The Carbon Curve

Episode 41 is with Noah Deich, Senior Advisor for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management Today Na’im speaks with Noah Deich about how the US Department of Energy (DOE) is contributing to the carbon removal landscape through innovative programs and policies aimed at decarbonizing the energy sector and advancing carbon removal technologies.  In this episode, Na...

Episode 40 is with Anu Khan, Founder and Executive Director at Carbon Removal Standards Initiative Anu founded the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative or CRSI in early 2024 while an Entrepreneur in Residence at Carbon180. She previously led the Science & Innovation team at Carbon180 where her work focused on measurement, reporting, and verification (or MRV) as a crucial level for building a just,...

Episode 39 is with Mark Cyffka, Co-Founder and COO of AirMyne.  Today Na’im speaks with Mark Cyffka about common barriers to scaling the different approaches of direct air capture technologies, how AirMyne is looking to bypass those barriers with its technology, what the cost trajectory of DAC will be between now and 2050, and how to think about the modularity versus large-system approaches of dev...

Episode 38 is with Dai Ellis (Co-founder and CEO) and Vilas Rao (Co-founder) of Cascade Climate. Today Na’im speaks with Dai Ellis and Vilas Rao about how Cascade Climate is working to address key challenges in open-system carbon dioxide removal (CDR), particularly around quantification of enhanced rock weathering (ERW), why a community-built quantification standard is key to increase consistency...

Episode 37 is with Lukas May, Head of Policy and Expansion at Isometric The traditional carbon offset market is riddled with problems. We've seen reporting on this from The Guardian, Bloomberg, and other media outlets. Researchers at CarbonPlan have also done some excellent work exposing just how broken some of these systems really are. As we build a new carbon removal industry, we now have an opp...

Episode 36 is with Nikki Batchelor of XPRIZE and Ben Rubin of Carbon Business Council. Carbon removal can be a force for good - not just in creating lasting climate benefits - but in delivering social, economic, and ecological benefits as well. Indeed, the future of carbon removal depends on that promise playing out. But it isn’t a foregone conclusion that large scale carbon removal is uncompromis...

Episode 35 is with Anastasia Pavlovic, CEO of Eion and Elliot Chang, Co-founder and CSO of Eion. Today Na’im speaks with Anastasia Pavlovic, CEO of Eion and Elliot Chang, CSO of Eion. Enhanced rock weathering (ERW) is an area of carbon removal that I’ve been really intrigued by. When I think about ERW, I think about high potential for scale, benefits to farmers, and potentially challenging MRV. So...

Episode 34 is with Phil De Luna, Chief Carbon Scientist and Head of Engineering at Deep Sky.  In this episode, Na’im speaks to Phil De Luna , Deep Sky ’s Chief Carbon Scientists and Head of Engineering. Na’im and Phil cover a broad range of what Deep Sky - a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) project developer that raised C$75M last year - has done to date, how they think about new technology adoption,...

Episode 33 is with Dr. Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist at Carbon Direct , and with Tim Bushman, Director of Policy and Research at Carbon Removal Canada . Today Na’im speaks with Dr. Julio Friedmann and Tim Bushman about Canada's potential to scale up carbon dioxide removal (CDR). Late last year, Carbon Removal Canada released a report on Canada's readiness to scale carbon removal and the policie...

Episode 32 is with Na’im Merchant and Rahima Dosani. Building off of the special episode they did a year ago, Na’im and Rahima are back to reflect on all things carbon removal in 2023 and what’s in store for 2024. They also get into launching Carbon Removal Canada, the role Canada can play in scaling carbon removal (CDR), managing changing professional demands, and other personal questions that Na...

Episode 31 is with Paul Needham, CEO of Arca. Today Na’im speaks with Paul Needham about the potential for accelerated carbon mineralization using mine waste as a carbon dioxide removal (CDR) method to decarbonize mining. Mining will play a huge role in the energy transition given the huge need of critical metals - and CDR can help ensure it’s done in a net-zero fashion. Arca is working to stop -...

Episode 30 is with Bilha Ndirangu, CEO of Great Carbon Valley. Today Na’im speaks with Bilha Ndirangu . Bilha is the CEO of Great Carbon Valley . She is also the co-founder of Jacob’s Ladder Africa, a non-profit focused on green workforce preparation.  In this and other roles, she is at the intersection of climate action, technology, and education, positioning Africa as an investment destination f...

Episode 29 is with Anna Stukas, Vice President of Business Development at Carbon Engineering Ltd. Today Na’im speaks with Anna Stukas about how Carbon Engineering is helping the aviation industry to decarbonize, and what roles direct air capture (DAC) technologies play in the sector’s overall strategy to reach net-zero. Anna Stukas is a Vice President of Business Development at Carbon Engineering...

