An important climate body at the U.N. is causing controversy as they seek to define use of CDR, and many supporters of carbon removal are not happy.
The UNFCCC is in the process of figuring out how carbon removal fits into emissions reduction plans. A recent draft statement caused a stir among advocates of CDR and climate experts, as it described CDR as 'unproven' and ‘not contributing to sustainable development’.
Many CDR advocates have contested these claims, especially given the crucial role attributed to CDR in last year's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
In response, the Carbon Business Council is drafted a letter, with support from over 100 CDR experts, in an attempt to persuade the UNFCCC to provide a clearer definition of CDR.
In today's discussion, we'll speak with Wil Burns, Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University. We'll explore the purpose of this new definition, what's been proposed so far, and why it's so important."
This episode’s second segment is an interview with - Todd Myers, the Director of the Center for the Environment at the Washington Policy Center. His 2022 book, “Time to Think Small: How nimble environmental technologies can solve the planet’s biggest problems,” sheds light on how compact, innovative technologies are giving individuals the power to safeguard endangered wildlife, cut back on CO2 emissions, and combat the issue of ocean plastic.
Radhika talks with Todd about a landmark decision in Washington State that recently made headlines as it became the first in the U.S. to pass its capital budget with funding specifically allocated for carbon dioxide removal. Todd also discusses his work on environmental policy and its applications to carbon removal.
On This Episode
Radhika Moolgavkar
Wil Burns
Resources
Carbon Business Council Letter
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, everyone, and welcome to a special edition of Carbon Removal Newsroom. Today, I have with me Wil Burns, Co-Executive Director of the Institute for Carbon Removal Law and Policy at American University. Hello, Will.
Wil Burns: Hello, Radhika. How are you?
Radhika Moolgavkar: I am doing well. The weather’s beautiful here in Seattle, so no complaints.
Wil Burns: Oh, yeah, here too.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And as always, I’m Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology at NORI. So, Unless you’ve had your head under a rock in the carbon removal world, you have been probably tracking the UNFCCC’s various, let’s call them recommendations for lack of a better word, that came out a few weeks ago. To give a little background, one of the most significant offshoots of the Paris Agreement is known as Article 6. 4. It created a system where countries can collaborate to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and it allows one nation to benefit from the emissions reductions achieved by another via a carbon trading scheme.
However, a recent focus from the UNFCCC is figuring out how carbon removal fits into these emission reduction plans. And a recent draft statement caused a stir among advocates of carbon dioxide removal, to put it mildly, and other climate experts as it described CDR as unproven and not contributing to sustainable development. Many CDR advocates have contested these claims, especially given the crucial role attributed to CDR in last year’s report from the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or the IPCC. In response, the Carbon Business Council drafted a letter with support from over 100 CDR experts in an attempt to persuade the UNFCCC to provide a clearer definition of CDR and its use.
So today we’re going to talk to Will, who is a policy wonk and expert to kind of get his take on what’s going on and maybe help bring some clarity to this debate because I know it has swirled all over the place and I haven’t been able to track it all for sure. So let’s just start off giving our listeners like just a high level overview of Article 6. 4 of the Paris Agreement and why it’s significant to the context of global efforts to combat climate change.
Wil Burns: Yeah. Article six in general, which advocates for market and non-market based mechanisms that could effectuate collaboration between countries to reduce costs and increase ambition, really grew out of the philosophy of the Kyoto Protocol right which established these flexible mechanisms that provided another means for countries or companies to meet their. Their obligations through, as you suggested emissions trading or the clean development project where they would cite a project in another country. That reduced emissions and then apply the reductions toward their carbon budget right and the idea was it could be win win win it can provide jobs and technology at a local level, it can reduce the cost for.
And it can cut through the Gordian knot of politics by making it easier. And so article six is an extension really of Kyoto, but it was much vaguer than Kyoto in terms of the flexible mechanisms. It didn’t really establish what this would look like, but it was contemplated that there would be rules subsequently developed. And article six, four, Contemplates that there’s a supervisory body that will be established by the parties that will oversee projects that have been developed. Grant credits from them that can be applied toward companies or countries’ obligations.
And so what they’re doing now is trying to develop the rules that will establish criteria by which one can obtain those kind of credits to meet NDCs.
Radhika Moolgavkar: And remind me, Will, when Article 6. 4 of the Paris Agreement was created? How many?
