Podcast-Take

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. ...