Podcast-Take on Captain Drawdown's CDR Databases

Take: 107 | Mining's Untapped Removals Opportunity - with Cara Maesano

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: Season 3 Episode 8: Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement with Adam Subhas

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: The Replacement for the Replacement | Andreas Bremen, Co-reactive

Thu, 29 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: 106 | SHOWDOWN: Europe’s CDR Strategy: BioCCS vs Tech Neutral - with Kaja Voss and Alastair Collier

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: Canada's Next Industrial Play: The Mine That Stores Carbon

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: Clear Skies: Direct air capture and Canada's advantage

Thu, 22 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: From Equity to Debt: How CDR Gets Bankable — with Julia Reichelstein and Tyler Manchester

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: Internationalisation of CDR Markets - Lashof

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: Season 3 Episode 9: Iron Fertilization Governance with Sara Nawaz

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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: Debunking the Myths: Why Carbon Removal Can Scale with Klaus Lackner

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

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.

Take: How Much CO₂ Can Enhanced Weathering Really Remove? - Derry

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reviewer 2 does geoengineering, originally published Mon, 28 Se. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reviewer2geoengineering/episodes/How-Much-CO-Can-Enhanced-Weathering-Really-Remove----Derry-e3pgntl

TL;DR

Derry’s whole-system argument: shallow-soil cation depletion (top 10–30 cm) measures the first step, not alkalinity export. Direct challenge to current ERW measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV).
Three sinks consume alkalinity downstream: ion exchange in acidic soils, secondary clay precipitation (generates acidity), carbonate precipitation. “Not delayed, it’s been consumed.”
Water budget check: ~250 mm/yr runoff in US corn belt would need 25–30 mmol/L alkalinity to move 5 t CO₂/ha/yr; real streams run 1–3. Useful framing.
Natural basalt catchments max out near 1 t CO₂/ha/yr (wet tropics), typically ~0.2. Global basalt weathering ~0.1–0.15 Gt CO₂/yr. First time I’ve seen this benchmark set against ERW claims.
Host tone is snarky; guest is measured and explicitly open to rebuttal. Take the substance, discount the wrapper.

Andrew of Reviewer 2 does geoengineering hosts Louis Derry, Cornell geochemist (30 years, also affiliated with IPGP Paris), on a new Nature paper with Kate Maher and Oliver Chadwick arguing that critical-zone processes cap alkalinity export from basaltic systems. The episode is essentially a mechanistic case for why enhanced rock weathering (ERW) removal claims of 5–10 t CO₂/ha/yr are physically implausible in row-crop agriculture.

Take: Inside the UK’s Answer to the GGR Review - with James Screen

Thu, 08 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 06 Oc. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/the-uk-governments-answer-to-the-ggr-review-with-james-scree

TL;DR

UK government’s GGR review response is a “staging post,” not a strategy; hard questions deferred to the Carbon Budget 7 delivery plan (expected 2026).
Geological net zero rejected mainly for political reasons: no appetite to reopen what net zero means. Candid, and worth knowing.
UK ETS removals integration slips from “end of 2028” to “as soon as practicable” — Screen says don’t over-read it, but UK-EU linking is a live variable.
Carbon contracts for difference (CCfDs) can serve both voluntary and ETS sales, but the taxpayer subsidy implied doesn’t scale. Honest framing.
GGR business model still has no financial close; the transport & storage network model does (Liverpool Bay).

The CDR Policy Scoop hosts Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart interview James Screen, who until recently ran the greenhouse gas removals (GGR) team at the UK Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ). Recorded 29 September, the episode dissects the government’s response to Alan Whitehead’s independent GGR review — what was accepted, what was parked, and why — from someone who drafted it and can now speak personally.

Take: CO₂ to Ethylene with Alex Ip, CERT Systems

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Bite-Size Climate Tech, originally published Tue, 29 Se. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lydiaclinzi/episodes/CO-to-Ethylene-with-Alex-Ip--CERT-Systems-e3piese

TL;DR

CERT Systems makes ethylene from CO₂, water and electricity via direct electrolysis; drop-in identical to fossil ethylene. This is utilization, not removal — keep that straight.
Market framing: ~200 Mt ethylene/yr, ~250 Mt CO₂ emitted making it. Useful order-of-magnitude anchor.
Scale today: a direct-air-capture-to-ethylene pilot at ~1 kg CO₂/day. Target: tens of tons of ethylene/yr “in the next couple of years.” That’s ~2–3 orders of magnitude.
Cost: competitive with bio-based polyethylene, still a premium over fossil. Parity thesis rests on refinery integration (O₂, H₂, heat) and cheaper electricity. Plausible, unproven.
Tencent CarbonX award funds the commercial demo and pushes CO₂-based materials into consumer products via CarbonXMade. Notable: Chinese corporate capital, not Western buyers.

Lydia Clinzi’s Bite-Size Climate Tech hosts Alex Ip, co-founder and CEO of Toronto-based CERT Systems, in a roughly 25-minute Season 5 conversation (“Climate Tech Is Just Good Business”). The episode covers the electrolyzer mechanism (the “sandwich” of catalyst-coated electrodes stacked into a reactor), the drop-in argument, current scale, the cost path, and what the CarbonX win unlocks. It is pitched at a general audience, with an eight-year-old explainer segment.

Take: The Minister Betting Big on Biochar - with Minister Chi-ming Peng

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 30 Se. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/the-minister-betting-big-on-biochar-with-minister-peng-chi-m

TL;DR

Taiwan has set a 1 Mt biochar carbon removal target for 2030 — but no biochar crediting methodology exists yet and one plant is operating. Aspirational, not a roadmap.
Minister Peng’s math: ~1.3 Mt of Taiwan’s ~5 Mt annual agricultural waste, ~500 pyrolysis units. Feedstock imports are politically and legally (Basel) blocked.
Demand driver is the semiconductor sector; TSMC alone may need ~10 Mt/yr of credits. CCS at $300–500/t is priced out; biochar is the “now” option.
Taiwan’s ETS runs on the EEX platform and is being designed to accept biochar credits. Article 6.2 deals (Paraguay MOU) are the workaround for non-UNFCCC status.
Useful as a case study in top-down CDR target setting before the value chain exists.

Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart host Taiwan’s Environment Minister Chi-ming Peng on The CDR Policy Scoop, recorded 28 September, two weeks after he announced a 1 Mt biochar removal target for 2030. The conversation covers the origin of the target, feedstock and pyrolysis capacity numbers, how the target plugs into Taiwan’s carbon fee and forthcoming emissions trading system, and how a non-Party to the Paris Agreement intends to trade credits.

Take: The palm nutcracker that became a carbon dioxide removal company—w/ Uzoma Ayogu of Biochar Industrial Group

Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 24 Se. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/The-palm-nutcracker-that-became-a-carbon-dioxide-removal-companyw-Uzoma-Ayogu-of-Biochar-Industrial-Group-e3p96kt

TL;DR

BIG’s model: don’t build greenfield biochar plants; bolt pyrolysis onto existing agroprocessors who already have feedstock, permits, weighbridges and farmer trust. Sound framing.
Value split is 20/60/20 of carbon profit (BIG / partner / capex funder); 80/20 early when BIG carries the risk. Rare to hear the terms stated.
Target fully loaded removal cost of $50–70/t. Stated as a goal, not a demonstrated number — treat accordingly.
Pyrolyzer uptime went 38% → 87% in a year; two larger systems due end-2026 and Q1 2027.
Cassava trials: 21–50% yield gains on acidic soils (pH 4.5–5.9). Promising but small, self-reported, and only ~20% of physical biochar sold so far.

Ross Kenyon hosts Uzoma Ayogu, CTO of Nigerian palm-kernel processor Releaf and cofounder of its spinout Biochar Industrial Group (BIG), which just closed a pre-seed round. The episode traces how a decade-old agri-supply-chain business ended up issuing Nigeria’s first industrial biochar credits, why the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) arm had to be a separate entity, and what BIG now offers other West African processors.

Take: Congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici on the ReSCUE Oceans Act and Bipartisan Support for mCDR

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change, originally published Thu, 10 Se. Listen: <>

TL;DR

Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) walks through the ReSCUE Oceans Act, a bipartisan bill to set up a federal framework for marine CDR research. Useful primer, light on specifics.
Bill would coordinate NOAA, NASA, NSF around mCDR (including ocean alkalinity enhancement). No dollar figure — “we’ll work that out.” Notable gap.
Bipartisan co-sponsors: Schatz (D-HI), Murkowski (R-AK) in Senate; Bonamici and Buddy Carter (R-GA) in House. Realistic path unclear this Congress.
Separate win discussed: bipartisan bill to block NSF from decommissioning the Ocean Observatories Initiative buoys. Small but concrete measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)-adjacent story.
On the Trump administration gutting NOAA’s mCDR capacity: acknowledged as a problem, no strategy offered beyond “hopefully rehire.”

Wil Burns (American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal) and guest co-host Priyanka Hooghan (Carbon to Sea) interview Rep. Suzanne Bonamici in her Capitol Hill office. The conversation covers the ReSCUE Oceans Act — Removing and Sequestering Carbon Unleashed in the Environment and Oceans — plus her work as bipartisan Oceans Caucus co-chair and a side fight over ocean observing infrastructure.

Take: S4 E8: Anton Root on the State of the Voluntary Carbon Market

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Untangling Climate Finance, originally published Mon, 17 Au. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/untanglingclimatefinance/episodes/S4-E8-Anton-Root-on-the-State-of-the-Voluntary-Carbon-Market-e3n7jvj

TL;DR

Anton Root (AlliedOffsets) says weighted-average VCM credit price roughly doubled from ~$3 to ~$7/t since early 2024 — useful data point, driven by mix shift not scarcity.
~1.6 Gt of issued-but-unretired credits sitting in registries, growing ~200 Mt/year. That’s ~8 years of demand overhang. Underrated structural problem.
CDR-specific read: >1,000 sellers historically, only ~800 all-time buyers of engineered removals. Consolidation is here; offtake-less projects are in trouble.
CCP-tagged issuances in H1 2026 (~18 Mt) nearly matched all of 2022+2023 combined. Integrity signal is real in the numbers, not just the marketing.
Asia overtook Europe as largest source of new credit demand last year. Tencent flagged as a high-quality-removals buyer.