Wil Burns: Well, well, yeah, I mean, it was created during the drafting of Paris. Right. And then Paris came into into force in 2016. And then in the interim, they’ve they’ve been talking about what the contours of it should look like. Right. And as I said, they started off just much more amorphously than Kyoto did in terms of market based mechanisms. Largely, I think, because the market-based mechanisms under Kyoto didn’t really succeed. And so I think they really wanted to sit with this and determine how to develop granular sort of rules that would make this more effective.
So it’s taken a while.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Seven years.
Wil Burns: Well, you know, they’re simultaneously trying to deal with all of the other provisions of Paris and operationalizing them. And so, yeah.
Radhika Moolgavkar: It’s just one of those dichotomies within the climate change world always perplexes me. The need for rapid change, but how slow it takes us to even get to the starting line, it feels like.
Wil Burns: Yep.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So one question that I was asking you beforehand and continues and it swirls in my head a lot is how do these two different groups interact with one another? You have the UNFCCC and the IPCC, who are both United Nations bodies. But seem to have come to very different conclusions about this.
Wil Burns: Yeah. Well, so the IPCC was actually created four years before the Framework Convention. It was created in 88 by the United Nations Environment Program, the World Meteorological Organization to provide You know, the most comprehensive ongoing assessment of climate science. And then the Framework Convention has established a relationship with the IPCC. It provides some of its funding. Through its subsidiary body for science and technology assessment, it asks the IPCC for special reports and to establish workshops. It takes the synthesis reports of the IPCC And seeks to translate them into policy ready sort of recommendations for the parties.
So they sit apart and they interact at the same time.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So do you think the UNFCCC read all the work that the IPCC folks wrote and then sort of disregarded it or?
Wil Burns: Yeah, I mean, you know, obviously we can go into the specifics in terms of what we think in the carbon removal community kind of writ large are some of the problems, but I think in general, There definitely was a heavy tilt ultimately on the part of the Framework Convention to what they label nature-based solutions in terms of what they would grant credits for and really serious reservations with what they labeled industrial-based approaches that was significant. Definitely more tilted and pronounced than what the IPCC has been telling us, including in its latest report in terms of risk, technological readiness levels and other things.
It’s definitely a different approach. And I think to some degree, it’s been driven by the stakeholder process, right? They’ve asked for interventions and I think one of the problems that the carbon removal community had is up until very recently, you really did not have voices for the carbon removal community to weigh in on these kind of critical processes right think how young. The Direct Air Capture Coalition is, the Carbon Business Council, Amador’s new organization. And I think that what happened was there were a few voices heavily in favor of nature-based solutions that provided most of the input into the process.
And that’s what largely dictated the output.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So the next question I was going to ask you, but I think you’ve answered it, is in your view why the UNFCCC labeled engineering approaches is unproven and not compatible with sustainable development. But it sounds like your thought is it was just the voices that they heard, or do you think there are other things that influence that?
Wil Burns: I don’t know, but I’m frustrated on both ends of the equation. On one end, I think they fetishized nature-based solutions in the sense that there is some discussion in some of the earlier parts of the document about how nature-based solutions could pose risks and might not be sustainable. But then when they got to the chart, and quite frankly, in a 96-page document, a lot of the parties to it are just going to read the charts. And there’s a chart with pros and cons, right? And there, they abandon all that. They talk about nature-based solutions, furthering sustainable development, being proven, not really posing risks.
None of this is really true at a really large scale. For example, the kind of scales that they’re talking about to effectuate some of the carbon removal estimates that they’re making might require you to be scaling up to 800, 900 million hectares of land for forests, an area the size of Europe. If you do that, you’re likely to displace huge amounts of prairie grasslands and savannas that are very high in biodiversity, not to mention releasing a lot of carbon in the process. There’s plenty of evidence from the RED program, and RED is very small compared to what we’d be looking at in massively scaling up forests, that many communities end up worse off economically because people are displaced from lands that they require for livelihoods, and a few elites benefit from plantation-based sort of afforestation.
But the community on balance is more food insecure and has less income. Right. And so from a standpoint of a number of the sustainable development goals, that isn’t tenable either. Right. And so I would have liked them to be a lot less blithe and a lot more granular about the risks of large scale afforestation and its implications for the sustainable development goals. OK, so on that side, I have some real problems on the other side. When it came to this so-called engineered approaches, first of all, I thought it was a rhetorical, an intentionally rhetorical approach, right?
