So this is their first ever midterm, almost 6 million people who said that climate is their number one issue. I just think that it is absolutely astonishing. If you think about, and this is the comparison I always make, you know, the NRA, which has outsized influence on our politics, has about five and a half million members. Just this year alone, almost six million, five and a half to six million had never before voted in a midterm and yet said climate was their number one issue. Now imagine banding together all of those climate first voters to create a coalition like what the NRA has done only for a good cause.
I mean, then you’re talking about something really incredible. So I think there’s a lot of implications that this election carries for climate, but It’s really just like everything else we’re seeing in the private sector and beyond. Everything is mirroring each other, which is pointing to people are starting to wake up. And take action, whether that action is to cast a ballot in a certain direction, or whether that action is to start investing or get interested in carbon removal or carbon credits, what have you. And so I think that’s really exciting.
And it’s starting to show in the election, even though it’s still a single digit number, but you have to look at the growth rate.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Naeem, that was a great policy analysis. And Susan, I so appreciate it. I’m curious though, from like a business perspective, what an election like this means for entrepreneurs? And what do you think the impact of the non-red wave and the green wave will have on how these business entities are thinking about Sustainability, growing their businesses, et cetera, et cetera.
Na’im Merchant: Well, I just want to say before I get into that, just congrats to Susan and her, this amazing organization that she’s involved with and having the impact it did. I mean, those are big numbers. Those are election swinging numbers that we’re talking about. And so that’s a really big deal. And we, I think, saw it play out in a way where an election Turned out against any existing precedent like it’s just not common that, you know, the party in power in the White House holds on to the Senate and hangs on to a lot of their house seats.
I mean, that this is a this is a big deal. And as a result of that, I actually don’t think this means a whole lot for entrepreneurs working in climate because the, you know, The horror story version of what could have happened was an effort to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act or a lot of the policy progress that’s been made over the last two years. And that’s not really likely to happen. And so for right now, it’s like, yes, control has changed hands, but I think that a lot of the policies that were made at the federal level are here to stay.
And the benefits that accrue to entrepreneurs that are working in climate will stay largely intact. Entrepreneurs at least, it’s like heads down and get to work. I don’t expect a lot of change. You know, there’ll be probably greater scrutiny around how some of these programs are going to be implemented or how funds are going to be used. But otherwise, it’s not going to be a whole lot of change going forward for entrepreneurs. I think it’s just, it’s like the positive signal that a lot of the climate policy that we have seen over the last couple of years, that signal is still strong.
And so whatever it meant for businesses and entrepreneurs, you know, a month ago, it’s still just as relevant today. And that’s a win in the context of a midterm election, I think.
Susan Su: I would add there are a couple of specific things that are going to be really positive for entrepreneurs. For example, in New York, voters approved a $4. 2 billion basically climate bond, green bond measure called the Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act. Just the margin of approval, it was 68, so it’ll change a little bit, but as of, I think last week, 68% of voters approved, and 28% disapproved, and 12% didn’t vote. But 68% approving is quite a loud majority. And I think that’s going to be a couple of things.
One, not only is it a decent chunk of change, $4. 2 billion, but it’s happening at the state level. And I think what we’ll start seeing more and more is more of not just these kind of like pledges around net zero happening at the state level, which we’ve been seeing throughout this year, But actually the money flowing at the state level. And I think that means something very specific for entrepreneurs, which is that if you haven’t Considered bringing on a policy person or having some sort of resource dedicated to policy yet.
Really now is the time because the IRA is one thing and it’s intricate enough. There are enormous opportunities and many pockets within the IRA and it’s complex. It takes time to navigate. But now layered upon that, there’s all of this local and regional and local all the way down to municipalities, but all the way up to the state level opportunities really. And investors like to see entrepreneurs that know their policy. Investors like to see entrepreneurs that understand the opportunities for non dilutive capital and also for really just sort of like public private partnerships.
That can be a lot if you’re fundraising, scaling your company, managing the day-to-day operations. I think just tactically, something to consider with all of these tailwinds on the public side. And with what’s coming in from this election, could be time to hire a policy person or engage a consultant, some resources there, because, you know, it’s really a lot of funds and resources that are going to be on the table, sort of up for grabs for these entrepreneurs. And, you know, this bond in New York is one thing, but there’ll be more and more and more as time goes on.