Jay Tipton hosts AlliedOffsets co-founder Anton Root for a data-heavy read on the voluntary carbon market. It’s mostly VCM-wide, but there’s a meaty CDR segment on seller/buyer imbalance, pricing, and offtake dynamics that’s worth an hour if you’re on the supply or buyer side of durable removals.

Take: Canada's Next Industrial Play: A New Revenue Line for the Mill

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 10 Se. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/canadas-next-industrial-play-a-new

TL;DR

Mercer’s Peace River pulp mill is developing a BECCS project with Svante that could store ~500,000 tonnes CO2/year — FID still ~a year out.
Alberta’s stack (15 km to sequestration, CCUS ITC + provincial top-up, permitting precedent) is doing real work here — worth noting for site selection debates.
Mercer wants BECCS bumped to the 60% ITC tier that DAC gets, plus a CDR price floor. Legitimate ask, but “we need a backstop” tells you unit economics don’t yet close on voluntary demand alone.
Meadow Lake’s Northstar (majority Indigenous-owned, 90 kt/yr, 15-year 626 kt Microsoft offtake) is the most structurally interesting BECCS deal in Canada right now.
Sheila Harrison’s point lands: without a viable primary forest sector, there’s no host infrastructure for pulp-mill BECCS. Fibre security is a CDR risk factor, not just a forestry one.

Na’im Merchant’s second episode in the Canada’s Next Industrial Play miniseries goes into the forest products sector with three guests: Bill Adams (CSO, Mercer International), Sheila Harrison (VP Policy, Alberta Forest Products Association), and Tina Rasmussen (CBO, MLTC Industrial Investments). The episode is essentially a pulp-mill BECCS deep dive with a policy and Indigenous-ownership wrapper. Episode link.

Take: Live From Brussels: The Carbon Removal Policy Summit - with Rodica Avornic

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 16 Se. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/live-from-brussels-the-carbon-removal-policy-summit-with-rod

TL;DR

Live from Carbon Gap’s first Carbon Removal Policy Summit in Brussels — four governance levels (international, EU, national, local) as the frame.
EU “Buyers Club” is now the “Buyers Coalition” — open, not membership-based — and being positioned as a test ground for a future Emissions Trading System purchasing facility, possibly by 2029.
Carbon Gap dropped a Policy Levers Library (~165 levers) plus a forthcoming Foundations of Carbon Removal book. Genuinely useful reference infrastructure if it lands as demoed.
Real unresolved problem surfaced: Carbon Removal Certification Framework credits don’t yet map to national greenhouse gas inventories under IPCC methods. Without that link, Member State targets can’t pull on CRCF supply.
Achim Steiner’s line — removals concentrated in few buyers, few countries, few technologies — is the honest diagnostic of where European durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) actually sits.

Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme record live from Brussels across two days of Carbon Gap’s inaugural Carbon Removal Policy Summit, with a mid-day sit-down with Carbon Gap policy director Rodica Avornic. The episode is a running commentary on what got said on stage — Buyers Coalition futures, ETS integration guardrails, post-2030 Member State targets, and the awkward plumbing between CRCF credits and national inventories.

Take: Which story is carbon dioxide removal actually in?—w/ Rudy Krehbiel of EcoEngineers

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 17 Se. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/Which-story-is-carbon-dioxide-removal-actually-in-w-Rudy-Krehbiel-of-EcoEngineers-e3ovfja

TL;DR

Krehbiel argues CDR is still at the innovator stage, not in a hype-cycle trough — useful reframing if you buy his diffusion-curve lens.
Numbers cited: <50Mt contracted, ~2Mt delivered, Microsoft ~78% of disclosed volume, median non-Microsoft biochar purchase <100t. Consistent with public CDR.fyi data.
Core argument: CDR is a public good with diffuse, delayed, non-excludable benefits — venture-scale expectations may be the wrong operating system for building it. Worth chewing on.
Three-layer de-risking frame (financial / buyer / societal) is the most portable takeaway for operators.
Long detour into Whig-theory-of-history, AfD, and Charlie Kaufman films — signal-to-ramble ratio is not great. Skim-friendly.

Ross Kenyon hosts EcoEngineers’ Rudy Krehbiel for a meandering two-hour conversation about which narratives the CDR industry is unconsciously operating inside — diffusion curves, Moore’s Law analogies, compliance-market inevitability — and which ones will not survive contact with 2026 politics. Episode link. It is more meta than technical, but Krehbiel earns his airtime.

Take: Brineworks: From “Magic Box” to Upgraded Suit | CO₂ + H₂ for E-Fuels

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Bite-Size Climate Tech, originally published Sun, 30 Au. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lydiaclinzi/episodes/Brineworks-From-Magic-Box-to-Upgraded-Suit--CO--H-for-E-Fuels-e3o34o3

TL;DR

Brineworks pivoted from direct ocean capture to a closed-loop land-based system using purchased salt + reverse-osmosis water. Bigger addressable market, but loses the “ocean is free feedstock” story.
Co-produces CO₂ and hydrogen from one electrochemical pH-swing box — pitched as the differentiator vs. other electrochemical direct air capture players optimizing purely for energy efficiency.
Cost targets: sub-$200/t CO₂ by 2030, near $100/t by 2035. Aggressive but in the same range peers are quoting.
Explicitly designed for intermittent operation (20-50% capacity factor) on cheap solar/wind — a design choice worth taking seriously.
Target customer is e-fuel project developers, not carbon removal buyers. This is really a feedstock company now, not a durable removal company.

Lydia Clinzi hosts Joel Parman, CTO and co-founder of Brineworks, returning to Bite-Size Climate Tech two years after his first appearance. The episode covers Brineworks’ pivot from direct ocean capture to a land-based closed-loop electrochemical system that co-produces CO₂ and green hydrogen for synthetic fuels.

Take: Gijsbrecht Gunter (Yara) over de businesscase van Nederlandse CO2 in de Noorse bodem

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Studio Energie, originally published Tue, 08 Se. Listen: https://soundcloud.com/studio-energie/gijsbrecht-gunter-yara-over-de-businesscase-van-nederlandse-co2-in-de-noorse-bodem

TL;DR

First cross-border CCS chain in the world went live: 800 kt/yr CO2 from Yara Sluiskil shipped to Northern Lights in Norway, 15-year contract, ~12 Mt total.
Yara’s site director admits on-record the project doesn’t pencil at current ETS (~€85/t); needs a premium plus avoided carbon costs to close.
Netherlands scrapping its national CO2 surcharge on top of ETS actively worsens the business case for the front-runner — Gunter says the FID likely wouldn’t be taken today under current conditions.
Useful concrete cost benchmark: RED III-compliant green hydrogen for their ammonia would imply ~€15,000 per ton CO2 avoided. Damning number, first time I’ve seen it stated this cleanly.
CAPEX ~€200M on Yara’s side; contract with Northern Lights “a multiple” of that. Not disclosed further.

Remco de Boer (Studio Energie) interviews Gijsbrecht Gunter, director at Yara Sluiskil, on opening day of the first cross-border CCS chain — Dutch ammonia CO2 liquefied, shipped 800 km, injected under the Norwegian seabed via Northern Lights. In Dutch. The conversation is unusually candid about the economics, which is why it’s worth an hour.

Take: MEP Peter Liese: the Rapporteur's take on removals in the EU ETS

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 08 Se. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/mep-peter-liese-the-rapporteurs-take-on-removals-in-the-eu

TL;DR

Liese wants Parliament to pull removals integration forward to 2028, not the Commission’s 2031 — big signal for offtake timing.
He argues for scrapping the cap on removal volumes in the ETS; if costs fall like solar did, why limit uptake. Bold, will meet resistance.
Wants biochar added to eligible methods alongside DACCS and BECCS, capped ~20% max. First MEP I’ve heard commit to this on record.
If the CDR-cost gap is bigger than the Commission modeled, his fix is to issue more allowances to fund the shortfall. Novel mechanism.
Backs a strong link to the CRCF and wants removals inside the international-credits envelope — Namibia cement plant DACCS as concrete example.

Hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme get Peter Liese — the European People’s Party MEP who is Parliament’s rapporteur on the current EU ETS (Emissions Trading System) revision — on the record days before his draft report drops on 11 September 2026. The conversation is a near-exhaustive walk through what Parliament’s amendments to the Commission’s July 2026 removals-in-ETS proposal could look like.

Take: Removals, avoidances, and what Wendell Berry thought of making tonnes fungible

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 03 Se. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/Removals--avoidances--and-what-Wendell-Berry-thought-of-making-tonnes-fungible-e3o9d89

TL;DR

Ross Kenyon’s solo reflection on Wendell Berry’s death, wrapped around an essay he wrote for Removr on removals vs. avoidances in one portfolio.
Mea culpa: Nori tried to build a “better” registry from scratch; Kenyon now says the convergence of legacy registry designs is structural, not a willpower failure. Useful concession.
Argues durable CDR’s cultural separatism from the broader voluntary carbon market has become a liability, not a moat. Fair, and increasingly the consensus.
Would pick rainforest protection over carbon removal if forced to choose. Provocative framing, thinly defended.
Name-checks Martin Freimüller (Octavia) and Robert Höglund as CDR-side voices moving toward portfolio thinking. Signal for where the discourse is drifting.

Ross Kenyon, Nori cofounder and long-running host of Reversing Climate Change, delivers a solo episode (link) that pairs an obituary for Wendell Berry with a piece he wrote for the Removr registry on why durable removals and avoidances belong in the same portfolio conversation. It’s part personal essay, part market commentary — you’ll get more of the former than the latter.

Take: Somebody here needs to say this before an investigative journalist does. I’d rather it be one of us.

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 01 Se. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.com/p/11-somebody-here-needs-to-say-this

TL;DR

Anonymous submitter argues artisanal biochar gets a scrutiny pass that industrial projects don’t — and that gap is where bad actors are hiding. Sharp, overdue take.
Specific red flag: daily production logs on public registries showing identical output across monsoon and dry season. Concrete, checkable, damning if true.
dMRV (digital measurement, reporting, verification) providers check data completeness/format, not plausibility against public rainfall records. That’s a real registry gap.
Water-for-quench competing with irrigation water in rain-scarce regions — a farmer-cost story the “farmer-first” crowd doesn’t tell.
First ~15 minutes is Ross’s AI-doom monologue. Skip to the submission unless you want that too.