To label one natural and one engineered because who doesn’t love natural, right? I mean, arsenic is natural too. There are things that are natural that are not necessarily good for us and things that are natural at too large a scale that are also not sustainable, right? So I don’t like the labels, and I know a number of the folks that weighed in talked about that. When they got to the engineered approach, again, it was extremely blithe and conclusionary, right? It talked about the fact that none of these approaches are proven at any scale.
That’s increasingly not true when it comes to things like direct air capture, for example. It talked about the fact that they can’t further the sustainable development goals, right? Well, number 13 of the sustainable development goals is climate change, right? And if this Is an effective way to address climate change by definition, it also potentially some of these approaches could provide jobs, it could, in the case of direct air capture. One of the potential co benefits is are things like hydrogen production, so it could meet the goal of clean energy. Not necessarily, right?
We know it could also require huge amounts of energy, right? But what I would have expected from them was less of a blithe conclusion of that nature and more of an expression of uncertainty and encouragement of further research, right? Because at the end of the day, When they put the thumb on the scale for nature-based solutions, one of the things they did is about 20 or 30 pages on 10-year accounting, right?
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, another... Another touchy topic that we- Yeah.
Wil Burns: And I think there’s a role for even short-term sequestration in terms of buying us time, for example, helping us to scale. But I don’t think at the end of the day, it can give us the kind of durable and permanent sort of sequestration that the IPCC told us we need And I think that chart, again, doesn’t communicate that adequately to policymakers.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, so much there, but... We will keep moving on. I would just say the other issue with the engineered label, which you and I have talked about too, is like so much of what we call engineered are also within nature. So it’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Wil Burns: What, right. What’s enhanced mineral weathering, right?
Radhika Moolgavkar: There’s a, you know, kelp sink. Yeah, all of that is also, yeah. It has a nature component to it.
Wil Burns: Yeah, yeah. I just don’t, I don’t find it helpful. It’s like the geoengineering word. It’s a devil term for so many people that you can’t cut through the miasma and then look at each one of these technologies, qua technology and assess risks and benefits, right? And I think that’s what we need to be doing, right? You know, there’s plenty of legitimate concerns about direct air capture or enhanced mineral weathering. But let’s not start off with giving it a label that means that a lot of people won’t even necessarily engage in that assessment process because that’s not how policy should be made.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I couldn’t agree with you more. So you signed on to the Carbon Business Council’s letter. Nori signed on to that letter as well. I’m curious what motivated you to do that and then also be on the show and kind of speak out about what you’re seeing and what you’re thinking.
Wil Burns: Yeah, it’s nothing that as an academic that I do without trepidation, right? I mean, as an academic, you always try to maintain a bit of a distance and objectivity on these sort of things, right? I had to feel plenty exercised by this document. But the reason I signed on ultimately is I agreed with the removal council’s, I think, primary thrust, which was that industrial Sequestrial approaches were both given too short a shrift and unfairly labeled as potentially providing no benefits in terms of sustainability and no proven ability to verify sequestration or scale up in a way that wouldn’t be potentially beneficial.
You know, if anything, if they think that we’re not ready with the industrial approaches to grant credits under 6-4, right? And I think that could be a reasonable argument, right? In the case of most of these approaches. I think the conclusion has to be, though, we’re not ready to do that with the nature-based, right? Because allowing massive upscaling of that could pose equal or even more serious risks on all of the metrics that they talk about for the industrial. And so let’s be We are extremely careful in doing that assessment in a way that’s very careful and not put the finger on the scale because at the end of the day, we’re ultimately going to need the industrial approaches to effectuate the more permanent and durable sequestration in the longer term.
Radhika Moolgavkar: What do you think, what’s your prediction about this advocacy and if it will change in any meaningful way what is written and recommended by this body?
Wil Burns: Yeah, I don’t know. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some nibbling on the edges, but I think the good news in some ways is that if you look at the history of the Kyoto Protocol and our development of definitions under their emissions trading component and their clean development mechanism, Those evolved over time, and to some degree that was driven by increasing recognition of technologies that had matured, and maybe it made sense to include under those rubrics. So I think this isn’t the last word.
Radhika Moolgavkar: What is your prediction on how this advocacy will impact the recommendations from this body?
Wil Burns: Yeah, I think it’s difficult to know. I know that they’re in a hurry to try to get recommendations ready for the parties for the upcoming meeting. Because again, I think a lot of people perceive that Article 6 is languished and people would like to see us get moving in terms of defining projects. But I think the good news is that if we look at the history of the development of the flexible mechanisms under the Kyoto Protocol, they evolved with time and new things were added that potentially could be credited based on technological developments, new scientific information and so forth.
