Carbon Removal Newsroom

Blue carbon has emerged as a popular climate solution, with offset marketplaces like Verra and Gold Standard eyeing blue carbon methodologies and Salesforce and the World Economic Forum teaming up to announce their own blue carbon credit framework at COP27 last year. Crediting for blue carbon usually means protecting ecosystems like mangrove forests, seagrass beds, and salt marshes. It can also in...

The Emission Trading Systems is the cap-and-trade carbon market that Europe has been using since 2005 to decarbonize its economy. Companies have to pay to pollute, and this week that price hit an all-time high as it traded for over 100 euros/ton. In the first segment of today’s show Na’im Merchant and Asa Kamer discuss the significance of that milestone, what it might mean for the CDR industry, an...

Should carbon removal be included in institutional climate plans? It’s a debate that’s taken place across business, government, and science in recent years. The rise of the net-zero framework has sharpened the focus on how and when organizations should decarbonize. And how carbon removal fits in. Last week two influential organizations weighed in on how they plan to use carbon removal in the comin...

In January, a team of researchers led by the University of Oxford’s Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment released a report titled “The State of Carbon Dioxide Removal.” The authors called it the first global assessment of the field and what gaps need to be closed to scale carbon removal. The 101-page report covered how much CDR currently exists, the research landscape, existing policy su...

Where are the buyers? That’s the question CDR-observer and climate advisor Robert Höglund asked in a much-discussed recent post . Höglund points out that while significant growth occurred for CDR through voluntary markets in 2022, the number of large buyers is low and growing slowly. He called the market “upside down”: lots of marketplaces, fewer companies doing removal, even fewer buyers. Today w...

In 2021 the U.S. congress passed the bipartisan Infrastructure bill , which alongside funding for roads and bridges, included $3.5 billion for 4 DAC demonstration hubs . Each will be a large-scale DAC facility, and they may be the first engineered CDR built at scale in the U.S. Since the bill was passed, DAC-watchers and interested entrepreneurs have been waiting for more information on what the f...

Last month, the non-profit Carbon Drawdown Initiative published a blog post featuring pictures of 11 projects across the world where researchers were spreading basaltic rock dust onto farm fields. This technique is known as enhanced weathering, and the post shows an upward trend in popularity. According to the post, the projects photographed cumulatively spread 50,000 tons of rock dust onto farm f...

It's our last business episode of 2022. It's been a newsworthy year for startups, corporate commitments, and investing in carbon removal, and December has been no different.  This week we'll talk about a grab-bag of headlines: Prince William came to the U.S. to give a promising carbon storage startup $1 million (among other things). A major investor doubled down on their climate fund a...

Back in April of this year, Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, Meta, and McKinsey announced a joint project to invest $925 million into carbon removal by 2030. Using an Advanced Market Commitment structure, the group aims to provide a source of stable demand and revenue to potential CDR companies to help the industry grow. In November, Frontier offered a new resource to the CDR industry- a database of “Ca...

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...

We planned an episode this week about carbon removal policy in the next Congress. At the time of recording we still don’t know which party will control either chamber. Since it looks most likely that the GOP will win at least the House of Representatives, we focused this episode on the prospect for bipartisan CDR policy opportunities. While Joe Biden and the Democrats retain control of the White H...

If you’ve read about carbon removal online, you’ve seen the refrain, “just plant trees”! It’s true that a living tree draws down co2 as it grows, but can mass forestation slow climate change? That math of forest carbon sequestration is complicated. But a lot of government climate plans, ESG investing rules, and most of the carbon offset markets are relying on forest projects to deliver CO2 removal...

Just a few years ago, DAC technology existed exclusively on a lab bench. This year the industry raised over $1 billion in VC funding, with over 50 funded startups in existence. While there are still technological hurdles to overcome to bring CDR to scale, funding also needs to be diversified and innovated, something we’ve discussed before on this show. Tech money continues to pour into CDR. Just t...