Ross Kenyon’s Climate Workers Anonymous publishes anonymous submissions from climate workers. This episode’s submission is a pointed critique of artisanal biochar carbon credits from someone who’s clearly been reading registry data. The first ~15 minutes is Ross editorializing about artificial general intelligence and Stripe’s “singularity is here” investor memo — you can skip to the submission without loss.

Take: What is really happening to DAC Hubs? - with Grant Faber

Thu, 03 Sep 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 01 Se. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/what-is-really-happening-to-dac-hubs-with-grant-faber

TL;DR

Only ~2.5% of the original $3.5B DAC Hubs budget has been disbursed; contract negotiation ate most of the Biden term before terminations froze things.
$1B of hub funding was reprogrammed by Congress to nuclear; ~$1.3B sits unobligated but not rescinded — dormant, not dead.
DOE admitted in court that project terminations were chosen on political basis; cancellations skewed toward blue-headquartered primes even when projects sat in red states.
Both TA3 megahubs (Project Cypress, South Texas) survived the retention list — Grant credits BIL/IRA’s deliberate red-district geography strategy.
Grant’s speculative but useful scenario: unspent CDR appropriations pile up, and 2029 brings a sudden multi-billion-dollar “we’re back” moment. Take with salt.

Grant Faber — former DAC Hubs program manager at DOE’s Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management, now Head of Standards at Absolute Climate — joins Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart on The CDR Policy Scoop to walk through his recent Substack article mapping the actual state of the US DAC Hubs program. This is the most granular public accounting of what survived, what got killed, and what’s still sitting in an account somewhere.

Take: #10: hype and a gold rush followed by contraction and consolidation

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 25 Au. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.com/p/10-hype-and-a-gold-rush-followed

TL;DR

Anonymous submission argues carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is living out a textbook boom-bust: 2022-2024 gold rush, now contraction. Not novel, but fairly stated.
Frames CDR as commodity-like and therefore structurally cyclical, with hoped-for upward trendline. Reasonable analogy, understates policy-driven demand fragility.
Prescription: counter-cyclical discipline at the individual/company level — conservative in booms, patient in busts. Sensible but generic.
Kenyon’s own gloss: blaming “macro conditions” explains everything and nothing; entrepreneurs are supposed to trim sails. Useful pushback.
Bonus tangent: Stripe’s Collisons reportedly calling “singularity” internally — Kenyon wonders what that means for CDR buyers. Speculative but worth noting.

Ross Kenyon’s Climate Workers Anonymous #10 runs a single anonymous submission on the CDR business cycle: how a 2022-2024 hype phase drove overexpansion, and how the current contraction is the predictable other side of that same coin. Kenyon reads the submission, then layers on his own commentary about founders using “macro conditions” as a catch-all excuse and about what a nearer-than-expected AI capability jump might mean for CDR buyer behavior.

Take: Canada’s Next Industrial Play: What It Takes to Earn a Farmer’s Yes

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Wed, 26 Au. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/canadas-next-industrial-play-what

TL;DR

Miniseries opener framing carbon removal as a layer on Canada’s $1T industrial buildout ahead of Carney’s September investment summit — useful political framing.
Jim Mann (UNDO) claims enhanced rock weathering on farmland accelerates natural weathering “50 to 100,000 times” — the upper bound feels rhetorical, but the mechanism is standard.
UNDO’s model: give crushed silicate to farmers free, cover transport and spreading, keep all carbon revenue. Farmer-adoption pragmatism, not revenue-sharing idealism.
Mann’s claim: Canada’s 100–300 Mt/yr residual removal need “could all be done with enhanced rock weathering.” Overstated, but the feedstock-plus-farmland argument is real.
CFA’s Brody Berrigan on why adoption stalls: farmers are business owners first, extension services have been gutted since the ’90s, neighbor-to-neighbor is the real diffusion channel.

Na’im Merchant kicks off a Carbon Curve miniseries on embedding durable carbon dioxide removal into Canadian industrial projects, timed to Prime Minister Carney’s September 14-15 investment summit. Episode here. Episode one pairs UNDO founder Jim Mann on enhanced rock weathering economics with the Canadian Federation of Agriculture’s Brody Berrigan on what it actually takes to get Prairie farmers to say yes.

Take: What Does CDR Actually Cost in Europe? - with Hansjörg Lerchenmüller and Eadbhard Pernot

Thu, 27 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 23 Au. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/what-does-cdr-actually-cost-in-europe-with-hansjorg-lerchenm

TL;DR

Commission’s ETS review cost forecasts for durable CDR trace to just four sources (McKinsey 2023, Ramboll Ecologic 2025, NEGEM 2023, CDR.fyi 2023) — thinner foundation than the policy weight implies.
Bio-CCS low-cost anchor of €172/t leans on €165/t of assumed energy revenue and calibration against an unverifiable 2022 Drax conference remark. Overstated confidence.
direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) range comes entirely from a black-box McKinsey report; no inspectable assumptions on energy, T&S, or learning rate. Useful flag.
Biochar low bound (€37–66/t) reflects Global South artisanal systems; Hansjörg says European scalable price is €175–200/t. First-time-cited industry number worth having.
Practical asks: modelers should use current CDR.fyi data, be transparent about assumptions, and suppliers should submit transaction data. Signal-dense.

Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart host Eadbhard Pernot (Carbon Management Europe) and Hansjörg Lerchenmüller (Biochar Europe) to stress-test the cost assumptions behind the European Commission’s July 2026 ETS review impact assessment. The episode walks through bio-CCS, DACCS, and biochar carbon removal cost curves line by line — where the numbers actually come from, and where they fall apart.

Take: #9: it feels like there’s nobody to celebrate with if the whole industry is hurting

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 18 Au. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.com/p/9-it-feels-like-theres-nobody-to

TL;DR

Anonymous submission from a CDR (carbon dioxide removal) operator saying their company is growing fine while peers struggle — a rare “we’re okay” voice in a bruised market.
Submitter’s real complaint: large incumbents going silent instead of continuing to build publicly at smaller scale, making bad sentiment self-fulfilling. Fair critique.
Format is anonymous, unverified single-submission — no numbers, no company names, no verifiable claims. Signal is emotional, not analytical.
Ross Kenyon’s framing (“corporeal man at the feast for ghosts”) is evocative but this is a ~10-minute mood piece, not reporting.
Skip if you want data. Worth 10 minutes if you want a read on morale inside CDR right now.

Episode link. Ross Kenyon (of Reversing Climate Change) runs Climate Workers Anonymous, a Substack/podcast collecting unverified anonymous submissions from people working in climate. Episode #9 is one submission, read aloud with brief commentary: a CDR operator saying their company is doing well, feels awkward saying so, and wishes their struggling peers would keep building in public instead of going dark.

Take: Article 6 Letters of Authorisation Explained - with Lisa DeMarco

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 17 Au. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/article-6-letters-of-authorisation-explained-with-lisa-demar

TL;DR

A letter of authorisation (LoA) under Article 6 is a legally enforceable contract against the sovereign — not paperwork. Useful reframing for developers who treat it as admin.
Letters of approval, acknowledgement, and no objection are NOT LoAs. Only documents conforming to Article 6.2/6.4 minimum requirements count. Market confusion here is rampant.
KOKO’s collapse in Kenya hinged on two ministries each denying authority to issue the LoA. Concrete cautionary tale for LoA counterparty diligence.
Since Jan 2025, ~35 projects authorised, ~100 Mt max volume — versus EU 2040 demand potentially in the hundreds of millions. Supply gap is real.
No retroactive revocation of units post-first-transfer (COP29 clarification), but entity-level revocation for fraud/breach is being reserved — and should be.

Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme host Lisa DeMarco (Resilient LLP) for a 30-minute legal deep dive on Article 6 letters of authorisation: what they actually bind, how they fail, and why the pipeline of authorised credits is running well behind projected demand. If you’re a durable CDR developer pursuing Article 6 sales — or a buyer trying to understand what you’re actually buying — this is one of the more precise explainers I’ve heard.

Take: Charred for Change

Thu, 20 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Ground Cover, originally published Wed, 19 Au. Listen: https://player.whooshkaa.com/shows/ground-cover

TL;DR

Biochar as durable carbon removal on-farm: 1 tonne biomass → ~1/3 biochar, 2/3 syngas. Useful mass-balance framing rarely stated so plainly.
Guest cites ~2.7 tCO₂e sequestered per tonne of biochar (80% carbon). Standard figure, worth internalizing.
Claim: biochar is currently the largest deployed carbon sequestration method. Defensible on delivered durable tonnes today, but worth checking against CDR.fyi.
Own-farm data: soil carbon doubled in top 100mm over 10 years including through the 2019-20 drought. Anecdotal, single site, no control — treat as directional.
Economics hinge on monetizing the syngas, not the char. This is the real CDR-relevant insight.

Australian ag podcast Ground Cover (host Pippa Jones) interviews John Winter, a chemical engineer turned Glen Innes cattle producer and inventor behind SEATA Group’s pyrolysis pilot. The episode is pitched at farmers, but there’s enough on unit economics and durability accounting to make it worth 45 minutes for a CDR practitioner working on biomass pathways.

Take: 411: Why I love Poppy Russell of Counteract VC's CDR analysis

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Fri, 07 Au. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/411-Why-I-love-Poppy-Russell-of-Counteract-VCs-CDR-analysis-e3n3erb

TL;DR

Counteract’s Poppy Russell walks through her fund’s thesis: diversify by pathway, geography, business model — favor “catalytic” IP and new-pathway enablers.
Bearish on ocean CDR: back-of-envelope claim that partnering with all existing water-moving infrastructure caps direct ocean capture at ~7–10 Mt/yr. Worth pressure-testing.
Bullish on industrial integration — Venterra (carbonated cement from gypsum + potassium sulfate fertilizer co-product) is her poster child.
Cautious on EU Emissions Trading Scheme absorbing the 250 Mt removals allocation given the price gap and recent decarbonization-pace delays. Realistic.
Notes a sharp drop-off in pre-seed CDR company formation; new founders increasingly avoid CDR-first positioning.

Ross Kenyon interviews Poppy Russell, Research Manager at Counteract, the London-based CDR-focused venture fund. The episode is a wide tour of her investment lens — pathway diversification, “catalytic” IP, industrial tie-ins — with candid bullish/bearish takes on ocean CDR, enhanced weathering, EU compliance demand, and where pre-seed founders are (and aren’t) going. Listen to the episode here.