Radhika Moolgavkar: I loved how you tied the business and policy together. Susan, that’s such an important point that, you know, entrepreneurs have to understand their policy landscape to take full advantage of the funding mechanisms that are available to them. I did want to follow up on something you had said earlier, which is, you know, the EVP was able to mobilize 6 million environmental votes. I was curious, one, it’s a two part question, one, why Were these people sitting on the sidelines if they were already registered? I know you talked about barriers, but did you see any particular trend?
And two, how did EVP overcome that barrier, those barriers?
Susan Su: So EVP focused on the nearly 6 million voters. It takes time to know exactly how many of them ended up taking action. They do know that about 900,000 of them cast early ballots, which is a very decisive action compared to not voting at all. That’s kind of going from junior leagues all the way to the majors in one swing. As for the reasons why people don’t vote but are eligible, I mean, there are so many and it’s a whole behavioral science episode just to dig into that. But, you know, I’ll kind of just highlight one thing and tie it into Georgia.
You know, here we are talking about Georgia again, two years later, but just tie it into the Georgia Senate runoff that’s coming up, which is that A lot of people find voting still to be confusing. And when you look at who those people are, they tend to be voters of color. In Georgia, in the Senate race in particular, surveys have found that the highest proportion of voters who find voting The rules around voting, especially in a runoff, to be confusing are Black voters, followed by Latino voters, followed by, you know, sort of a smorgasbord of all voters of color.
And that is speaking to a structural barrier. There are rules around how you can mail your ballot in, when you need to mail it in by, you can’t do early voting all the way up until election day, you have to have Voted early by the Friday before. This is in Georgia. These are all state by state specific, sometimes election by election specifics. And this stuff can be very, very confusing to people. I mean, it’s confusing to me as well. And I think those kind of things and the fact that we’re often seeing changes, you know, Radhika, you probably saw here in Washington State, we had some propositions on the ballot that were looking at changing the way that we vote and adding ranked choice voting.
All of these things can create mental barriers to people. And then that’s not to speak to the emotional barriers of, well, what’s the point? One vote doesn’t matter. You know, those kind of defeatist Thoughts that people often, mistaken thoughts, actually, that people often have, because by the way, I’ll just put a little plug here. Voting is not about winning. It’s about being counted. Even if you lose and you get counted, you still won because politicians look at numbers. They don’t just look at who won the election. They look at how many people who care about a certain topic are showing up through their mail-in or through in-person voting.
So anyway, I’ll just say that’s a big part of it. And that’s why get out the vote efforts are just an incredible bang for your buck. Like if you can have a cordial conversation with somebody where you don’t have to change their mind from voting for one candidate to a candidate on the opposite end of the spectrum, all you have to do is clarify the confusion around how to vote. Which is really, you’re helping them to understand the instructions. That is so simple. It’s so unemotional. And if that can remove the barrier for people, then that is a huge win for very, very little cost.
So that’s what EVP and other Get Out the Vote organizations are focused on. EVP was a focus just on the environmental subsegment of voters. But, you know, I’ll just say, for example, and the last thing I’ll say about this, because I think it’s really important, in this upcoming Georgia runoff, for example, last year, I believe there were two weeks, or was it 19 days or so to continue? This year early voting has been shortened to five days. So the early voting window is much smaller. This is something that could be very confusing to people.
Why in 2020 did I have a much bigger window to do my early voting and now it’s only, oh, it’s only five days. We have to know that now. We have to understand those changes. And so there’s a lot at stake that’s coming up here in Georgia, even though Democrats control the Senate, whatever, like it’s every single vote in the Senate counts. And it’s incredibly important to look at things at a candidate level, as opposed to just at the majority level, because each candidate also stands for something. And so I would just say that if anybody’s interested in this or learning more about it, there’s an incredible...
Actually, webinar that EVP held for its community for free, and it’s on YouTube. The recording of it is on YouTube. So anybody who’s like an election nerd or anything like that, you should definitely watch this. It is fascinating. Some of the numbers that I talked about are in there, and we’ll share the link in the show notes. People can go and watch and learn if they’re interested.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Thanks, Susan. Naeem, just to wrap up this segment on the federal election, Curious, you said that the good news was there was no signal to businesses because things are sort of staying the status quo. Because of that, what do you expect the federal government to do in terms of funding in the next two-year election cycle?