I think it would behoove the Carbon Removal Council to do a really thorough job of regularly communicating with Paris on this. And there’s a silver lining in all of this, which is... Even a couple of years ago, I think carbon removal was just a twinkle in the eye of the parties to the Paris Agreement. And in my opinion, we’re never going to scale carbon removal just using the voluntary carbon markets. We’re going to need the compliance market. And to the extent now that we have really meaningful sort of discussion inside of the Framework Convention about the role of carbon removal, It provides an opportunity for the carbon removal community to engage in a colloquy to try to shape what happens in a way that even a year ago wouldn’t have been true.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So if you’re a benign dictator and you get to rule the UNFCCC’s definition of carbon removal and the implementation on Article 6. 4, what is your hope or how would you frame it?
Wil Burns: Yeah, well, again, I wouldn’t necessarily say tomorrow I’m going to grant you credits for any of what they label industrial approaches. I do think we need more characterization, we need more MRV, more risk assessment for many of these approaches. I would hope that they would be open to do that in a way that chart 3. 2 that simply says, nope, can’t ever be sustainable, can’t be proven. Isn’t isn’t the end end of the story. And on the other side, I’d say slow down when it comes to a forestation and really.
Do much more characterization about its implications at a large scale for sustainable development and risks that are associated with that, including socioeconomic risks and questions of equity that I don’t think were adequately addressed in the document.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, Will, thank you so much for joining us and doing a very high level overview of what’s happening. We will obviously follow it, and I’m sure we will be talking about it as different recommendations come out and the process continues to be iterated on. But thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.
Wil Burns: You’re very welcome, Radica. Have a good day.
Radhika Moolgavkar: You too. Hello everyone and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. Today we’re welcoming a thought leader in free market environmental policy, Todd Myers, the director of the Center for the Environment at the Washington Policy Center. His 2022 book, Time to Think Small, How Nimble Environmental Technologies Can Solve the Planet’s Biggest Problems, sheds lights on how compact innovative technologies are giving individuals the power to safeguard endangered wildlife, cut back on CO2 emissions, And combat the issue of ocean plastics. So Todd, thanks so much for joining us.
Todd Myers: Yeah, thanks for having me on. It’s nice to chat with you.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I’m always happy to have another fellow Washingtonian on the podcast. And as always, I’m Radhika Moolgavkar, Head of Supply and Methodology here at NORI. So with Todd’s extensive background in environmental policy and public relations, he really offers a unique perspective on the interplay between the marketplace and environmental action. In CDR policy news last week, a landmark bill was passed in Washington state making it the first state in the US whose capital budget included funding specifically allocated for carbon dioxide removal. The move is groundbreaking as it goes beyond just CO2 and supports technologies designed to actively remove a full spectrum of greenhouse gases including methane and nitrous oxide from our atmosphere.
The state will distribute these funds totaling $12 million as grants. Businesses, academic institutions, and nonprofit organizations can apply, leveraging this opportunity to further their research development and demonstrations projects focused on carbon and greenhouse gas removal. So today, Todd and I will talk about his work in environmental policy, its application to carbon removal, and some of the recent news from Washington State. And we’ll jump off time at the Washington State budget. So Todd, I’m curious about Your reaction to the state’s decision to allocate capital budget funding specifically for carbon dioxide removal.
Todd Myers: So I think In a lot of ways, I think it’s great that people are looking across the spectrum for ways to reduce CO2 emissions, not just reduce emissions, but actually, you know, store carbon, remove it from the atmosphere and do that. I think what my book was about is the incredible improvement in technology to address a lot of these environmental and climate problems. So I’m really pleased that there is a broad perspective I, having done environmental policy in Washington state for more than two decades and worked at the Department of Natural Resources, I am a little bit skeptical about the state’s ability to do this.
I’m more hopeful about companies like Amazon and Microsoft, who are also looking at carbon removal about their ability to focus on effective ways to Remove and store carbon. So one of the things that when I looked at the capital budget, for instance, there are no metrics for success, for cost, for how long the carbon is stored, all those sorts of things. And the discussion of it is more about jobs. Now, I will say that Washington State is one of the best places in the country to do geologic storage. We have lots of basalt.
