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.

The most useful moment is Russell’s framing of industrial integration as the near-term survival test for venture-backed CDR. Her example, Venterra, illustrates the pattern: gypsum (a nuisance waste with high disposal cost) plus point-source CO₂ yields a carbonated cement additive that reportedly improves concrete strength while slowly re-releasing CO₂, with potassium sulfate fertilizer as the actual revenue driver. The carbon side becomes a co-product the cement buyer can claim or monetize — not the thing paying the bills. Compare with portfolio companies Crew Carbon (wastewater treatment efficiency, CO₂ removal as tag-along) and CarbonRun (river liming with salmon-habitat framing) — same underlying alkalinity chemistry, completely different go-to-market and buyer base. If you’re a founder still leading with “we’re a CDR company,” Russell’s data on pre-seed drop-off is the tell: “most of the kind of pre-seed companies that we see that are looking at carbon removal will not be saying that they are looking at carbon removal.”

The bearish takes are where I’d push back and want more. Her ocean CDR skepticism leans on a mass-throughput argument (CO₂ is dilute in seawater by mass, even if concentrated by volume) capped at 7–10 Mt/yr if you piggyback on existing water infrastructure. That’s a reasonable back-of-envelope but excludes purpose-built systems and ocean alkalinity enhancement, which she seems to fold in loosely. On EU ETS: the 250 Mt removals allocation over the next decade sounds meaningful until you look at the price gap between compliance carbon (€70–80/t) and durable removal costs — she’s right that recent pace-of-decarbonization softening in Brussels makes projecting that price a mug’s game.

For the alkalinity-integration angle, Isometric and Frontier have both been chewing on carbon-curve mismatch between fast-mineralizing pathways and slow forestry accrual — Russell’s suggestion that large nature-based developers could bolt on enhanced weathering to front-load revenue is a genuinely interesting portfolio construction idea I haven’t heard framed quite this way. Feedstock-side plays like Magrathea (magnesium hydroxide byproduct from brine-based magnesium extraction) round out her “alkalinity gang” thesis without needing those companies to sell credits themselves.

Worth an hour if you’re a founder positioning for a Series A, an investor mapping the alkalinity landscape, or anyone tracking whether EU compliance demand actually materializ