Podcast-Take

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 27 Oc. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/minings-untapped-removals-opportunity-with-cara-maesano TL;DR Almost any carbon removal pathway can run on a mine site; only ex situ mineralization with metal recovery truly requires one. Useful framing. Headline potential (>1 Gt/yr) and $80–300/t range are theoretical and price-based, not cost-based. Maesano says so herself; treat accordingly. Thetford Mines hub (Frontier, Carbon Removal Canada) targets ~800 Mt of Quebec asbestos waste. Research only, no projects announced yet. Arca claims ~100x reactivity from microwave activation of tailings. Lab result, not field data. Environmental liability reduction, not credit revenue, is the current driver for miners. Likely the most actionable insight here. Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart host Cara Maesano, lead author of RMI’s August report on mining and carbon dioxide removal, now scientific and technical director at CDR 2030, on this episode of The Carbon Removal Scoop. The ~30 minutes cover which removal pathways fit mine sites, how surficial mineralization of tailings works and is being accelerated, what the report’s scale and cost numbers actually rest on, and why permitting and risk aversion slow adoption more than land area would suggest. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Ocean Solutions: a NOISE Lab podcast, originally published Wed, 30 Se. Listen: https://soundcloud.com/morgan-reed-raven/season-3-episode-8-ocean TL;DR LOC-NESS, the first EPA-permitted ocean alkalinity enhancement trial, ran in August in the Gulf of Maine: 6-hour dispersal, 4 days of ship monitoring. Subhas says they have direct measurements of atmospheric CO2 uptake — “tons” over 4 days, error bar still pending. No headline number yet. No measurable biological impacts detected in the plume. Useful, but it’s one summer patch; don’t over-read it. Rhodamine dye made the patch visible from NASA satellites — a genuinely interesting measurement, reporting, and verification angle. WHOI deliberately kept the project off the voluntary carbon market; Subhas tells startups to be explicit about financial motives. Ocean Solutions (a NOISE Lab podcast out of UC Santa Barbara’s Bren School) hosts Lena Capece and Alexandra Phillips interview Adam Subhas, associate scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and project lead for LOC-NESS (Locking away Ocean Carbon in the Northeast Shelf and Slope). The episode is a plain-language walk through what ocean alkalinity enhancement is, how the Wilkinson Basin trial was actually executed, what the preliminary results show, and how the team handled fishermen, Indigenous groups, and a split public comment record. Listen here. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Bite-Size Climate Tech, originally published Mon, 26 Oc. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lydiaclinzi/episodes/The-Replacement-for-the-Replacement--Andreas-Bremen--Co-reactive-e3r3moo TL;DR Co-reactive makes a supplementary cementitious material (SCM) by carbonating milled minerals with CO2 in a tubular reactor — storage happens inside the product, not underground. The pitch isn’t lower-carbon cement; it’s replacing fly ash and slag, which are vanishing as coal plants close and steel moves to direct reduction. Useful framing. Scale path: 1,000 t/yr demo now, 10,000 t by end of 2027, 100,000 t before 2030. A cement plant does ~1 Mt. Honest about the gap. Reaction time cut from years (ambient) to ~1 hour via milling, heat, pressure, additives. Feedstock not specified. Water: 250 kg/t product, recirculated, vs ~150 kg/t for cement. Not a removal play yet — CO2 source is point-source, not air. Lydia Chen’s Bite-Size Climate Tech sits down with Andreas Bremen, chemical engineer, mineralization PhD and co-founder of Co-reactive, for a short tour of their carbonation-to-SCM process, the 1,000 t/yr demonstration plant in Erkrath, and the go-to-market logic. Recorded 3 September 2026. Episode here. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 20 Oc. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/showdown-europes-cdr-strategy-bioccs-vs-tech-neutral TL;DR Motion: “Europe’s CDR strategy should put bio-CCS first.” Audience voted 70% against; tech-neutrality won. Voss’s case: ~75% of durable offtakes to date are bio-CCS; it’s cheapest among 1,000-year pathways; its pipelines/terminals serve DAC later. Collier’s case: concentrated tech = concentrated politics. Cites Australia’s 2013 carbon-price repeal as the cautionary tale. Useful framing. Voss claims biomethane-to-CCS alone could reach 1 Gt/yr by 2050 on sustainable biomass. In-house number, unverified; treat with caution. Northern Lights got 80% capex support from Norway — Voss’s core “storage is a utility” argument. Strongest point on her side. The Carbon Removal Scoop (recently rebranded from The CDR Policy Scoop) runs its fifth live debate at Carbon Unbound Europe in London, moderated by Eve Tamme. Kaja Voss, CEO of Inherit — which captures CO2 from biogas upgrading and stores it via Northern Lights — argues Europe should deliberately prioritise bio-CCS (biogenic carbon capture and storage). Alastair Collier, Chief R&D Officer at biochar developer A Healthier Earth, argues for technology neutrality anchored in the CRCF (Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming regulation). Episode: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/showdown-europes-cdr-strategy-bioccs-vs-tech-neutral ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Wed, 21 Oc. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/canadas-next-industrial-play-the TL;DR Canada Nickel’s Crawford project claims up to 1.5 Mt CO2/yr storage via in-process tailings carbonation — reaction time cut from ~a decade to 3–6 hours. Big if real. Key nuance the hosts skip: in-process carbonation is a sink; it’s removal only if the CO2 is atmospheric. Third-party CO2 storage there is CCS, not CDR. Arca’s measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) stack: dynamic closed chambers + eddy covariance, cross-checked against solid-phase mineral mass over 4 months. Useful, concrete description. Dipple on price mismatch: miners think $20–30/t; mineralization needs $50–200/t. Explains why majors walked away in the early days. Policy watch: push to get mineral carbonation recognized under Canada’s CCUS Investment Tax Credit. Na’im Merchant (Carbon Removal Canada) hosts the third instalment of his “Canada’s Next Industrial Play” miniseries on The Carbon Curve, with Mark Selby and Scott MacDougall of Canada Nickel and Greg Dipple, co-founder of Arca. The episode covers how carbon storage got engineered into the Crawford nickel project near Timmins, Ontario, and how Arca measures mineralization at working mine sites. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Disruptors, originally published Wed, 21 Oc. Listen: https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/rbc-disruptors/ TL;DR Deep Sky positions itself as a “project developer” for direct air capture (DAC), hosting multiple vendor technologies on one Alberta site to compress the learning curve. Useful framing. CEO Alex Petre claims first DAC credits produced in North America as of June. Contestable — US sites have delivered earlier; depends on definition. Final investment decision on a first commercial facility targeted late 2027; three sites in development (Alberta, Manitoba, Quebec); three large plants operational within five years. The commercial thesis is export: Canada’s storage geology plus the DAC investment tax credit sell to storage-poor buyers like Japan and Switzerland via Paris Article 6.2. No cost-per-tonne, capacity, or buyer figures disclosed. The episode is strategy and jurisdiction, not economics. RBC’s Disruptors sends host John Stackhouse to Deep Sky’s test site in Innisfail, Alberta, for a conversation with CEO Alex Petre. The episode is a tour-plus-interview covering how DAC works, why Deep Sky runs competing capture units side by side, and why Petre thinks Canada — geology, gas-processing workforce, fiscal regime — is the jurisdiction to build in. It’s pitched at a general Canadian business audience, so the basics get airtime. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 12 Oc. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/from-equity-to-debt-how-cdr-gets-bankable-with-julia-reichel TL;DR Vaulted Deep’s $35M Mediobanca debt facility was built on three legs: delivery track record, investment-grade offtakers (Frontier, Microsoft), and an insurer (Arturo) covering residual project risk. CFP Energy’s floor for a loan conversation is ~$5M; the “sweet spot” is substantially larger. An offtake at or near signature is non-negotiable. Frontier brokered the introduction roughly a year before close. Its published offtake templates are the reusable asset for everyone else. Working-capital detail worth stealing: Vaulted pushed registry and buyers from quarterly/annual to monthly crediting because pay-on-delivery would otherwise have sunk it. Policy ask from the lender: anything that creates price predictability or a liquid forward market. Every CDR debt deal named is outside Europe. Sebastian Manhart hosts Julia Reichelstein (co-founder/CEO, Vaulted Deep) and Tyler Manchester (head of voluntary carbon, CFP Energy) on this episode to walk through Vaulted’s $35M debt facility from Mediobanca. It’s a deal post-mortem: why Vaulted waited to take debt, what the lender actually underwrote, and what other developers need in hand before knocking. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reviewer 2 does geoengineering, originally published Fri, 09 Oc. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reviewer2geoengineering/episodes/Internationalisation-of-CDR-Markets---Lashof-e3pql81 TL;DR US durable-CDR demand hasn’t shrunk in absolute terms, but it has against expectations — the federal purchase program never launched. Useful distinction, honestly made. 45Q survived the 2025 budget bill at ~$180/t; four-ish DAC hubs lost federal support, Louisiana and Texas may proceed. Lashof cites a ~250 Mt removals window in proposed EU ETS revisions. First time I’ve seen that number; verify before repeating. Government money is thin: Sweden €3B bio-CCS reverse auction is the only big one; Finland and Brazil’s SBCE ~$100M each. Google signed a rice-paddy enhanced rock weathering deal in Latin America stacking near-term methane reductions with long-term removal. Clever, measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)-heavy. Andrew (Reviewer 2) hosts Daniel Lashof, senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, to discuss a WRI communications piece arguing that the centre of gravity in CDR markets is moving out of the US. The hour covers the policy wreckage post-Trump, what Europe, Canada and Brazil are actually funding, and a running argument about measurement, reporting and verification and perverse incentives. Episode here. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Ocean Solutions: a NOISE Lab podcast, originally published Wed, 30 Se. Listen: https://soundcloud.com/morgan-reed-raven/season-3-episode-9-iron TL;DR ExOIS (Woods Hole) is targeting the Northeast Pacific for ocean iron fertilization field trials and still fundraising; Nawaz pushed them to stand up a governance advisory board. “Nutrient robbing” is the distinguishing risk: iron added in one basin can suppress productivity decades later off, say, Peru. Useful framing for permanence-adjacent liability. Workshop finding: publics liked macroalgae sinking until shown it at scale, then preferred offshore direct air capture with sub-seabed mineralization. First time I’ve seen this “betrayal effect” named. The 2012 Haida/Russ George dump became a geoengineering scandal because of the carbon-credit financing, not the iron. Nawaz says it froze German ocean alkalinity funding for ~15 years. Baseline public knowledge of marine CDR in BC/Washington: effectively zero. Cautious interest, not opposition. Ocean Solutions (NOISE Lab / UC Santa Barbara Bren School) closes season three with hosts Lina and Alex interviewing Sara Nawaz, research director at American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal. The hour covers how she runs deliberative workshops on marine carbon dioxide removal (mCDR) in the Pacific Northwest, her advisory work on the Exploring Ocean Iron Solutions (ExOIS) programme, and why iron fertilization carries governance baggage no other ocean pathway does. Episode here. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Climate Chat, originally published Tue, 29 Se. Listen: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bnI-2ckIDMQ TL;DR Thermodynamic minimum for direct air capture is ~20 kJ/mol CO2 vs ~700 kJ/mol released burning gasoline; current DAC runs 10–20x above that floor. Useful framing. Lackner’s practical cost floor: $10–30/t (materials, water, electricity only); $100/t is the “economy survives” threshold. Cost-floor argument is the episode’s strongest section. Learning rate is the make-or-break variable: 20% per doubling scales to gigatons, 10% fails. Rarely stated this bluntly. Policy ask: certificate of sequestration at the wellhead plus a reverse auction for government buying of historical emissions. Coherent, not new. Arcusa (ASU) finding cited: roughly half of Microsoft’s carbon certificates are “orphaned” after 30 years. First time I’ve seen this number on a podcast. Dan Miller hosts Klaus Lackner — the physicist who published the first technical direct air capture paper in 1999 and co-founded Global Research Technologies — for a structured walk through what he calls the myths about carbon dioxide removal. Episode: https://youtube.com/watch?v=bnI-2ckIDMQ. Topics are energy balance, cost floors, storage capacity, fossil-company moral hazard, scaling precedents, and the policy design Lackner wants. It’s a long interview with a live Q&A; the substance is front-loaded. ...