The work that Nori is doing, I think, Excellent on agricultural storage. We have a lot of agriculture and a lot of opportunity to do those things. So I really, I like the notion that we are looking, taking a broader look at how to reduce CO2 emissions and reduce atmospheric CO2. I think, however, at the end of the day, the government approach is going to be less successful than some of the Washington business approaches like Microsoft and Amazon.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So yeah, given your expertise in free market environmental policy, what role do you see in the private sector businesses and startups when they apply for these funds that are driving innovation in carbon and greenhouse gas removal? I mean, you talked about some big ones like Microsoft and Amazon, but what about like the more startup focused new technologies that need to be developed in the CDR space?
Todd Myers: Yeah, you know, what I would hope is that government programs would help create the market because I think that’s what startups need is increased market and increased market opportunities. You know, Microsoft and Amazon, as you point out, they’re big companies, so they, they can do their own thing, but we need to democratize the carbon market so lots of people can look to it as an alternative. In that area, Washington’s doing a bad job because our cap and trade system really tightly limits the amount of carbon offsets and the ability to use carbon projects to reduce CO2 emissions.
So I think that’s one area that can help. Government can also help in basic research so that companies like Microsoft and Amazon can then look at, okay, what works and what doesn’t. I think that’s really the fantastic balance that government and private sectors and a company like Nori can strike the balance that they can strike. Government doing a lot of the basic research, national labs, other things like that, looking at how we can effectively store carbon and allowing carbon markets to incentivize people to use that technology and turn it into something that’s marketable and effective.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Since the rules haven’t yet been written for how this is going to be spent, do you think there’s an opportunity to influence that in any way through the administrative state?
Todd Myers: I hope so. And we certainly will be encouraging the state to put some good metrics. Now, you know, as we’ve seen with carbon storage, it’s not just cost. And one of the advantages of carbon storage, whether it’s especially agricultural or geologic, is the certainty. You know, carbon projects like forestry, I mean, I worked in forestry, but I’m very skeptical of forestry offsets for a variety of reasons. So, you know, it is hard to find, there is no perfect balance, right, of cost and certainty, but that is one of the advantages that carbon storage provides is that certainty in a way that some other carbon reduction projects.
So I hope that those sort of standards are put in. To the regulation and to the rules. Like I said, the way that it was written in the capital budget, those standards weren’t there. And the focus was developing an industry rather than effective CO2 reduction, but there’s still time.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I find it interesting because both Washington and California, which has recently passed some legislation around greenhouse gas emission reductions and things, emphasize a lot the job aspect of it and how important it is to create a homegrown industry. So just from your experience within Washington State, do you think that was because that was needed to get bipartisan support or are there other reasons that only the job part seems to be emphasized and the other benefits are not as prevalent in the language?
Todd Myers: Well, Washington State is very heavily Democrat controlled, so there was no need for bipartisan support. I don’t know. I think that I think that. One of the frustrations I have with climate policy is that there is a sense to try to make it all things to all people. And what I see is that in a variety of ways, those other claimed benefits undermine the carbon effectiveness and drive up the price of reducing CO2 emissions to try to achieve other benefits. So as an environmental economist, that frustrates me. You know, politicians have a different viewpoint.
They want to claim, you know, that it’s both a floor wax and a dessert topping at the same time by saying we can reduce CO2 emissions and grow our economy and create jobs. I think that those, I think it’s hard to do all of those things at the same time and be effective. So we will see where the balance ends up with these projects and with these grant programs. My experience with similar grant programs in Washington State is that the programs have been very ineffective.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s interesting. I mean, I’m curious why you think they’re ineffective. Are they improperly managed or do you think it’s because of the way the metrics are written, a combination of both, something else?
Todd Myers: I think it’s a variety of things. I think one is that the projects are not politically chosen, that’s the wrong way to say it, but that they are influenced by politics. So Washington State has actually had a program for a long time called the Clean Energy Fund that has funded projects like this. So for instance, methane capture, which would count, I think under this system, because as you mentioned, the new Carbon storage is for all greenhouse gases so it would count for methane and so capturing methane And then reusing that I think might count under this.
And we’ve had those programs, but the programs that have been funded actually, like one of them actually stopped early because it was so expensive and yielding so little. A lot of these tech, look, I love innovation and I am all for finding new ways to reduce CO2 emissions. And that’s why I say, I think government plays a great role in basic, Research that can be used by companies like nori and then you know purchased by companies like Microsoft and Amazon, but I think too often what we see is that the government.