Na’im Merchant: I think if we’re talking about the federal government, I don’t think we’re going to see a lot. Of anything new for the next couple of years, right? We just had a once in a decade world’s biggest climate bill passed. And so I think the focus now at the federal level will be on implementation. You know, from a carbon removal standpoint, that means DAC hubs, that means the new and improved 45Q, you know, many other climate policies. I think there’s going to be a lot of scrutiny around how these programs are implemented, how funds are used.
And that’s something that everyone should be really mindful of. But I think the focus now is really oriented around how is all of this going to be implemented because we’re not going to see anything like the inflation reduction act again anytime soon. And so that’s where the focus is for the next two years.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, I’m going to pivot to another once in a decade, fingers crossed event, which is the Total unraveling of the crypto company FTX. It was a complicated series of events that led to its collapse, but it has been compared to the run on the savings and loan industry or maybe on Lehman Brothers back in 2008. So we were curious about its impacts on VC financing and who better to ask than Susan and Naeem about it. So starting with you, Susan, Obviously, an astonishing collapse. I’ve not seen this much coverage of crypto in the New York Times, I think, ever.
What do you think its impact will be on the broader VC and investment landscape? And do you see any ripple into other industries like carbon removal or climate tech generally?
Susan Su: Yeah, I think, man, it’s a huge deal. And it’s just very sad, really. I don’t agree with people that I think there’s like a sentiment on Twitter and maybe elsewhere where, you know, people love to see the tall daisy get cut down. And it’s terrible that fraud was committed and that actually many, many customers of FTX were defrauded of their deposits. Who knows whether it was done in sociopathic malice or whether it was somebody getting in over their heads in terms of leverage and then looking desperately around for funds to cover that and then turning to customer deposits.
Sort of the desperate gambler that keeps going in for more. Who knows what it was, but none of us should be Kind of delighting or like licking our chops that this happened. And I feel like that is sort of happening in some corners of the Twitterverse and even in VC where people are sort of self-satisfied that it’s an I told you so on crypto. I think that’s really, really sad. So first, I’ll just say that there’s a little bit of division in the venture world around that. Crypto, the technology, it’s easy to kind of confuse the technology with the people that are sort of putting it out there in the world.
And unfortunately, there’s so many stereotypes about the crypto bro or maybe sister or whatever, but the crypto person who’s kind of a scammer or who’s like skeezy or whatever. And this just really plays into that. Again, I don’t know if that was the intention from the beginning or if this was something that got out over their skis kind of moment. But regardless, none of us should be happy that this happened. And I do think that it will have an impact on venture. A lot of people don’t think it will because people will point to the fact that, hey, what’s $10 billion in the grand scheme of things?
That’s less than Sequoia’s AUM. And that’s spread out across customer losses. The VC losses were $2 billion. And really, it’s a drop in the bucket for some of these companies Sorry, Sequoia’s AUM is 80-something billion. If I said 8 billion, I misspoke. It’s 80-something billion. But it’s less than the huge sums of money that many of these mega funds command. The investors that lost money in... FTX were SoftBank, Sequoia, Tiger Global, Lightspeed, Temasek, huge mega firms that raise billions and billions and have tens of billions under management, hundreds of billions collectively.
You know, 2 billion bucks, like it sounds like a lot. And of course, it’s a shame to burn money like that. But at the end of the day, it’s not going to break these funds. I will say the funds that will be most affected are the ones that were crypto specific because they had much higher concentrations of their portfolio organized around FTX.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So Naeem, you obviously are not, well, maybe I shouldn’t say obvious, but you do not appear to be part of the crypto bros culture. And I assume that, you know, FTX is more of a distraction than something you pay a ton of attention to. But when you hear about FTX, what do you take from it? And do you feel like there’s any warnings or things that we need to be thinking about on the climate tech side of the world?
