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.

The most actionable claim is Walker’s “pre-compliance” framing. She argues we are no longer in a voluntary market — the signals from the future are clear enough to act on. Specifics she puts on the record: the SBTi draft now requires removal purchases by 2035 to qualify for net-zero status (not just “encouraged”); the ISO net-zero aligned organization standard, due later in 2026, will mandate short-term interim removal targets; UK ETS and EU ETS integration is moving toward early 2030s; Japan is already in. If those land as described, the corporate buyer thesis genuinely shifts from “marketing” to “secure supply before your competitors do.” Worth tracking the actual ISO and SBTi text against her characterization.

The British Airways case study is the most concrete buyer-side anecdote in the episode. Walker says BA’s portfolio (built with CUR8) made them the largest airline CDR purchaser and largest UK corporate purchaser, and that Sean Doyle frames CDR as ~30% of BA’s decarbonization pathway — implicitly conceding sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), hydrogen, and electrification will not close the gap. She also flags that the UK Jet Zero Task Force and reportedly the EU are looking at folding CDR into SAF mandates rather than running them in parallel. Captain Drawdown’s view: this is the right direction but Walker glides past the awkward fact that several direct air capture firms are pivoting to e-SAF precisely because there’s a compliance market there and not for durable removal — a tension Eve Tamme raises and Walker doesn’t fully resolve.

For adjacent context: CUR8’s diligence pillars echo the durability-plus-delivery-risk framing that Frontier and Isometric have been pushing on the measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) side, and Walker’s “core benefits not co-benefits” reframe is a useful rhetorical move for anyone writing buyer policy. Her forthcoming Nature op-ed on the nature-vs-tech binary is worth watching. The Microsoft “building the market we need to buy from” quote (attributed to Melanie Nakagawa at Davos) is the cleanest articulation of the anchor-buyer thesis I’ve heard recently.

Useful for: corporate sustainability leads building a CDR business case internally, policy folks tracking SBTi/ISO timing, and anyone who needs language to bridge the reductions-vs-removals or nature-vs-tech fights with non-CDR colleagues. Skip the first 30 minutes unless you want the Antarctica stories.