Podcast-Take

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. ...