They go for what sounds good rather than what works effectively and the most dramatic example of that is not in the. And carbon storage area, but in biofuels, Snohomish County, one of the counties in Washington State, actually built their own biofuel feedstock plant for $5 million and literally never produced a gallon of feedstock. It’s the most dramatic example, but those sorts of things are always in the back of my mind. I much more trust the work that you are doing and that others are doing to You know, follow the good technologies and make them effective.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, thank you very much. I appreciate that. Washington is the first U. S. state to take a step like this. So do you think this is a shift in how other states might approach funding in support of climate technologies, especially related to greenhouse gas removal? Or do you think Washington is going to be a little bit of an outlier?
Todd Myers: I think, yeah, I think it could influence others, and just let me be clear, I think there is a really nice aspect of this, which is that we should be looking more broadly at ways to reduce CO2 emissions. We shouldn’t just look at, you know, sort of reducing emissions, but we, you know, we should look at storage and things like that because What we want is a broad portfolio of projects in terms of cost, in terms of certainty and reliability. Carbon storage offers some things that just simply reducing CO2 emissions or renewable energy credits or things like that don’t offer.
And having that broad Portfolio of options is a really good idea. So I’m glad that the state has broadened its perspective and is looking at these areas. And I do hope that others pay attention because I think it can be effective because there’s going to come the point where, and I think the point is here to some extent, where some carbon storage projects are cheaper than alternative carbon reduction efforts. And the more that we can encourage people to take advantage of those opportunities rather than what can be very expensive alternative regulatory approaches is a great thing.
And let me just say, you know, I’m not just buttering you up because I’m on your podcast, but I do think, I mean, the thing about Nori and other businesses is that they have to prove results. If you, you know, promise a certain amount of CO2 reduction and you sell it and you don’t get that, the companies, you know, are going to come after you. We don’t see that in politics. We see political approaches on CO2 reduction falling short repeatedly, and there is no accountability. And I think that difference in the level of accountability between government programs and private programs is really critical to make sure that we have effective CO2 reduction programs.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah. So, you know, it’s interesting because I want to pivot a little bit about Some of the challenges that we have as startups, which is we have local opposition and environmental justice groups who don’t always like the projects that we’re proposing. And I know Washington has a long history of advocacy and very strong tribal nations. So as the free market and the government is experimenting in this space, how do you think we should be considering those challenges?
Todd Myers: Well, the complaints I have seen about carbon storage from the environmental left are twofold. The first is a project by project basis. As I mentioned, Washington State probably has the best opportunity for geologic storage because we have so much basalt. And there have been efforts to do experiments with those, including Pacific Northwest National Labs to see if it works and how, you know, whether they can get the science right. And one of the key opponents were environmental groups. They even were saying things like, we don’t want to store pollution in the ground.
So I think, you know, the language of CO2 as a pollutant sort of comes back to bite some folks when storing CO2 in the ground becomes translated into storing pollution in the ground, which I think is sort of disingenuous. But the second thing is that I think that there is a sort of more philosophical opposition, which I strongly disagree with, that says that if we can effectively remove atmospheric CO2 and store it, Using what other method, geologic, agriculture, or whatever else, that it allows business as usual. And some groups don’t want business as usual.
That strikes me as not an argument about climate change. That strikes me as an argument about using climate change to force economic change. And I think that is really dangerous because if you make effective action on climate change contingent on sort of the economic battles and philosophies, we are likely to stall and not get very far. And the more political and the more partisan we make these discussions, the less likely we are to succeed in meeting targets that people want to meet and reducing CO2 in a cost effective and sustainable way.
So I think Both of those objections to carbon storage really frustrate me. One of them I think is simply NIMBY and the other one I just think is really counterproductive to the overall effort of reducing the risk of climate change.
Radhika Moolgavkar: What would be your advice to the CDR community on how to kind of widen the public support or combat these narratives that you just described?
Todd Myers: I think, you know, I come from the center right, although I’m very sympathetic, obviously, I hope you can tell, to efforts to reduce CO2 emissions. And the skepticism I get is from, you know, politically chosen, picking and choosing winners as people say, But when I you know tell them it’s like look, we need to have let the markets choose let innovation flourish and find ways to effectively and cost effectively inexpensively reduce CO2 emissions, a lot of the. The nervousness goes away because when it is, you know, companies and markets choosing rather than politicians, I think people on the center right say, well, look, I may not agree.
I may think climate change is not as serious as other people, but look, If Amazon wants to spend its money that way, that’s their issue. And so creating markets, as I said, I think was a really powerful way for government to promote that innovation that is gonna be critical if we’re gonna effectively reduce CO2 emissions. And creating markets also means that small innovators, of which there are many, can compete. If you have to have a good idea and a lobbyist, you are less likely to succeed than if you just have to have a good idea and put it on the market.