Take: Is Enhanced Rock Weathering Ready for Scale? - with Dirk Paessler and Mel Murphy

Thu, 13 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 09 Au. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/is-enhanced-rock-weathering-ready-for-scale-with-dirk-paessl

TL;DR

Solid-phase and aqueous-phase MRV on the same plot can disagree by orders of magnitude — tons vs kilos of CDR. Not a rounding error.
Carbon Drawdown Initiative’s 300-litre buckets have shown zero enhanced-weathering signal after 1,400 days on Furt soil. Publishing the null result matters.
~20,000 credits certified across three geographies via three different solid-phase methods, while Verra declines to write a methodology. That gap is the story.
Carbon Plan’s Lithos critique implies ~8.3 tCO₂/ha/yr vs a new Suhrhoff et al. median of ~0.8. 10× is not a discount factor, it’s a different claim.
Dirk won’t name a year for ETS-readiness. Mel won’t either. Take that seriously.

Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart host Dirk Paessler (Carbon Drawdown Initiative) and geochemist Mel Murphy for a deep-dive on whether enhanced rock weathering (ERW) measurement is anywhere near the rigour policy frameworks like the EU Emissions Trading System or the Carbon Removal Certification Framework will demand. The episode runs long by the show’s standards and earns it.

Take: #7: I should have used my retirement funds for retirement instead of assuming the future of our planet is of interest to

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 04 Au. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.com/p/7-i-should-have-used-my-retirement

TL;DR

Anonymous submissions podcast; three short letters from CDR workers read aloud. Total runtime under 5 minutes.
Submission 1: venture capital’s 10-year return horizon doesn’t fit hard-tech durable carbon dioxide removal timelines. Familiar critique, stated cleanly.
Submission 2: pushback on the “novel CDR steals from proven climate tech” framing — argues voluntary markets are doing exactly what they’re supposed to.
Submission 3: a supplier who cleared every methodology hurdle since 2021 and can’t sell credits on the spot market. Bitter, and worth hearing.
Not analysis, not reporting — it’s a vibes check on practitioner morale in mid-2026. Useful as a temperature reading, not as data.

Ross Kenyon’s Climate Workers Anonymous is a curated read-aloud of anonymous, unverified submissions from people working in climate. Episode 7 pulls three that all land on the same nerve: the mismatch between what CDR practitioners were told the market would do and what it’s actually doing in 2026. Under five minutes, no guest, no debate — just the letters.

Take: Carbon removal that utilities actually want

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Wed, 05 Au. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-that-utilities-actually

TL;DR

CREW Carbon doses calcium carbonate into wastewater bioreactors, converting microbe-generated CO2 into stable bicarbonate — durable removal inside a closed, metered system.
Just signed a Microsoft offtake for up to 23,602 durable removal units; total book now >$40M with JPMorgan, Google, Autodesk, Stripe/Frontier.
Pitch to utilities is capex deferral + easier nitrogen/phosphorus compliance — CDR revenue is upside, not the core sell. Useful framing.
measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) story leans on the closed reactor: mass-balance and effluent chemistry, not open-ocean modeling. Materially stronger than marine ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) on measurement.
Regulated-utility sales cycles are the real bottleneck, not chemistry. Worth taking seriously.

The Carbon Curve’s Na’im Merchant hosts Joachim Katchinoff, CEO of CREW Carbon, on turning municipal wastewater treatment plants into alkalinity-enhancement sites. The episode was taped before CREW’s Microsoft deal dropped, so the show notes carry the news; the conversation itself is about mechanism, MRV, and how you actually sell CDR into a regulated utility.

Take: Inside the Framework for Residual Emissions - with Injy Johnstone

Thu, 06 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 02 Au. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/inside-the-framework-for-residual-emissions-with-injy-johnst

TL;DR

Residual emissions has no shared definition — the term drifted from IPCC modeling into corporate net-zero plans without translation. Useful framing.
Johnstone insists “hard-to-abate” (technological limit) ≠ “residual” (broader, includes demand-side and normative choices). Overdue distinction.
Proposes three buckets: near-term abatable now, medium-term (2040) plausible tech, long-term (2050) speculative — with 5-year reassessment.
Warns the medium-term bucket is where optimism bias silently shrinks today’s carbon removal (CDR) demand. This is the real signal.
Compares SBTi v2 and draft ISO net-zero standards: ISO handles residuals with more specificity, SBTi punts implementation into future decades.

Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme host Dr. Injy Johnstone (Oxford Net Zero) to unpack her Drax-funded report What Are Residual Emissions? — a term everyone uses in net-zero pathways and almost nobody defines the same way. The episode is a 30-minute methodological conversation, not a market update.

Take: 410: remove's new Latin American carbon dioxide removal accelerator program—w/ Hans Westerhof & Marian Krüger

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 30 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/410-removes-new-Latin-American-carbon-dioxide-removal-accelerator-programw-Hans-Westerhof--Marian-Krger-e3mm7bh

TL;DR

remove launches a Latin America accelerator cohort with Milkywire funding, extending their Global South work beyond India and Africa. Concrete gap-filling, not vaporware.
Central thesis: LATAM developers get shut out of buyer/investor mindshare by availability bias — the founders who can’t afford Carbon Unbounded don’t get RFPs. Fair diagnosis.
Startups in the Global South ship biochar and soil samples to Europe/North America for lab analysis. Underrated bottleneck for enhanced rock weathering and biochar scale.
remove is doubling down on non-credit revenue diversification — biochar into fertilizer, biocoal as pulverized-coal-injection substitute in steel. Explicitly fine with it not counting as carbon removal.
Krüger’s counter-cyclical pitch: right now is actually a decent time to found a direct air capture company if your first commercial plant lines up with a 2030 compliance regime.

Ross Kenyon hosts remove co-founders Hans Westerhof and Marian Krüger to announce a Latin American accelerator cohort, launching applications now with a fall 2026 kickoff, funded by Milkywire. The conversation is half program pitch, half a candid read on where Global South carbon dioxide removal (CDR) actually gets stuck — buyer psychology, lab infrastructure, and the increasingly obvious limits of a voluntary-credits-only business model.

Take: Indigenous Leaders Fawn Sharp, Francesca Hillery, and Ken Paul on the Role of Indigenous Knowledge in Ocean Climate Solu

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change, originally published Thu, 28 Ma. Listen: <>

TL;DR

Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) scale-up talk is “far too premature” per Ken Paul; local knowledge should shape monitoring design first. Useful pressure on the field’s pacing.
Fawn Sharp cites a Carbon to Sea-commissioned figure: ~$1T marine CDR value and 200,000 jobs by 2050. Advocacy number — I haven’t seen it independently sourced.
Sovereignty-as-regulatory-arbitrage: in 2008, tribal nations could access Kyoto markets ($32/t) that US companies couldn’t ($2–3/t domestic). First time I’ve heard this mechanism on a podcast.
Concrete partnership asks: direct capital access to Indigenous communities, impact benefit agreements, revenue sharing on mCDR in unceded territories — not just consultation.
“Two-Eyed Seeing” framing: integrate Indigenous and Western methodologies up front, not run them in parallel and hope they converge.

This episode of Plan Sea was recorded live at Carbon to Sea’s 2026 annual convening in Halifax, with Anna Madlener and Danny Głowacki hosting three Indigenous leaders: Fawn Sharp (five-term Quinault Nation president, former National Congress of American Indians president), Ken Paul (Wolastoqey Nation, former national fisheries director at the Assembly of First Nations), and Francesca Hillery (Tribal Carbon Solutions, Round Valley Tribes). The subject is how Indigenous knowledge systems and tribal sovereignty intersect with OAE development.

Take: The EU ETS Proposal: the Scoop’s Debrief

Thu, 30 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 27 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/the-eu-ets-scoop-verdict-our-honest-take-on-brussels-proposa

TL;DR

Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart disagree on whether the EU ETS removals proposal is a compliance market or a purchasing programme funded by one. The distinction shapes everything downstream.
The cost assumptions look broken: €38/t transport and storage for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), €18/t for direct air capture (DAC). Developers privately say off by 2x+.
The 250 Mt figure: Commission says target, proposal text reads more like an auction commitment. The rapporteurs will have to nail this down.
Contingency asymmetry: non-delivered removals after allowances are auctioned have no backstop — unlike international credits, which trigger linear reduction factor adjustment.
Biochar praised in the impact assessment, absent from the proposal. Nature-based solutions got a review clause; biochar didn’t.

Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart use this debrief episode of The CDR Policy Scoop to say what they couldn’t in their earlier interview with the Commission’s Mette Quinn: their unfiltered read of Brussels’ proposal to bring carbon removals into the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). It’s two policy insiders arguing productively, which is more useful than either of their LinkedIn posts alone.

Take: #5: maybe CDR is a good decision that just feels bad right now.

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 21 Ju. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.substack.com/p/5-maybe-cdr-is-a-good-decision-that

TL;DR

Not an interview: two anonymous written submissions from CDR practitioners, read aloud by curator Ross Kenyon. Sentiment data, not market data.
Submission one names the current mood — Microsoft pausing, buyer scarcity, VC pullback, quiet consolidation — then argues second-time founders re-entering is a real signal.
Submission two calls for cutting 2050 novel-CDR targets to 2–3 gigatons and abandoning the “compensate for residuals” framing entirely. Provocative, worth arguing with.
The “reverse legacy damage, don’t offset ongoing emissions” reframe is the most substantive idea here — it has real implications for credit-market design.
Twenty minutes, no numbers you can cite in a memo, but an unusually honest read on practitioner psychology.

Climate Workers Anonymous #5 is not a normal podcast episode. Ross Kenyon (formerly of Nori and Carbon Removal Newsroom) curates anonymous submissions from climate workers, PostSecret-style, and this installment carries two longer analytical pieces from people evidently inside carbon dioxide removal. There’s no guest, no dataset — just what practitioners will say when their names aren’t attached.

Take: Removals Enter the EU ETS: What Brussels Actually Proposes - with Mette Quinn

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 22 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/removals-enters-the-eu-ets-what-brussels-actually-proposes-w

TL;DR

The European Commission confirms a commitment to buy 250 Mt of permanent, domestic removals (bioenergy with carbon capture / direct air capture) for the EU Emissions Trading System — with a 2034 review clause.
Commission cost modeling assumes no national subsidies layered on top. Given Nordic BECCS economics today, that looks optimistic.
ETS operators can use certified removals for their own compliance from 2031 — no volume cap beyond deduction from the 250 Mt.
Pay-on-delivery is the default, but Quinn signals openness to prepayment and offtake structures via Innovation/Modernisation Fund mechanics. Details unwritten.
Commission’s own supply projection: ~48 Mt/year by 2040. The gap to the headline target is the real story.

Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart got Mette Quinn — Deputy Director for Carbon Markets and Clean Mobility at DG CLIMA, and the official who led the ETS revision — on The CDR Policy Scoop five days after the Commission published the proposal. This is the closest thing to primary-source commentary you’ll get on the removals provisions right now.

Take: Sustaera - electric DAC

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reviewer 2 does geoengineering, originally published Sat, 04 Ap. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reviewer2geoengineering/episodes/Sustaera---electric-DAC-e3heke1

TL;DR

Sustaera embeds Joule heating directly into a monolithic sorbent structure using a carbon-based resistor — no steam, no gas-phase heat transfer. Claims >90% heating efficiency in a 3.4L lab prototype.
Sorbent is alkali carbonate on alumina, not amine: claimed 18,000–24,000 cycles (~3 years) before 30% degradation forces recoating. If real, that’s a meaningful operating-cost lever.
Full adsorption/desorption cycle in 30–45 minutes; desorption at just 80°C, ramping in seconds. Host pushes back hard on whether this actually meshes with curtailed-power economics — worth hearing both sides.
Manufacturing piggybacks on catalytic-converter production lines. Buried at the end of the episode, but arguably the most important claim.
technology readiness level (TRL) 5 (1 t/yr indoor), raising $8.6M for a first 500–750 t/yr outdoor unit against $700/t pre-purchases from Stripe and Shopify.

Andrew of Reviewer 2 Does Geoengineering interviews Corey Sanderson, CTO and co-founder of Sustaera, the North Carolina direct air capture (DAC) startup that spun out of incubator Sustion in 2021. It’s a proper technical grilling — sorbent chemistry, desorption physics, cycle economics — from a host who knows his physisorption from his chemisorption. Episode here.

Take: #4: the denial of grief plays a central role in the work

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 14 Ju. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.substack.com/p/4-the-denial-of-grief-plays-a-central

TL;DR

An anonymous submission argues for pausing all crediting of enhanced rock weathering (ERW) and ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) until end-to-end verification improves. Critical but fair.
Core mechanism: open-system removals can’t be directly measured, so “phantom credits” used to offset real emissions pose both climate and reputational risk.
Claims early findings already show actual removal well below estimates — no citations given, but directionally consistent with recent field-trial literature.
Host Ross Kenyon explicitly frames all submissions as unverified. Treat this as practitioner-sentiment data, not evidence.
The CDR-relevant content is roughly five minutes; the other two submissions (climate grief, virtue signaling) are off this beat.

Episode #4 of Climate Workers Anonymous is Ross Kenyon’s anonymous-submission project: climate workers send in things they won’t say under their own name, and he reads them aloud. This episode carries three submissions, and one of them is a direct shot at the crediting of open-system carbon removal — which is why it’s worth flagging here despite the show’s soft format.

Take: 408: The impossible taxonomy of carbon dioxide removal

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 16 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/408-The-impossible-taxonomy-of-carbon-dioxide-removal-e3m54kn

TL;DR

Solo episode: host Ross Kenyon reads his own Substack essay arguing that a “perfect” carbon-credit taxonomy wouldn’t meaningfully unblock climate action. Useful contrarian framing for a taxonomy-obsessed field.
Core mechanism: categories like avoidance/removal/legacy fray at the edges immediately, yet practitioners communicate fine anyway — Wittgenstein’s “game” problem plus Polanyi’s tacit knowledge.
His diagnosis: the real blockers are narrative and how humans handle the discount rate, not categorization gaps. Honest as a corrective, overstated where taxonomy is regulatory infrastructure.
No guest, no numbers, no market data. This is a philosophy essay read aloud, not an episode you mine for figures.
He explicitly doesn’t dismiss taxonomy work — “valuable work for some purposes” — he just demotes it from the critical path.

Ross Kenyon goes solo on episode 408 of Reversing Climate Change, reading an essay he published on Substack, The Impossible Taxonomy of Carbon Dioxide Removal. No guest, no interview — just Kenyon working through whether the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) field’s endless categorization projects actually matter.

Take: Inside the Fight to Save $600 Million for DAC - with Vikrum Aiyer

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 15 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/inside-the-fight-to-save-600-million-for-dac-with-vikrum-aiy

TL;DR

Heirloom’s VP of policy explains how the ~$600M Louisiana DAC Hub award survived Trump-era review — while other hub tiers got cut. Useful post-mortem, not spin.
Winning argument wasn’t climate: LNG export carbon intensity, workforce transferability, and hyperscaler siting. A repeatable playbook, candidly described.
45Q’s $180/t is intact post-BBB, but reporting is in limbo: EPA’s GHGRP move broke the verification chain, Treasury’s safe harbor lapsed end-2025, replacement framework not yet issued.
California’s cap-and-trade extension put CDR integration into statute and lets emitters comply via direct capital expenditure (CapEx) investment into removal facilities — Aiyer sizes the market “in the billions.”
The $85M/yr Cap-and-Invest pot is small; the statutory integration is the real story. First detailed practitioner account I’ve seen of the mechanism.

Sebastian Manhart hosts Vikrum Aiyer, Heirloom’s head of global energy and climate policy, on The CDR Policy Scoop for a 30-minute tour of US direct air capture (DAC) policy: the DAC Hubs rescue, the 45Q reporting gap, and California’s Cap-and-Invest program.

Take: Avantium: Engineering Sorbents for DAC - Wessels

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reviewer 2 does geoengineering, originally published Thu, 16 Ap. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reviewer2geoengineering/episodes/Avantium-Engineering-Sorbents-for-DAC---Wessels-e3i16mo

TL;DR

Avantium sells high-throughput sorbent testing rigs (€350k–€1M) to DAC developers including Climeworks and Shell; 150+ units deployed, mostly for catalysis.
Central claim: no standardized DAC sorbent test protocol exists — labs routinely publish one or two adsorption/desorption cycles as “results.” Plausible and underdiscussed.
Wessels says early cycles show large variation, so single-cycle data is essentially noise. Real deployment means thousands of cycles.
Avantium just joined the NIST Carbon Dioxide Removal consortium to push standardized breakthrough-curve protocols. Worth tracking.
Claimed 4x reduction in sorbent time-to-market via 16-channel parallel testing. Vendor number, but customer-testimonial-backed.

Andrew from Reviewer 2 does geoengineering interviews Rudolf Wessels, Director of Technology and Innovation at Avantium R&D Solutions, the Amsterdam-based Shell spin-out (founded 2000, publicly listed) better known for its plant-based PEF polymer. The DAC-relevant part: Avantium’s R&D Solutions unit builds parallel testing hardware that lets sorbent developers run identical adsorption/desorption experiments across multiple channels simultaneously. Episode here.

Take: Carbon removal is not one thing

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 25 Ju. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-is-not-one-thing

TL;DR

Counteract has screened 1,000+ CDR companies, invested in 27 — one of the widest dealflow vantage points in the sector. That alone justifies the listen.
Core thesis: carbon removal is a category, not a pathway, so no single financing model fits — CREW’s small-ticket wastewater units vs. big DAC infrastructure need entirely different capital.
Most striking claim: e-SAF costs $1,000+/t CO2 abated vs. $200–300/t durable removal, so aviation mandates should accommodate a removal share. Useful framing for policy fights.
“Policy is expectation management” — the landfill tax analogy for how compliance signals unlock private capital. Not new, but well argued.
Counteract is pivoting from early-stage venture to a “delivery fund” for first commercial projects. Worth watching who they raise it with.

Na’im Merchant hosts Richard Barker, partner at Counteract, the 2021-vintage early-stage fund dedicated to carbon removal, on The Carbon Curve. The episode is an investor’s-eye tour of how capital actually flows into CDR (carbon dioxide removal) right now — pathway by pathway, with biomethane as the cautionary historical parallel.

Take: Getting CDR Right in the EU ETS: What's at Stake - with Francesca Battersby and Louis Uzor

Thu, 09 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 06 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/what-do-we-need-to-get-right-in-the-cdr-integration-into-the

TL;DR

The European Commission is reportedly leaning toward a public authority as intermediary for CDR procurement into the EU ETS — from public statements, not leaks. Significant if it survives co-decision.
Carbon Gap’s position: integrate removals below the cap (“one in, one out”) for the first review period, revisit later. Hedges against mitigation deterrence.
The “cap reaching zero” premise is shifting — Commission signaled in May that allowances will be issued well into the 2040s under a -90% by 2040 framing.
Numbers to watch on 17 July: the 75 Mt central estimate for 2040 removals, a floated 100 Mt figure, and Carbon Gap’s ~21% of ETS emissions analysis.
Only direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) and bio-CCS expected at launch; the mechanism for adding biochar and enhanced weathering matters more than the initial list. Useful framing.

Eve Tamme hosts Louis Uzor (Policy Director) and Francesca Battersby (Associate Policy Lead) of Carbon Gap on The CDR Policy Scoop, recorded 6 July — eleven days before the Commission’s expected EU Emissions Trading System (ETS) review proposal. It’s a pre-game analysis of how carbon dioxide removal (CDR) gets wired into the world’s largest compliance carbon market.

Take: Can ocean technologies combat climate change?

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Land & Climate Podcast, originally published Fri, 26 Ju. Listen: https://www.landclimate.org/podcast/

TL;DR

David Ho (Hawaiʻi, IPCC lead author) argues marine CDR isn’t ready — most techniques carry too many known unknowns to deploy. Fair and specific.
Enthusiasm has cooled since ~2023 across CDR broadly, not just ocean. Matches what practitioners are seeing.
Ocean iron fertilization: nutrient robbing effect only visible at scales we’ll never test. Models flag it, deployers dismiss it. Useful framing of the epistemic trap.
Direct ocean removal is being added to IPCC methodology as a “political decision” despite research gaps. First time I’ve seen it stated this bluntly by a lead author.
Governance gap: equilibration happens outside the deploying country’s EEZ — nobody’s worked out who claims the credit. Underrated issue.

Bertie Harson-Bredinsky hosts David Ho of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, fresh off the 4th International Conference on Carbon Dioxide Removal in Milan and now a lead author on the IPCC methodology report covering CDR and CCUS. The conversation is a sober tour of marine CDR — iron fertilization, ocean alkalinity enhancement, direct ocean removal, and blue carbon — from someone who’s moved from cautiously curious to openly skeptical. Listen here: landclimate.org/podcast.