Episode 28 is with Marty Odlin, Founder and CEO of Running Tide. Today Na’im speaks with Marty Odlin about how Running Tide is navigating the waters of open ocean CDR. Marty Odlin is the Founder and CEO of Running Tide , a global ocean health company. A systems engineer from a 4th generation fishing family, Marty founded the company in 2017 after seeing the devastating implications of climate chan...

Episode 27 is with Sebastian Manhart, Senior Policy Advisor at Carbonfuture and Board Chair of DVNE, a new German carbon removal association. In the last year, carbon removal news has been dominated by policy wins in the United States. But we know that climate change is the ultimate collective action problem, and I've been keen to learn what other jurisdictions are doing to scale carbon removal gl...

Episode 26 is with Rahul Shendure, CEO of CarbonBuilt. There are many different storage pathways for carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. One storage medium that we don't talk about enough is storage of CO2 in long-lived products like concrete. Storing CO2 in concrete not only helps solve the CO2 storage problem - especially for smaller, modular carbon removal deployments - but helps decarb...

Episode 25 is with Jack Andreasen (Breakthrough Energy) and Dr. Claire Nelson (Cella). Today Na’im digs deep into the safe and secure storage of CO2 with Jack Andreasen and Dr. Claire Nelson. Jack Andreasen covers carbon management policy for Breakthrough Energy . In this role he works on policy across NGOs, federal and state governments, industry and start-ups in DAC, CCS and carbon storage. Prev...

Episode 24 is with Professor Gregory Nemet, a Professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the La Follette School of Public Affairs and Convener of the State of CDR report. Today Na’im speaks with Professor Gregory Nemet to learn more about the current state of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) globally, the varying magnitudes of carbon removal needed by midcentury as they correspond to differen...

Episode 23 of The Carbon Curve is with Dr. Julio Friedman (Chief Scientist at Carbon Direct), James Mwangi (Co-Founder and CEO of Africa Climate Ventures), Ugbaad Kosar (Director of Environmental Justice at Carbon180), and Marcius Extavour (Chief Climate Solutions Officer at TIME CO2). This episode was recorded from the 2023 Direct Air Capture Summit hosted by Climeworks on June 6, 2023. A couple...

Episode 22 is with Dr. Sifang Chen, a Managing Science and Innovation Advisor at Carbon180 and author of the recent white paper, Depending on the Ocean: Research and Policy Priorities for Responsible Ocean Carbon Removal . We continue to see growing interest in enhancing the ocean's ability to remove and store carbon dioxide. In the last month alone, we've seen the largest investment to date in an...

Episode 21 of the Carbon Curve is with Dr. Shuchi Talati, founder of the recently launched nonprofit, The Alliance for Just Deliberation for Solar Geoengineering. In this episode, Na’im and Dr. Shuchi Talati talk about shifting the conversation on two major climate interventions in the course of her career. First, we discuss her experience working with the Department of Energy to help facilitate a...

Episode 20 of The Carbon Curve is with Marian Krüger, co-lead of the Remove Accelerator and Decarbonization Lead for Sus. Lab at ETH Zürich Let’s hop over the Atlantic and talk about the carbon removal (or CDR) innovation and policy landscape in Europe. The EU is the world’s third largest economy, and it’s well positioned to have a major impact on the future of carbon removal policy and innovation...

Episode 19 of The Carbon Curve is with Ted Christie-Miller, Head of Carbon Removal at BeZero Carbon Scalability is essential to the success of long-term CDR deployment - it is broadly acknowledged that by midcentury, CDR must grow from its current capacity of thousands of tons to billions of tons of removal per year. But how do we evaluate the potential to scale, the barriers that could prevent th...

This is a special episode with Rahima Dosani (my amazing wife) who interviews me about my career transition from working in international development to carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and my thoughts on the CDR field more broadly. Over the last few years, countless people have asked me about my journey from working in global health to working on climate and the steps I took to shift into this field....

This episode features interviews with Rob Niven (CEO and Chair of Carbon Cure), Shashank Samala (Co-Founder and CEO of Heirloom), Natalia Dorfman (Co-Founder and CEO of Kita), Mike Kelland (Co-Founder and CEO of Planetary), Peter Reinhardt (Co-Founder and CEO at Charm Industrial), Adrian Corless (CEO at CarbonCapture), and Stacy Kauk (Head of Sustainability at Shopify) This episode is sponsored by...