And that’s, I think, the way we’re going to get where we need to go.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, that’s an interesting point. I was just talking to somebody else about some of the work that the UNFCCC is doing on carbon removal and how Our small companies have a hard time having a voice in a big bureaucracy like the UN and how you do that while trying to develop an industry. It’s just very hard, to your point, if you need a lobbyist and to build a business at the same time.
Todd Myers: Yeah, you should be focusing on making the technology work and finding customers. You shouldn’t have to spend a lot of your time worrying about decisions in New York or Brussels or anywhere else.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Yeah, I agree. So I wanted to now pivot to your book, Time to Think Small and talk about it kind of in relationship to carbon removal. So obviously your title kind of says it all. You advocate for small decentralized technologies to combat climate change and other environmental challenges. So how can you see these technologies fitting into the landscape of carbon dioxide removal strategies and these decentralized technologies?
Todd Myers: Yeah, I think a lot of our mindset about like I said, I’ve worked in environmental policy for 20 years. And I think a lot of our approach to environmental policies in general and climate change in particular is based on the success of the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act and similar laws in other countries. When we had air pollution problems, when we had water pollution problems in the United States, we created the Environmental Protection Agency and we passed laws that targeted point sources of pollution. And it worked. We have much cleaner air and much cleaner water today than we did in the 1970s because of those things.
And that success has influenced how we think about solving future problems like the ones we have now with climate change. But the world has very much changed. Not only the nature of the problem, we don’t have just big smoke stacks that are emitting CO2. CO2 emissions are distributed in a lot of different sources. And the other thing is that we now have technology that can empower people to deal with that pollution in a way that they simply couldn’t in 1970. And my favorite example, recent example, is In California, when they were having their energy crisis, short energy crisis last September, they were facing blackouts and they simply texted residential customers.
Now they’d never done this before, at least at this scale, and just said, look, we are facing shortages, please conserve where you can. And within 15 minutes, they reduced demand by 2000 megawatts. Which basically averted the blackouts. And just to put that in context, California right now, their total grid capacity battery storage is 4,000 megawatts. So think about all the money that they have spent on those batteries and one text was able to replicate basically half of that for no cost. So it really shows the power of engaging, of democratizing environmentalism and engaging lots of people to do small things that add up to big results.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That’s a really interesting and cool example. I love it. What other types of You know, nimble innovators or people doing creative things like this. Can you highlight for us? Because, you know, I think these stories often get overlooked in the media and they often are hard to show. So I’d love to hear more about a few others that excite you.
Todd Myers: Yeah, there’s a lot of stories. It’s funny because in my book, I tell lots of stories. And the reason I tell so many stories is that oftentimes, especially for people who believe in markets like me, the critique that we get, and it’s justifiable, which is, okay, that sounds good in theory, Todd. We get your market theory. Show us where it actually works in the real world. And so I’m very heavy on cool stories because I want to show that this stuff does actually make a difference. And the second thing is, is that I want to inspire innovators because people are doing some amazingly clever things and I want more of that type of innovation.
I will give you another small example, but it just shows what can be achieved. In Ghana, they have a very, in the capital, they have a very haphazard electrical system, and there’s lots of blackouts because the lines go down, a variety of other things. And so the utility was having a difficult time determining where those blackouts were. So a group of students, I think at Cal Berkeley, came up with an app. And so people with cell phones, what the app would do is if you’re phone was charging and had Wi-Fi and suddenly lost power and Wi-Fi and didn’t move, right?
So you didn’t unplug it and leave. It would send a ping to the utility. And if the utility all of a sudden received several pings from the same area, it would know that there was a power outage there. Now think about how simple that app is. And yet 15 years ago, That is almost more sophisticated than we had in the United States. Before smart meters, the way most utilities would know if your power was out is if you called them. That’s changed now. We have two-way communication. But think about everything we had to do with smart meters.
And smart meters don’t just tell when there’s power outage. I get that. But it is one of the functions. And yet, with a simple app, they were able to tell the utility in Ghana We think we have a power outage here. So that just, it shows how ubiquitous the technology is, how the opportunities are to do really amazing things at very low cost in a way that just didn’t even exist 10 years ago. And I think we’re only at the beginning of this kind of revolution.
Radhika Moolgavkar: That is a very elegant solution, I must say. Kudos to those Berkeley students.