Take: ISO, SBTi, and the LCAW Verdict on Corporate Net Zero - with Kaya Axelsson

Thu, 02 Jul 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 30 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/iso-sbti-and-the-lcaw-verdict-on-corporate-net-zero-with-kay

TL;DR

ISO Net Zero draft + SBTi v2 launched same day at London Climate Action Week 2026; Axelsson worked on both, argues they’re complementary not competing.
Big CDR concern: SBTi doesn’t require removals purchases before 2035 — Axelsson calls this a cost-based decision, not a science-based one.
ISO does require 5-year removals milestones, which is stricter on near-term CDR procurement than SBTi. Useful distinction that hasn’t been widely surfaced.
Alleged SBTi communication flaw: merged short + long-term standards may let companies claim “net zero aligned” with only a short-term target. Worth watching.
Next fight: governance of commodity certificates (green steel, SAF, cement) — mass-balance and additionality risks echoing prior voluntary market failures.

Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme host Kaya Axelsson of Oxford Net Zero one week after the simultaneous 22 June launch of the ISO Net Zero draft standard and SBTi Corporate Net Zero Standard v2. Axelsson worked inside both processes for three years, and the episode is essentially her post-mortem: what converged, what didn’t, and where the corporate demand signal for durable removals actually lands.

Take: 405: Does Managed MRV imply the existence of Unmanaged MRV?!—w/ Varsha Ramesh Walsh, Offstream

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 25 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/405-Does-Managed-MRV-imply-the-existence-of-Unmanaged-MRV--w-Varsha-Ramesh-Walsh--Offstream-e3l8cev

TL;DR

Offstream is repositioning from a DMRV (digital monitoring, reporting, verification) software vendor to “Managed measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)” — they do the work, not just provide a dashboard. Useful naming of an under-articulated category.
Walsh’s claim: the head-of-MRV in-house hire is often more expensive than outsourcing the whole function. Plausible for small biomass developers, untested at scale.
Most operational data in carbon projects still passes through a human at some point — bills of lading, odometer photos, clipboard entries. Honest admission worth hearing from a vendor.
Thesis: every owner of a physical asset eventually becomes a carbon project developer. Big swing; light on the path to get there.
Long surveillance-capitalism tangent eats ~20% of the runtime. Skippable.

Ross Kenyon hosts Varsha Ramesh Walsh, cofounder/CEO of Offstream, on episode 405 to explain why Offstream stopped trying to be pure software and embraced what Walsh calls “Managed MRV” — a services-plus-platform model targeting biomass-based durable CDR developers (biochar, lumber mills with waste streams) and increasingly 48E ITC tax-credit work.

Take: Is hyperscaler demand finally giving CCS its moment?

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Interchange Recharged, originally published Tue, 24 Fe. Listen: <>

TL;DR

Hyperscaler power demand has flipped carbon capture from a regulation-driven to a buyer-led market in ~18 months. Plausible, and consistent with the Meta/Hyperion-type deals.
ION claims natural gas + capture + storage lands at ~31 kgCO2/MWh — competitive with solar+storage on a lifecycle basis. Aggressive; rests on a 0.75% methane leakage assumption that is below US field averages.
Cost adder: ~$20–25/MWh for retrofits, $16–18/MWh for new builds, inclusive of transport and storage. Useful number if it holds.
ION’s pitch on its amine solvent: doesn’t degrade in oxygen, so 99% capture is achievable without the usual exponential energy penalty. Worth probing.
Execution risk — getting power purchase agreements to final investment decision — is now the binding constraint, not policy or tech. 45Q stayed at $85/t under the current administration.

Bridget van Dorsten hosts Tim Vail, CEO of ION Clean Energy, for a fairly technical hour on post-combustion capture at natural gas plants serving AI data centers. The framing is unapologetically pro-gas-plus-capture as a “clean firm” option alongside nuclear and geothermal — if you want a skeptical take on that premise, this isn’t it, but if you want the seller’s most coherent version of the argument with actual numbers, it’s here.

Take: Petra Fromme, Arizona State University - Materials That Harness Humidity to Capture Carbon

Thu, 25 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Academic Minute, originally published Thu, 25 Ju. Listen: https://www.academicminute.org/p/petra-fromme-arizona-state-university

TL;DR

Petra Fromme (Arizona State University) describes nanoscale imaging of moisture-swing sorbents for direct air capture — material rearranges with humidity, controlling CO₂ uptake/release.
Core claim: a porous resin sorbent performs especially well because its internal structure lets gases move more freely. Useful but unquantified — no kg CO₂/m³, no cycle data.
Method angle (nanoscale imaging of structural changes under humidity swings) is the genuinely novel bit, not the moisture-swing concept itself (Klaus Lackner territory).
Three-minute segment. Zero numbers on capacity, cost, durability, or scale. Treat as a research-direction pointer, not a result.
Worth it only if you specifically track sorbent materials science for passive/moisture-swing direct air capture.

This is a three-minute Academic Minute segment with Petra Fromme, Regents Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Arizona State University, on academicminute.org. She’s pitching work done with graduate student Gayatri Yoga Ganeshan on moisture-swing sorbents for direct air capture — materials that grab CO₂ when air is dry and release it when air is humid, avoiding the thermal or pressure swing energy penalty.

Take: 404: When will insetting work for carbon dioxide removal?—w/ Tom Mills, Stripe Climate Fellow (former)

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 18 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/404-When-will-insetting-work-for-carbon-dioxide-removal-w-Tom-Mills--Stripe-Climate-Fellow-former-e3kugqp

TL;DR

Tom Mills (ex-Stripe Climate Fellow, now at Mati Carbon) argues insetting durable CDR into ag supply chains is harder than the industry assumes — useful reality check.
Coffee is the first ag value chain where biochar insetting actually pencils, driven by EUDR pressure, unmixed supply chains, and willing-to-pay CPGs. Plausible.
GHG Protocol forces removals onto a separate ledger from scope 3 reductions — a structural block on insetting demand that’s underdiscussed. Important.
“Supply shed” remains undefined; practitioners are setting norms by just doing it. Honest, slightly alarming.
Real insetting business model = stacking non-carbon benefits (yield, pesticide residue, nitrate leaching, biofortification), not selling the ton. Worth the hour for value-chain folks.

Ross Kenyon hosts Tom Mills — former Stripe Climate Fellow, now at enhanced rock weathering developer Mati Carbon (XPRIZE Carbon Removal grand prize winner) — on episode 404 of Reversing Climate Change. Mills spent his fellowship year on a single question: when does embedding biochar and enhanced rock weathering into Global South ag supply chains actually work? The honest answer is “not yet, and here’s why.”

Take: Green-Hushing, Safe Harbors, and Who Actually Owns a Carbon Credit - with Dr Ruth Dagan

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 17 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/with-dr-ruth-dagan

TL;DR

Climate-washing lawsuits up 70% since 2022; Grantham counts ~160 cases, 54 directly tied to offset-based claims. Useful baseline number.
EU Empowering Consumers Directive (in force September) flatly bans product-level carbon-neutral claims; California’s AB 1911 goes opposite direction with a safe harbor for high-integrity credits.
Apple Watch carbon-neutral case: lost in Germany (permanence only guaranteed to 2029 vs. an implied 2040 horizon), tentatively won in US, now on appeal.
Registries — including Article 6.4’s PACM — explicitly disclaim that account-holders legally own the credits. Dagan calls this an unforced error throttling collateralization.
UNIDROIT principles (due early 2027) would classify credits as intangible assets. The fix everyone in finance has been waiting for.

Sebastian Manhart hosts Dr. Ruth Dagan (Herzog, formerly UNFCCC legal affairs) for a 30-minute tour of two legal bottlenecks chilling corporate buying: greenwashing litigation exposure, and the bizarre fact that carbon registries refuse to assert that account holders actually own anything. Eve Tamme is out sick. Episode link.

Take: Policy wins and hard lessons as carbon removal finds its footing

Thu, 18 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 26 Fe. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/policy-wins-and-growing-pains-as

TL;DR

FY26 appropriations gave durable CDR (carbon dioxide removal) real wins: $45M for the DOE purchase prize, $70M+ for RD&D, despite the President’s budget zeroing them out. Genuinely surprising.
DAC (direct air capture) Hubs took a hit: $1B of remaining funds repurposed to small modular reactors, leaving ~$800M. Obligated grants untouched.
1 million tons delivered milestone is mostly biochar — Peter Minor frames the concentration as a warning sign, not a victory lap. Sharp framing.
Consolidation (Terradot/Ion) read as maturity, not panic — scale matters more in CDR than most industries for project finance and offtake credibility.
Gianna Amador: per-ton price is the wrong KPI in the prove-and-learn era. Worth chewing on.

Naim Merchant kicks off a new “Removers Roundtable” format on The Carbon Curve with Gianna Amador (Carbon Removal Alliance), Erin Burns (Carbon180), and Peter Minor (Absolute Climate). The hour is a US-centric stocktake: where federal CDR policy actually landed a year into the new administration, what the consolidation wave means, and whether the field’s talent and narrative survive the right-sizing.

Take: 403: How to get max value from carbon market consultants—w/ David LaGreca, EcoEngineers

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 11 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/403-How-to-get-max-value-from-carbon-market-consultantsw-David-LaGreca--EcoEngineers-e3kkn5k

TL;DR

When to call a consultant: as soon as you have a concept beyond a napkin sketch — useful framing, mostly self-serving but honest about it.
Claim: a 1-6 month consulting engagement often beats hiring a $150-200k FTE for methodology, LCA, registry selection work. Plausible for early-stage developers.
EcoEngineers’ workload has shifted from drafting new CDR methodologies (2022-2023 peak) to advising large energy/corporate entrants and operating projects. Useful market-temperature signal.
Rule of thumb: AI tooling gets you ~70% of the way on methodology drafting; the last 30% is where expertise compounds. First time I’ve heard it quantified that way.
Registry choice (Puro vs. Isometric vs. Rainbow vs. others) is undersold as a strategic decision that determines credit volume, verification cadence, and labeling eligibility.

Episode link. Ross Kenyon hosts David LaGreca of EcoEngineers — a sponsor of the show, which Ross discloses repeatedly — for an hour on how durable-CDR developers should actually engage advisory firms. The episode is half practical (hire vs. contract math, when to fire a consultant) and half industry-state observation from someone who’s touched roughly 10 CDR protocols across 7-8 mechanisms.