Na’im Merchant: Well, you are right. I’m not a crypto bro, so I don’t follow this very closely. But I think the lesson here that I think you can just broadly apply to You know, any business or any industry is like this importance of operating with integrity, transparency and accountability. And I think that there’s like a temptation in climate tech and carbon removal to scale quickly. Like that’s a very real temptation, especially in climate when we’re trying to solve a very real problem in a very short period of time. And so I think the message to those of us who operate in this space is that despite there being this imperative to grow and grow quickly, we can’t lose sight of the fact that, you know, we need to operate in good faith.
And that’s central to what we need to do. And adopting some kind of ends justifies the means narrative, whatever that looks like to you, could very well backfire. And so that’s just something to keep in mind as we Operate in an industry that there is a lot of pressure to scale. There is a lot of VC interest. There are a lot of claims made about new technologies that remain untested. And we need all that innovation. We need all that energy. We need all that dynamism and funding. But it needs to be Anchored by a sense of integrity, transparency, accountability that I think was probably missing at least one of those three things were missing with FTX and some of the other things that we’ve seen not go well in the crypto space.
So it’s a lesson for everybody and we’ll see how this all shakes out in the end, but I think those pieces are ultimately important here.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, and this is a question for you both, I think, as we kind of wrap up this segment, is how do you maintain that integrity and transparency and ensure as you’re rapidly scaling, you don’t lose it? You know, one of the things that I was struck by in the whole FTX debacle is the absolute lack of governance and the lack of due diligence it felt like by the VCs around the governance. So curious, To both of you, how you can scale while also maintaining that sense of purpose and integrity that you talked about, Naeem.
So I’ll start with you, Naeem, and then I’ll move on to Susan.
Na’im Merchant: Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think within an organization, it’s about... I think, ultimately, it’s about taking a long view, right? I think it’s like, and that means that we need investors to take a longer view, especially when it comes to climate technology. We need companies to take a longer view, and that makes it more likely that we’ll see companies and organizations implement the right governance procedures internally. But it also means that other system actors that work in, let’s call it like the carbon removal space more generally, are going to want to see time spent at the front end to implement measurement reporting and verification standards, for example.
I think that when we Recognize that what we’re trying to do is solve a major problem over and take a long view as opposed to a quick win view. I think that leaves space for building some of these internal systems as well as external systems that are going to be necessary to create that integrity and transparency and accountability. But if we are in this race to scale and trying to scale up as quickly as possible, You know, yeah, that’s important. We need to do that. But if we don’t have the full long game in view, I think we miss some of these really important pieces.
I don’t think this is the answer to, you know, how we avoid an FTX situation in other industries, but I think it makes them, these sorts of situations, a little less likely.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Susan?
Susan Su: There’s a lot of FOMO. There is a lot of FOMO in venture. There’s a lot of FOMO in climate venture. And I think a lot of why it’s easy to blame the investors in the FTX scenario, but no investor wants to go in with no due diligence. No investor wants there not to be a board, wants there not to be governance. Everybody wants those things, but sometimes, and we’ve all been in that position, sometimes you have to kind of waive your rights to those things in order to get access to a deal because it’s so hot, especially if that was happening.
I happen to think that this year and next year are climate techs 2020 and 2021. So I think the lessons learned from FTX are highly salient to climate tech right now, which is that something that could look like a hot deal that’s just got us burning up inside with FOMO Our job as investors is to be good faith stewards of capital. If you do a bad job, you might support an entrepreneur and create an industry and create a bunch of hype around something. If all of those things ultimately fail, you’re still not doing justice to the movement.
We’re not solving the ultimate problem. And in fact, we’re probably hurting it more in the end. And we’re not being good stewards of capital, which is like literally you sign a contract that says, I agree to do that. This is my job. And so I think that, like, that’s probably the number one thing to take away. Like I’ve seen over the past couple of years, just an increasing amount of, like, scary dearth of diligence, I’ll call it, DOD. There are a lot of folks, I’ll admit it, like myself, that are part of generalist funds, where some of the other partners aren’t available, aren’t there to advocate.
Ask hard-hitting questions before a deal goes through because they’re focused on SaaS or FinTech or what have you. And part of it is driven by FOMO. Part of it is driven by just the amount of velocity that there is. You know, it feels like we’re getting into a gold rush in climate tech, just as it felt like we were getting into a crypto gold rush in 2020 and 2021. What happens when there’s a gold rush? Well, everybody, you know, anybody who’s been to San Francisco used to be called the Barbary Coast, not for nothing.