In July, over 40 carbon removal startups announced the launch of a new industry group: The Carbon Business Council . Since then, the list of members has grown past 70 companies. The group’s goal is to serve as a “resource for our members, lawmakers, the energy industry, and the environmental community to advocate for the responsible growth of the carbon management industry.” They recently publishe...

Can restoring animal populations in the ocean sequester CO2? This question has generated a lot of conversation and was explored in depth in the 2022 in the National Academy of Sciences report on Ocean Carbon Dioxide Removal. Chapter 6 of that report covered ecosystem restoration and how much CO2 it can potentially sequester. The report found the fully restoring ocean ecosystems would draw down CO2...

On April 22nd, XPRIZE announced the 15 winners of the second round of their competition for carbon removal solutions. Each of these teams has been awarded $1 million to help them compete for the grand prize of $50 million, or 3 $30 million runner-up slots, awarded three years from now. The grand prize winner may not be one of the 15 Milestone awardees, but these teams are a step ahead of the compe...

Earlier this year, the think tank and polling organization Data for Progress released polling that showed that voters all across the political spectrum support federal procurement of carbon removal. Researchers conducted two polls, one of New York voters on statewide legislation there and another of voters nationwide on pending Federal legislation. These two similar bills would compel the governme...

Hi listeners, we won’t have a new episode this month and will return the first week of September. Due to Covid disruptions our summer break has been a bit longer than anticipated, but we’re looking forward to bringing you our regular schedule next month. Thanks for listening Get full access to Climate Workers Anonymous at climateworkersanonymous.substack.com/subscribe

This week we're joined by two experts in the evolving world of CDR policy in Europe. Eli Mitchell-Larson from Carbon Gap and Lee Beck from the Clean Air Task Force. The E.U. is working on a certification standard for CDR to complement its existing climate plan. When completed, it will likely represent the largest jurisdiction with a comprehensive policy plan to scale up carbon removal. Last week t...

This week Radhika is joined by Dr. Jane Zelikova and Dr. Sarah Myhre, Program Director, Climate Advocacy & Democracy Reform, at the Glaser Progress Foundation. For decades, the climate science community has examined the problems with climate pledges and carbon markets. But the ascendancy of carbon removal has prompted researchers to take a fresh look at the topic.  Recently Carton, Lund, and D...

This week we recorded our business episode live in front of a Zoom audience. The audience was invited to pose questions to our hosts Radhika, Susan, and Na’im. They discussed- -Which type of CDR will be the first to achieve 1 gigaton of removal -The effect of global economic turbulence on CDR’s prospects -The First Movers Coalition -Occidental’s plan for 70 DAC plants -& more! Get full access...

This week we talk about recent developments in local, state, federal, and international policymaking that aim to help scale up CDR. Joining the conversation is Greg Nemet. His 2019 book “ How Solar Energy Became Cheap ” traced the history of PV technology and the government policies that helped it become the cheapest form of electricity in history. At the book’s conclusion Greg examined how the le...

Ocean CDR is attracting attention from many corners of the climate community. In recent episodes, we’ve covered global policy developments in Ocean CDR regulation and research with Wil Burns and the business challenges in the space with two startups working to develop commercial methods to remove CO2 from the ocean. On this episode we complete the trilogy with a look at some recent science on the...

“ Inflection Point ,” “ New Frontier ,” “ Finally Getting Serious ”- are some of the ways the carbon removal field has been described in headlines over the past few weeks. With Frontier Climate, Lowercarbon capital, and Climeworks all announcing big new infusions of money into the wicked problem of pulling CO2 from the air, it’s fair to say the field has entered a new stage. At a recent panel at C...

This week, we’re joined by four of the teams that won the Carbon Removal Xprize Milestone award. On April 22nd, Xprize announced the 15 winners of the second round of their competition for carbon removal solutions. Each of these teams was been awarded $1 million to help them compete for the grand prize of $50 million, or 3 $30 million runner-up slots, which will be awarded three years from now. Th...