Take: Is carbon removal stronger than the headlines suggest?

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 11 Ju. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/is-carbon-removal-stronger-than-the

TL;DR

Three Toronto operators (Amplify, Mangrove, CarbonRun) argue the durable-CDR vibes are worse than the fundamentals — useful corrective if you’ve been doom-scrolling.
Venture was the wrong instrument for an infrastructure sector; the “missing middle” between VC and big-bank project finance is the real bottleneck. Accurate diagnosis, no easy fix offered.
CarbonRun’s first verified river alkalinity issuances exposed how optimistic pre-audit limestone-to-feedstock ratios were. First time I’ve heard an operator say this out loud.
1,100+ permanent CDR companies counted across public lists — Vlaar predicts consolidation via acqui-hire, not a clean die-off. Plausible.
Affordability framing in government budgets is the under-discussed existential risk for compliance demand. Worth taking seriously.

Na’im Merchant’s Toronto Climate Week wrap puts Trish Nixon (Amplify Capital), Brandon Vlaar (Mangrove Systems), and Luke Connell (CarbonRun) in one room to take stock of durable CDR a year after the US political shift. It’s a finance/measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)/supplier triangle, recorded live, and unusually candid about what isn’t working.

Take: Taking Stock: The State of CDR - Fireside Chat with Oliver Geden

Fri, 12 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 08 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/taking-stock-the-state-of-cdr-fireside-chat-with-oliver-gede

TL;DR

Geden: only 2 countries (Australia, UK) name novel/durable CDR in NDCs through 2035; ~1/3 of long-term strategies for 2050 mention it. Damning baseline.
State of CDR report puts CDR at ~16% of global mitigation effort — higher than the 5-10% often cited. Worth understanding why before quoting it.
“Hard to abate” is partly politically hard to abate — CDR risks becoming a flexibility valve for politicians dodging transport/buildings decarbonization. Sharp framing.
EU’s 5% international credits allowance: officially “no CDM mistakes round two,” but Geden expects criteria to be more lenient than current rhetoric suggests.
land use, land-use change, and forestry (LULUCF) accounting hides the ball: net targets mask gross emissions (e.g. Germany’s 50 Mt/yr from peatland drainage, stable, now 8% of national total).

Sebastian Manhart interviews Oliver Geden (SWP, IPCC WG3 Vice Chair, State of CDR co-author) live at NEP Summit Brussels, recorded the week the third State of CDR report dropped. Thirty minutes covering policy sequencing (foundational → supply → demand), the gap between net zero pledges and actual CDR planning, EU pillar architecture, and how the Iran conflict scrambles climate attention.

Take: The State of CDR 2026: The CDR Policy Scoop Verdict

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 02 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/the-state-of-cdr-2026-the-cdr-policy-scoop-verdict

TL;DR

Third edition of the State of CDR report drops: 300 pages, 75+ authors, two-year cadence now established as the canonical reference doc.
Global novel CDR sits at 2.1 Mt gross — but the report finally shows per-pathway net/gross gaps (bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) net is 68–98% of gross, DACCS 23–90%). Material for anyone quoting headline tonnages.
2025 reality check: first edition projected 11 Mt novel by 2025; actual is ~2 Mt. Hosts flag 2030 announcements (42 Mt) vs estimated delivery capacity (8.4 Mt) as the next gap to watch.
Across IAM scenarios that actually reach net-zero CO2, CDR averages 16% of mitigation effort — higher than the 10% figure often cited in corporate target-setting.
CDR captures 2.6% of climate-tech funding. Low enough to puncture the “CDR is eating climate’s lunch” narrative.

Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme got an embargoed copy of the third State of CDR report and spent 30 minutes pulling out what surprised them rather than re-reading the executive summary. It’s a useful filter episode if you don’t have time for 300 pages this week.

Take: Viridas Pressurised DAC, El-Sayed

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reviewer 2 does geoengineering, originally published Fri, 15 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reviewer2geoengineering/episodes/Viridas-Pressurised-DAC--El-Sayed-e3jct2c

TL;DR

Viridas pitches “pressurized DAC”: compress incoming air to ~70 bar so CO2 partial pressure jumps from ~400 ppm to ~2.8%, shrinking contactors ~70x.
Sorbent is a cheap aqueous ammonia + alkali carbonate mix (carbamate formation + bicarbonate buffer), regenerated thermally at ~90–110°C. Sensible chemistry, nothing exotic.
Core thesis: solvent R&D is hitting thermodynamic limits; the real lever is CAPEX, attacked by retrofitting gas-turbine turbomachinery as compressor/expander.
Claimed round-trip efficiency target: ~97–98% (vs ~70% for current compressed-air energy storage). That’s the whole ballgame and it’s not demonstrated.
No technoeconomic assessment shared, no pilot, no funding disclosed, Gmail contact address. Treat as concept-stage.

The host of Reviewer 2 Does Geoengineering interviews Ahmed El-Sayed, co-founder of Viridas Technologies, about a pressurized DAC concept built around retrofitted gas-turbine machinery. The episode is recorded walking through a Cambridge park, which means a non-trivial fraction of the runtime is ice cream and hawthorn commentary — the substantive technical content is maybe 35 minutes.

Take: Why carbon removal needs a new story

Thu, 04 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Wed, 25 Ma. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/why-carbon-removal-needs-a-new-story

TL;DR

Höglund argues CDR should shift from “speed and scale” to “prove and learn”: drive down costs, nail measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), demonstrate at relevant scale. Useful reframing.
Voluntary demand likely exceeds compliance demand through ~2040. EU ETS + UK ETS maybe a couple hundred million tons total by mid-2030s. First time I’ve seen the number stated that bluntly.
Aviation and shipping legislation (ReFuelEU, FuelEU Maritime) effectively locks CDR out as a compliance pathway. Advocacy gap, not science gap.
“Last resort” framing was a self-own. CDR is rate-limited, not stock-limited — building capacity today doesn’t deplete future capacity.
High-profit/low-emission buyers (tech, finance) sustain the beachhead market; heavy industry won’t buy voluntarily and shouldn’t be expected to. Reflects reality, not aspiration.

The Carbon Curve, Ep. 62 — Na’im Merchant interviews Robert Höglund (Milkywire, CDR.fyi co-founder, Marginal Carbon) for a state-of-the-sector check-in. The conversation is essentially Höglund’s argument for retiring the “we need 6–10 Gt by 2050, scale now” narrative and replacing it with a more sober “prove the methods, drop the costs, serve future decision-makers a credible menu” frame.

Take: 399: How to Pitch Terraset (and other carbon removal buyers)—w/ Taylor Insley, Terraset

Thu, 28 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Fri, 15 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/399-How-to-Pitch-Terraset-and-other-carbon-removal-buyersw-Taylor-Insley--Terraset-e3jd1gr

TL;DR

Taylor Insley (Terraset) says ~75% of developer interactions at Carbon Unbound are bad pitches — ambush style, no social grace. Believable and useful.
Terraset claims 6-8x leverage per dollar deployed via its revolving fund model. First time I’ve seen that ratio cited publicly for them.
Terraset gets ~450 projects in its intake pipeline against a team of three. Diligence bandwidth is the binding constraint, not capital appetite.
Insley’s actual advice: relationship-building beats first-impression perfection; she discounts bad early pitches if the project matures.
Ross’s “minor leagues” framing — Milky Wire/Terraset before Frontier/Microsoft — is the most operationally useful frame in the episode.

Episode link. Ross Kenyon interviews Taylor Insley, Director of Strategic Growth at Terraset, the tax-deductible philanthropic CDR buyer. The episode is essentially a sales-craft conversation for developers pitching small-to-mid catalytic buyers, anchored on a Carbon Unbound Vancouver panel Insley did earlier this year. There’s also a long Ross monologue on status and in-group dynamics that you can safely skip.

Take: LULUCF, Carbon Farming and the CRCF Review - with Asger Strange Olesen

Thu, 28 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 24 Ma. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/lulucf-carbon-farming-and-the-crcf-review-with-asger-strange

TL;DR

Carbon farming side of the CRCF (Carbon Removal Certification Framework) lacks the buyer momentum permanent removals have — no offtake equivalent of the Buyers Club in sight.
Olesen pushes “performance certificates” as the right instrument for land that stays in production: an inventory-aligned reporting unit, not a credit. Useful framing.
Strong claim: leakage and permanence have no role in this tool, and only simple stock-change additionality applies. Will be controversial but internally consistent.
EU bottom-up inventory logic vs SBTi FLAG’s top-down benchmark is a real collision course — first time I’ve seen it spelled out this cleanly.
Wishlist for Q4 national targets & flexibilities proposal: shift the buy-side obligation from member states to sectors/companies, keep Article 6 out, give CSRD↔CRCF a legal hook.

The CDR Policy Scoop, hosted by Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme, brings back Asger Strange Olesen (International Woodland Company, EU Carbon Removal Expert Group) to walk through where the carbon-farming half of the CRCF actually sits after the recent CRCF Days. It’s a policy-mechanics conversation: methodologies adopted (soil, peatlands, afforestation), why credits are the wrong tool for most European farmland, and what the upcoming CRCF review and Q4 flexibilities proposal need to deliver.

Take: Seven buyers in a trench coat

Thu, 28 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 16 Ap. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/seven-buyers-in-a-trench-coat

TL;DR

Microsoft pausing new durable CDR purchases isn’t the story — the story is they were ~80-90% of the market to begin with. Correct framing.
Governments committed $45M to CDR purchases, spent ~$0; private sector spent $10.5B. Striking number, worth citing.
Jack’s case: voluntary buying was always a house of cards; policy has to take over. Hard to argue with at this point.
Defense of enhanced oil recovery as a legitimate scaling pathway for direct air capture. Will annoy some, but the argument is coherent.
Dream policy: low-carbon-intensity product standard embedded in trade, with CDR compliance pathways. Interesting, underdeveloped here.

Naim Merchant interviews Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh, who runs the Carbon Management Program at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy and previously led carbon management policy at Breakthrough Energy. The episode is a reaction to Heatmap’s reporting that Microsoft is pausing new durable carbon removal purchases, and Cavanaugh’s weekend piece arguing the real failure is governmental, not corporate. It’s the cleanest articulation I’ve heard of “the voluntary market was always structurally fragile” — read the episode post if you don’t have an hour.