There were all kinds of like hucksters and scammers and, you know, every bad guy out there because it was a gold rush and there was an opportunity to make money, an opportunity to, you know, probably be a hustler and be a You know, a trickster. And I think the same thing is happening. You know, I’m not pointing any fingers, but I think the same thing could happen with all of the money that’s coming into climate tech. We still have to pause and exercise discernment and make sure that For example, like Naeem says, that the actual accounting methods are regular, that there’s an agreed upon sort of set of standards that we look at before we go into something.
I think that would be, especially set by outside parties, that would really, really help to straighten things out. But at the end of the day, my only hope is that the FTX experience will remind all of us that it’s really important to pause and do good, sometimes slow work. Um, where we can and not get too, too caught up in the emotional, um, hustle bustle of, of deal making as much as we can control that. Hortus beats the hair.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Um, all right. So in honor of Thanksgiving, we’re going to do a quick round of what we’re thankful for in carbon removal. So we will each have to answer these questions, including myself. And we’ll do a quick one to two sentences of what we are thankful for. First off, many people are devoting themselves to growing carbon removal. Who is one that you’d like to shout out or a team and give thanks for? Susan, I’ll start with you.
Susan Su: I’ll shout out the people listening to this podcast, actually. I think you are incredible for caring about this. This is pretty wonky. And, you know, by the way, we’re all learning as we go. So thank you for also being forgiving, for being flexible, for laughing with us, all of it. And most of all, thank you for being here and being interested. It’s incredible that like this podcast has even grown to what it is. And I’m surprised every day I get outreach on LinkedIn or emails and people say, oh, I listen, I’m like, what you do?
I thought this was just us having a conversation, you know, the three of us. But so I’m really impressed and thankful for that.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, some of my freakier moments is when people are like, I recognize your voice. And I’m like, oh my goodness, that’s weird. Naeem, your turn.
Na’im Merchant: Yeah, I’d like to shout out Di Ellis, who like me used to work in global health and he’s an advisor and executive coach to a number of climate startups. And we used to work in an organization that was involved in scaling up access to HIV medicines using financing mechanisms like advanced market commitments. And he’s launched an excellent newsletter called The Great Unwind, which I think people should try to check out. And why I’m shutting him out is that he’s just, I’m thankful for him because he’s brought up so much thought leadership around, you know, what we learned in our previous kind of careers in global health, from driving down costs, to find ways to pay for medicines, to ensuring quality.
And a lot of those lessons are not perfectly, you know, adaptable to or applicable to carbon removal, but they can be adapted to carbon removal. And so he writes, Every time you write something, I devour it because I think there’s some really great insights there. And as a new industry, I think carbon removal needs folks like Dai to help us think about how we can do more than just kind of create this new market, but actually shape it into the one we want. So I wanted to be thankful for Dai in this example.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I just watched his MRV video. It was really good. Really interesting. All right. Well, I’m keeping mine close to home and I’m going to give a shout out to The folks at Nori and very specifically the team that I work with, they all are always acting as one of our company values with the end in mind and are continuously improving yet another one of our values. I just so appreciate all the hard work they do, all their efforts to make CDR accessible to everyone and look forward to seeing what 2023 brings as we continue to grow and expand as a company.
Next question, and I’ll start with you, Naeem, on this one. Be it a company, nonprofit, or public agency, whose work has progressed the field in a way that you’re grateful for?
Na’im Merchant: Yeah, so on this one, I’m going to call out Carbon 180. I attended the Carbon Removal Summit they hosted earlier this week here in Washington, D. C. , which was excellent. But, you know, over the last several years, Carbon 180 has just done a lot of groundwork in creating A narrative and doing the field building around CDR, which is a part of why I think we have such a dynamic ecosystem here in the US. And I think it’s a model that other countries should try to adopt. But in holding this summit a couple of days ago, you know, carbon 180 has been keeping the momentum going around CDR in 2022 and beyond and helping Industry and policymakers kind of see where we need to orient our attention going forward.