Todd Myers: Yeah. When I read about it, I just thought this is so clever because it’s so simple and so powerful.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So your book also talks about the importance of making customers’ decisions more environmentally friendly. So in the context specifically of carbon dioxide removal, how can we empower individuals to contribute when right now the cost of carbon removal credits are pretty high and there’s some barriers to entry?
Todd Myers: Yeah. I think one of the greatest things about technology and information is that it brings people in who wouldn’t otherwise be care about environment or climate concerns. So if you know if the strategy of climate policy is to get everybody to be concerned or support, you know, action on climate, we’re in big trouble. Until recently, Gallup had climate change as the most divisive environmental or the most divisive issue, even more divisive than abortion until last year. So in that, in that political climate, how do you engage people who think that climate change is either not a risk or very low risk?
And the way you do it is engaging them as a consumer. So for instance, I have in my Electrical panel, something called a sense monitor, which just clips to the two wires into my house and then uses artificial intelligence to tell me how much electricity I’m using. And it can detect the unique electrical signals of the appliances in my house and say, oh, you’ve just turned on your washer. You’ve just turned on your lights. And it helps me determine where I’m using electricity and how I can save. I don’t have to think climate change is a crisis to see the value of that because it can help me save money.
People are very attuned to gasoline and the price of gasoline because they see it on every street corner. If you ask somebody what the price of a kilowatt hour is, they won’t even know what a kilowatt hour is. So how do you get people to be price sensitive in that environment And, and especially during peak hours when prices are the highest, but energy is also carbon intensive. And if you can simply tell people, look, if you, instead of washing your dishes or washing your clothes between four and 7pm, you do it later at night or earlier in the day, not only will you save money, but it’ll be less carbon intensive.
That sort of information is now available to everybody at their fingertips. And it’s the kind of way to engage people who wouldn’t otherwise act to reduce CO2 emissions.
Radhika Moolgavkar: So last question for you, Todd, is about the groups that advocated for the new CDR funding in Washington. One of them is the Open Air Collective, which is a group of volunteers who are all online and advocate for carbon removal policies and projects. So when you think about networks and the And, you know, the public engagement and is this what you envision and is this the strength we need to bring to continue the climate, you know, the climate policies we need?
Todd Myers: I think it’s hard because people have different levels of risk tolerance. And so I have worked, you know, at government agencies. I’ve dealt with advocacy organizations. All the time. I work at a public policy think tank. We advocate. So I especially appreciate the role of the public that the public plays in making these decisions and encouraging them. But organizations whose sole purpose is to reduce CO2 emissions at any cost, I think that those kinds of political solutions are very fragile because when prices go up, People, you know, voters react and they get upset.
The way that we are going to see truly sustainable and why sustainable, I mean, you know, in the truest sense of that word, which is that can be sustained over a long period of time, is innovation that can stand the test of time, stand the markets and is available and attractive to people independent of their politics. It’s a very hard Right bar to meet. I understand that. But I do worry about some. I think the groups that go out of their way to talk with all sides, people who agree and disagree with them and come up with more open ended, more flexible and more innovative regulatory approaches, I think are going to have the most success rather than those who say we want to spend money on this particular type of technology.
It’s a hard balance, and I certainly waffle. I certainly see the benefits, as I’ve said, of Washington State broadening its perspective and looking at carbon storage as opposed to just carbon reduction. I think those are good things, but I think how we do it makes a big difference in how successful we will be.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, it seems like a perfect place to end. I so appreciate your time, Todd, and your perspective. We, for a long time on the show, had somebody from the American Conservation Coalition, the ACC in D. C. , and he brought always a nice center-right perspective, and we’ve missed that. So I really appreciate your time and insights, and thanks so much for joining us on the show.
Todd Myers: Yeah, I’m happy to be on. And look, there are a lot of folks on the center right who care deeply about the environment. I speak to a lot of groups and oftentimes in hushed tones, they will say, look, I am worried about environmental impacts, but I want to do it in a way that fits my principles and my values. And I think there are a lot of opportunities to do that. You have climate activists and other folks, I think, despair sometimes, but there are more allies. But I think we need to find a way to talk to each other.
And that was one of the goals of my book is to show That there are innovative things that can do that can cross the ideological spectrum. And I’m really proud that the forward of my book was actually written by somebody who was with the World Wildlife Fund. So these types of innovative approaches really can bring people together in a way that I think is necessary to tackle the problems we face.
Radhika Moolgavkar: Well, thanks so much, Todd. I couldn’t agree with you more. I really appreciate your time.
Todd Myers: Thanks for having me on.
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