Take: 400: What kind of leader does my CDR company need me to be?—w/ Julia Reichelstein, Vaulted Deep

Thu, 21 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 21 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/400-What-kind-of-leader-does-my-CDR-company-need-me-to-be-w-Julia-Reichelstein--Vaulted-Deep-e3jiss8

TL;DR

Vaulted Deep is on track for ~50,000 tonnes of durable removal this year, up from 25,000 tonnes cumulative to date — credible scale-up for a non-biochar developer.
Reichelstein frames Vaulted as a waste management company first, CDR second; gets paid on the disposal side, which sidesteps biomass-competition risk entirely.
The Microsoft ~5M-tonne offtake (signed 2024) underwrites site development through ~2040 — the deal that turned them from operator into builder.
Most of the conversation is leadership philosophy, not technical. Useful if you’re a founder; thinner if you came for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) or geology specifics.
Spin-out mechanics from Advantek get a rare honest treatment — including why venture-backed spin-outs are scarce.

Ross Kenyon hosts Julia Reichelstein, co-founder and CEO of Vaulted Deep, for a wide-ranging conversation that’s roughly one-third Vaulted operations and two-thirds founder psychology. If you’ve heard Reichelstein on the technical circuit before, this is the softer cut — useful for understanding how she thinks, less useful if you want to interrogate the deep-well injection thesis.

Take: Carbon removal is stuck in low earth orbit. Here's how we get out.

Thu, 21 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 30 Ap. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-is-stuck-in-low-earth

TL;DR

Friedmann argues CDR 1.0 built the scaffolding (registries, raters, taxonomy) but isn’t structured to close commercial deals — reframing, not bashing.
Five pillars to unlock CDR 2.0: technical readiness, project assurance, standardization, bankability, transactional ease. Useful checklist, light on novelty individually but coherent together.
Headline claim: deals die at the CFO, not the CSO. Risk management, not price, is the binding constraint. Rings true with what buyers actually say.
Pointed critique: 5,000-ton pilots don’t interest 100kt-scale buyers like Microsoft/JPM/Airbus. Sector is still over-indexed on first-of-a-kind storytelling.
Intro segment announces the Quebec Surficial Mineralization Hub at Thetford Mines — 800Mt tailings, Frontier RFP open through May 22, 2026.

Naim Merchant hosts Julio Friedmann (Chief Scientist, Carbon Direct) to walk through Carbon Direct’s new “CDR 2.0: Five Pillars of Successful Project Deployment and Delivery” report. The episode is essentially a guided tour of why durable carbon removal deal flow has stalled and what specifically needs to change at the buyer-procurement-bank interface. There’s also a 4-minute opening from Merchant announcing the Quebec Surficial Mineralization Hub partnership between Carbon Removal Canada, Frontier, and Thetford Mines.

Take: CBAM and International Credits: What’s Just Changed? - with Dan Maleski

Thu, 21 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Fri, 15 Ma. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/cbam-and-international-credits-whats-just-changed-with-dan-m

TL;DR

Draft Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism implementing act (published 13 May 2026) lets importers deduct carbon costs paid abroad — including, controversially, international credits. First-time clarity worth knowing.
Hard cap: international Article 6 credits can offset at most 10% of a CBAM liability. But most third-country ETSs already cap offset use at 5-10%, so binding impact is modest.
No quantitative cap on domestic credits used inside a third-country mandatory regime. Maleski can’t justify the asymmetry; nor can the hosts. Genuinely odd policy choice.
“Effective” carbon cost is net of free allocation — so Brazil, Turkey, Korea ETSs in ramp-up phase deliver near-zero deduction regardless of headline carbon price. Important reality check.
Anti-gaming safeguard is “independent persons” verifying paid prices. Maleski openly notes clients ask how to inflate intra-group credit prices. Thin guardrail.

The CDR Policy Scoop (episode link) reconvened Dan Maleski of Ruby Advisors one day after the Commission dropped its draft implementing act on Article 9 of CBAM — the provision letting importers deduct carbon costs already paid in the country of origin. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme spend 30 minutes parsing what the act actually says about international credits, the 10% cap, and why the consultation (closing early June) still leaves big pieces missing.

Take: 398: Scientists vs. Engineers, & the Commercial Pressure on Carbon Dioxide Removal—w/ Erica Dorr & Samara Vantil, Rainbo

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 07 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/398-Scientists-vs--Engineers---the-Commercial-Pressure-on-Carbon-Dioxide-Removalw-Erica-Dorr--Samara-Vantil--Rainbow-e3j0jq0

TL;DR

Rainbow’s head of science Erica Dorr and certification engineer Samara Vantil reframe the science-vs-engineering split as a false binary; both do applied work daily.
The real gap is technical-vs-commercial. Useful framing for anyone who’s watched a salesperson promise a methodology change on a call.
Concrete example: biochar lab samples cost ~€600 to ship Africa→Europe. That’s the kind of number that should anchor measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) requirement-setting.
Defense of Charm’s “cut scope” posture as courage, not laziness — diminishing returns on the last sample are real and worth saying out loud.
When project developers can’t deliver a data point, Rainbow’s default is a conservative discount factor, not rejection. Worth knowing if you’re a buyer reading their credits.

Ross Kenyon hosts Erica Dorr (head of science) and Samara Vantil (environmental engineer, certification) of Rainbow, the carbon removal standard and registry. The episode is a follow-up to two essays Kenyon wrote for Rainbow on whether durable CDR needs more field engineers or more scientists, and lands somewhere more interesting than either piece: the science/engineering line is fuzzy, and the harder boundary is between technical teams and commercial.

Take: Dr. Sambuddha Misra: Drinking Tea to Save Coral Reefs? The Mechanics of Enhanced Rock Weathering in Darjeeling | S5E5

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from REEF Roundup: 🪸Coral Reefs🐠 and 🐙Marine Conservation🦈, originally published Wed, 15 Ap. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reefroundup/episodes/Dr--Sambuddha-Misra-Drinking-Tea-to-Save-Coral-Reefs--The-Mechanics-of-Enhanced-Rock-Weathering-in-Darjeeling--S5E5-e3hsh58

TL;DR

Alt Carbon’s chief scientist explains why Darjeeling’s foothills are a rare “supply-limited” weathering regime — solid mechanistic justification for site selection.
2025 Isometric-verified delivery claimed as Asia’s first enhanced rock weathering (ERW) credits; guest says next tranche is ~10x larger. Useful datapoint on Asian ERW supply.
Current deployment ~80,000 acres, roadmap to 250k then 1M acres across Bengal and Assam. Ambition is real but measurement is the bottleneck.
Honest admission: a million-acre deployment implies ~3M samples/year, more than all geochemistry has measured historically. New measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) methods required.
Reported 25–100% crop yield uplift on degraded tea-estate soils from basalt micronutrients. Eye-catching, but no controls described — take with caution.

Reef Roundup (a marine conservation show) hosts Dr. Sambuddha Misra, IISc earth scientist and chief scientist at Alt Carbon, for a surprisingly substantive walk through the geochemistry, MRV, and scaling math of enhanced rock weathering in the Himalayan foothills. The framing is coral-reef alkalinity, but the meat is durable CDR: basalt sourcing, supply-limited weathering regimes, Isometric verification, and the brick wall of sample-scale measurement.

Take: Insurance, Buffers, and the Permanence Trust - with Natalia Dorfman

Thu, 14 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 03 Ma. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/fixing-permanence-insurance-and-the-permanence-trust-with-na

TL;DR

Natalia Dorfman (Kita CEO) argues buffer pools were a useful bootstrap but not built for perpetual liability — a defensible position, gaining traction with standards themselves.
Frames permanence as two distinct problems: short-term liability (handle via insurance on the developer) vs long-term/perpetual (needs a fund mechanism). Useful clean split.
The Permanence Trust: an endowment-style, fully capitalized fund where per-credit fees are invested so the corpus always exceeds expected reversal costs. AFF-led feasibility study, report due ~June 2026, pilot to follow.
Expects multiple Permanence Trusts (per-jurisdiction, per-standard), not one global fund. Realistic, though fragmentation risk goes unaddressed.
Interim move: insurance-wrapped buffers so standards stop “holding the bag.” Practical bridge, but no costs disclosed on-air.

Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart host Natalia Dorfman of Kita for a 30-minute walk through where carbon insurance has landed in 2026 and, more substantively, the Permanence Trust concept being developed by the American Forest Foundation with Kita as modeling partner. If you’ve been hearing “permanence trust” in conference hallways and wondering what’s actually under the hood, this is the cleanest public explanation so far.

Take: Carbon removal is stuck in low earth orbit. Here's how we get out.

Sat, 02 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 30 Ap. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-is-stuck-in-low-earth

Naim Merchant hosts Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist at Carbon Direct, to unpack the firm’s new “CDR 2.0” report. The thesis: durable carbon removal has reached “low Earth orbit” — markets, registries, raters, a buyers coalition all exist — but the next stage requires a different operating model. Friedmann lays out five pillars: technical readiness, project assurance, standardization, bankability, and transactional ease.

Take: DIGGING DEEP with Gabrielle Walker: A Life in Climate

Sat, 02 May 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 29 Ap. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/digging-deep-with-gabrielle-walker-a-life-in-climate

TL;DR

Long-form interview with Gabrielle Walker (CUR8, Rethinking Removals) — part biography, part state-of-the-CDR-market read. Worth it for the second half.
Walker’s “pre-compliance” framing for 2026-2035: SBTi draft reportedly requires removals by 2035, ISO net-zero standard (due later this year) will mandate interim removal targets. Useful if accurate.
British Airways portfolio anecdote: Sean Doyle reportedly sees CDR as ~30% of BA’s decarbonization solution. First time I’ve seen that number cited publicly.
CUR8’s 5-pillar diligence framework (climate integrity, team, future potential, delivery risk, “core benefits” not co-benefits) — practical, steal-able.
Honest moment: Walker admits she initially dismissed Global South CDR as virtue-signaling before James Wanjigi (Kenya) changed her mind. Worth hearing.

Episode link. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme launch a long-form spinoff of the CDR Policy Scoop with Gabrielle Walker — co-founder of CUR8 and Rethinking Removals, and one of the people who has actually been in rooms with FTSE-100 CSOs trying to convert intent into off-takes. The first 60% is biography (Antarctica, ice cores, science journalism); the back half is the part practitioners want.