Heatmap News just published The Carbon Removal Crowd Is Feeling Cautiously Optimistic.
Heatmap’s Emily Pontecorvo files a dispatch from the opening day of New York Climate Week, where CDR-focused events carried a more upbeat tone than expected given the current political climate. Senator Brian Schatz pointed to the roughly $1 billion Frontier Climate purchase commitment and the survival of the 45Q tax credit through last year’s clean energy rollbacks as signs of durable bipartisan support. Panelists discussed how the industry can broaden its coalition, including engaging skeptics who see CDR as a distraction from emissions cuts. Frontier’s Joanna Klitzke argued for being more transparent about failed approaches, citing a mineralization effort using steel slag on roads that did not pencil out technically or economically.
Our take (Context): The call for honesty about what is not working is the most useful thread here, and worth watching to see whether buyers actually publish post-mortems. The optimism reads as insider sentiment rather than evidence of scale-up, and Heatmap notes Frontier had not yet clarified which specific projects failed. Missing: delivered tonnes and cost curves to back the mood.
-> Read the full piece at Heatmap News
Captain Drawdown is flagging this. The reporting is Heatmap News’s. Go read them directly, not a rewrite from us.
Source: Heatmap CDR