So they’re not shy to say, you know, we need to focus on environmental justice or we need to, you know, effectively implement policies and start to build coalitions around government procurement and take MRV seriously. So it’s been really, really inspiring to just see them do their work. And I’m grateful for Carbon 180 to kind of continue the CDR momentum and keep people focused on just where this industry needs to go. And if you’ve ever met Any of the folks there, they’re also just really nice people.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Susan?
Susan Su: I am grateful to California state lawmakers for introducing the California Carbon Dioxide Removal Market Development Act very recently. I think it was just three days ago that they announced it. They announced the bill. And I think And I think, you know, more than anything, what will be really important out of this is just how it drives the conversation, you know, something that California is very good at doing, right, is shaping the conversation leading the narrative, and specifically around what exactly counts as a valid negative emission. How does that get paid for?
Who’s a credible buyer to that? And then how tactically do we make it so that we can actually fulfill against those credits and make it possible to get I think those are really, really important questions to be asking. And it’s getting into the more sophisticated nuances as opposed to, I think, like carbon removal circa 2018 would have just, or maybe even 2020, would have been much more around nice sounding pledges, but know how for how we get there. And now we’re getting into the how, like really at the nitty gritty state lawmaking level.
And I think that’s really exciting. Grateful for everybody that’s part of that, that’s taking leadership on this.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Okay, that’s a great one. And it nicely actually segues into what mine, which is about a federal agency, NOAA, that I got to visit yesterday. They are doing incredibly interesting work, particularly around Ocean CDR, building out the various technologies and Other types of equipment that we need to really, truly scale Ocean CDR. And I appreciate their quiet, hard work and their excitement about public and private partnerships that I think are necessary to probably scale, particularly Ocean CDR to the next level. So very grateful for all the work they do in all of their innovation.
Finally, and again, I’ll start with you, Susan. Zooming out, what trend, just generically within CDR, gives you hope for the coming year?
Susan Su: I mean, it has to be the collaboration between all of these different parties on the policy side, which we’ve talked about quite a bit today, but also in the private sector, everything from Stripe Frontier to well-established oil and gas companies getting involved. I think we need everybody to be a part of this. It’s great to see the openness that there has been on all sides to work together and collaborate. We need expertise from people that have been digging stuff up from the ground for a long time and using CO2 to injecting it already into the ground.
We need a policy push. We need innovators. We need funders. And every one of those players is coming to the table now. And I’m I’m really thankful for that trend.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Naeem?
Na’im Merchant: Yeah, the trend that I’m grateful for is the increasing level of attention that’s being placed on measurement reporting and verification or MRV. MRV, I think, is critical to CDR’s long-term success. And it’s really a tool for building trust, not just with buyers of carbon credits, but also improving transparency and trust with a lot of different stakeholders. And like we were talking about earlier, we can get so hung up on scaling CDR quickly that it’s easy to lose sight of the need to ensure that carbon removal is done with a high level of integrity.
If we want to scale longer term, and the fact is that CDR is a long game. And so, you know, an increased degree of seriousness and thoughtfulness that I’m seeing across every, you know, stakeholder in the space that I speak to on this issue of measurement reporting and verification is something I’m grateful for as someone who is playing the CDR long game and wants to see this industry succeed in meeting its potential this century.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And then finally, I think just sort of echoing both what Susan and Naeem kind of were alluding to, I’m just grateful for the attention that CDR is getting for the continual growth in intelligent, thoughtful people that are joining the conversation to push this, the whole industry forward. It’s still in the toddler phase, as I think that I was saying in his video, and I’m just really excited that what What I think is going to be from the toddler to the adolescent phase will be happening in the next year to two years.
And it’s just a really fun time to be in this space. And before I say goodbye, I just want to add one more thing that I’m thankful for. And that is my producer, Asa, who you might have heard last week as the host. He has made this show a real joy to work on. And I want to just thank him for all of his hard work and keeping us all organized and Coming up with some really good and thoughtful questions. So thank you, Asa. With that, I will wrap up our Thanksgiving episode of Carbon Removal Newsroom and wish you both, Susan, Na'im, a wonderful short week next week and look forward to talking to you next month.
Announcer: Thanks so much for listening to Carbon Removal Newsroom. If you like the show, the best way you can help us is by giving us a great rating and review an Apple podcast, following the show on Spotify, and by sharing the show on social media. Tell your friends and help us spread the word about what’s happening in the world of carbon removal.
