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Carbon Herald just published Carbon Capture Debate Intensifies In Louisiana. Carbon Herald covers the ongoing fight in Louisiana over carbon capture and storage, which has emerged as a flashpoint in the state’s 2024 legislative session. The piece outlines competing pressures from industry developers pursuing CCS projects along the Gulf Coast, local communities raising concerns about pipelines and underground injection wells, and lawmakers weighing new restrictions and permitting rules. It situates the debate against Louisiana’s heavy petrochemical footprint and the federal incentives, including 45Q tax credits, that have drawn project proposals to the state. The article tracks how parish-level opposition and proposed bills could reshape the regulatory path for CCS deployment. ...

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 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 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. ...

Carbon Herald just published Senken And Sylvera Find Major Gaps In Carbon Credit Transparency Among DAX40 Firms. Carbon Herald reports on a joint analysis by Senken and Sylvera examining carbon credit disclosures across Germany’s DAX40 index. The review finds that most of the country’s largest listed firms provide limited detail on the credits they retire, including project types, vintages, registries, and quality ratings. According to the outlet, the gaps make it difficult for investors and regulators to assess whether offsets used in corporate climate claims meet credible standards. The piece situates the findings within tightening EU rules on green claims and growing pressure on issuers to substantiate net zero and carbon neutrality statements with verifiable retirement data. ...

Biochar: the pathway Biochar is what you get when you cook biomass — crop residues, forestry waste, sewage sludge — in a low-oxygen environment at several hundred degrees Celsius. The carbon that the plant pulled out of the atmosphere ends up locked in a stable, ring-structured solid that resists microbial decay for centuries when applied to soil or used as a filler in concrete and asphalt. It is, by volume, the largest delivered carbon dioxide removal (CDR) pathway today: biochar accounts for the majority of tonnes actually issued on registries like Puro.earth and the European Biochar Certificate (EBC), even as direct air capture attracts more capital per tonne announced. ...