Podcast-Take

Take on a podcast episode from Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change, originally published Thu, 10 Se. Listen: <> TL;DR Rep. Suzanne Bonamici (D-OR) walks through the ReSCUE Oceans Act, a bipartisan bill to set up a federal framework for marine CDR research. Useful primer, light on specifics. Bill would coordinate NOAA, NASA, NSF around mCDR (including ocean alkalinity enhancement). No dollar figure — “we’ll work that out.” Notable gap. Bipartisan co-sponsors: Schatz (D-HI), Murkowski (R-AK) in Senate; Bonamici and Buddy Carter (R-GA) in House. Realistic path unclear this Congress. Separate win discussed: bipartisan bill to block NSF from decommissioning the Ocean Observatories Initiative buoys. Small but concrete measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)-adjacent story. On the Trump administration gutting NOAA’s mCDR capacity: acknowledged as a problem, no strategy offered beyond “hopefully rehire.” Wil Burns (American University’s Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal) and guest co-host Priyanka Hooghan (Carbon to Sea) interview Rep. Suzanne Bonamici in her Capitol Hill office. The conversation covers the ReSCUE Oceans Act — Removing and Sequestering Carbon Unleashed in the Environment and Oceans — plus her work as bipartisan Oceans Caucus co-chair and a side fight over ocean observing infrastructure. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Untangling Climate Finance, originally published Mon, 17 Au. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/untanglingclimatefinance/episodes/S4-E8-Anton-Root-on-the-State-of-the-Voluntary-Carbon-Market-e3n7jvj TL;DR Anton Root (AlliedOffsets) says weighted-average VCM credit price roughly doubled from ~$3 to ~$7/t since early 2024 — useful data point, driven by mix shift not scarcity. ~1.6 Gt of issued-but-unretired credits sitting in registries, growing ~200 Mt/year. That’s ~8 years of demand overhang. Underrated structural problem. CDR-specific read: >1,000 sellers historically, only ~800 all-time buyers of engineered removals. Consolidation is here; offtake-less projects are in trouble. CCP-tagged issuances in H1 2026 (~18 Mt) nearly matched all of 2022+2023 combined. Integrity signal is real in the numbers, not just the marketing. Asia overtook Europe as largest source of new credit demand last year. Tencent flagged as a high-quality-removals buyer. Jay Tipton hosts AlliedOffsets co-founder Anton Root for a data-heavy read on the voluntary carbon market. It’s mostly VCM-wide, but there’s a meaty CDR segment on seller/buyer imbalance, pricing, and offtake dynamics that’s worth an hour if you’re on the supply or buyer side of durable removals. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 10 Se. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/canadas-next-industrial-play-a-new TL;DR Mercer’s Peace River pulp mill is developing a BECCS project with Svante that could store ~500,000 tonnes CO2/year — FID still ~a year out. Alberta’s stack (15 km to sequestration, CCUS ITC + provincial top-up, permitting precedent) is doing real work here — worth noting for site selection debates. Mercer wants BECCS bumped to the 60% ITC tier that DAC gets, plus a CDR price floor. Legitimate ask, but “we need a backstop” tells you unit economics don’t yet close on voluntary demand alone. Meadow Lake’s Northstar (majority Indigenous-owned, 90 kt/yr, 15-year 626 kt Microsoft offtake) is the most structurally interesting BECCS deal in Canada right now. Sheila Harrison’s point lands: without a viable primary forest sector, there’s no host infrastructure for pulp-mill BECCS. Fibre security is a CDR risk factor, not just a forestry one. Na’im Merchant’s second episode in the Canada’s Next Industrial Play miniseries goes into the forest products sector with three guests: Bill Adams (CSO, Mercer International), Sheila Harrison (VP Policy, Alberta Forest Products Association), and Tina Rasmussen (CBO, MLTC Industrial Investments). The episode is essentially a pulp-mill BECCS deep dive with a policy and Indigenous-ownership wrapper. Episode link. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 16 Se. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/live-from-brussels-the-carbon-removal-policy-summit-with-rod TL;DR Live from Carbon Gap’s first Carbon Removal Policy Summit in Brussels — four governance levels (international, EU, national, local) as the frame. EU “Buyers Club” is now the “Buyers Coalition” — open, not membership-based — and being positioned as a test ground for a future Emissions Trading System purchasing facility, possibly by 2029. Carbon Gap dropped a Policy Levers Library (~165 levers) plus a forthcoming Foundations of Carbon Removal book. Genuinely useful reference infrastructure if it lands as demoed. Real unresolved problem surfaced: Carbon Removal Certification Framework credits don’t yet map to national greenhouse gas inventories under IPCC methods. Without that link, Member State targets can’t pull on CRCF supply. Achim Steiner’s line — removals concentrated in few buyers, few countries, few technologies — is the honest diagnostic of where European durable carbon dioxide removal (CDR) actually sits. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme record live from Brussels across two days of Carbon Gap’s inaugural Carbon Removal Policy Summit, with a mid-day sit-down with Carbon Gap policy director Rodica Avornic. The episode is a running commentary on what got said on stage — Buyers Coalition futures, ETS integration guardrails, post-2030 Member State targets, and the awkward plumbing between CRCF credits and national inventories. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 17 Se. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/Which-story-is-carbon-dioxide-removal-actually-in-w-Rudy-Krehbiel-of-EcoEngineers-e3ovfja TL;DR Krehbiel argues CDR is still at the innovator stage, not in a hype-cycle trough — useful reframing if you buy his diffusion-curve lens. Numbers cited: <50Mt contracted, ~2Mt delivered, Microsoft ~78% of disclosed volume, median non-Microsoft biochar purchase <100t. Consistent with public CDR.fyi data. Core argument: CDR is a public good with diffuse, delayed, non-excludable benefits — venture-scale expectations may be the wrong operating system for building it. Worth chewing on. Three-layer de-risking frame (financial / buyer / societal) is the most portable takeaway for operators. Long detour into Whig-theory-of-history, AfD, and Charlie Kaufman films — signal-to-ramble ratio is not great. Skim-friendly. Ross Kenyon hosts EcoEngineers’ Rudy Krehbiel for a meandering two-hour conversation about which narratives the CDR industry is unconsciously operating inside — diffusion curves, Moore’s Law analogies, compliance-market inevitability — and which ones will not survive contact with 2026 politics. Episode link. It is more meta than technical, but Krehbiel earns his airtime. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Bite-Size Climate Tech, originally published Sun, 30 Au. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lydiaclinzi/episodes/Brineworks-From-Magic-Box-to-Upgraded-Suit--CO--H-for-E-Fuels-e3o34o3 TL;DR Brineworks pivoted from direct ocean capture to a closed-loop land-based system using purchased salt + reverse-osmosis water. Bigger addressable market, but loses the “ocean is free feedstock” story. Co-produces CO₂ and hydrogen from one electrochemical pH-swing box — pitched as the differentiator vs. other electrochemical direct air capture players optimizing purely for energy efficiency. Cost targets: sub-$200/t CO₂ by 2030, near $100/t by 2035. Aggressive but in the same range peers are quoting. Explicitly designed for intermittent operation (20-50% capacity factor) on cheap solar/wind — a design choice worth taking seriously. Target customer is e-fuel project developers, not carbon removal buyers. This is really a feedstock company now, not a durable removal company. Lydia Clinzi hosts Joel Parman, CTO and co-founder of Brineworks, returning to Bite-Size Climate Tech two years after his first appearance. The episode covers Brineworks’ pivot from direct ocean capture to a land-based closed-loop electrochemical system that co-produces CO₂ and green hydrogen for synthetic fuels. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Studio Energie, originally published Tue, 08 Se. Listen: https://soundcloud.com/studio-energie/gijsbrecht-gunter-yara-over-de-businesscase-van-nederlandse-co2-in-de-noorse-bodem TL;DR First cross-border CCS chain in the world went live: 800 kt/yr CO2 from Yara Sluiskil shipped to Northern Lights in Norway, 15-year contract, ~12 Mt total. Yara’s site director admits on-record the project doesn’t pencil at current ETS (~€85/t); needs a premium plus avoided carbon costs to close. Netherlands scrapping its national CO2 surcharge on top of ETS actively worsens the business case for the front-runner — Gunter says the FID likely wouldn’t be taken today under current conditions. Useful concrete cost benchmark: RED III-compliant green hydrogen for their ammonia would imply ~€15,000 per ton CO2 avoided. Damning number, first time I’ve seen it stated this cleanly. CAPEX ~€200M on Yara’s side; contract with Northern Lights “a multiple” of that. Not disclosed further. Remco de Boer (Studio Energie) interviews Gijsbrecht Gunter, director at Yara Sluiskil, on opening day of the first cross-border CCS chain — Dutch ammonia CO2 liquefied, shipped 800 km, injected under the Norwegian seabed via Northern Lights. In Dutch. The conversation is unusually candid about the economics, which is why it’s worth an hour. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Tue, 08 Se. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/mep-peter-liese-the-rapporteurs-take-on-removals-in-the-eu TL;DR Liese wants Parliament to pull removals integration forward to 2028, not the Commission’s 2031 — big signal for offtake timing. He argues for scrapping the cap on removal volumes in the ETS; if costs fall like solar did, why limit uptake. Bold, will meet resistance. Wants biochar added to eligible methods alongside DACCS and BECCS, capped ~20% max. First MEP I’ve heard commit to this on record. If the CDR-cost gap is bigger than the Commission modeled, his fix is to issue more allowances to fund the shortfall. Novel mechanism. Backs a strong link to the CRCF and wants removals inside the international-credits envelope — Namibia cement plant DACCS as concrete example. Hosts Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme get Peter Liese — the European People’s Party MEP who is Parliament’s rapporteur on the current EU ETS (Emissions Trading System) revision — on the record days before his draft report drops on 11 September 2026. The conversation is a near-exhaustive walk through what Parliament’s amendments to the Commission’s July 2026 removals-in-ETS proposal could look like. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 03 Se. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/Removals--avoidances--and-what-Wendell-Berry-thought-of-making-tonnes-fungible-e3o9d89 TL;DR Ross Kenyon’s solo reflection on Wendell Berry’s death, wrapped around an essay he wrote for Removr on removals vs. avoidances in one portfolio. Mea culpa: Nori tried to build a “better” registry from scratch; Kenyon now says the convergence of legacy registry designs is structural, not a willpower failure. Useful concession. Argues durable CDR’s cultural separatism from the broader voluntary carbon market has become a liability, not a moat. Fair, and increasingly the consensus. Would pick rainforest protection over carbon removal if forced to choose. Provocative framing, thinly defended. Name-checks Martin Freimüller (Octavia) and Robert Höglund as CDR-side voices moving toward portfolio thinking. Signal for where the discourse is drifting. Ross Kenyon, Nori cofounder and long-running host of Reversing Climate Change, delivers a solo episode (link) that pairs an obituary for Wendell Berry with a piece he wrote for the Removr registry on why durable removals and avoidances belong in the same portfolio conversation. It’s part personal essay, part market commentary — you’ll get more of the former than the latter. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 01 Se. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.com/p/11-somebody-here-needs-to-say-this TL;DR Anonymous submitter argues artisanal biochar gets a scrutiny pass that industrial projects don’t — and that gap is where bad actors are hiding. Sharp, overdue take. Specific red flag: daily production logs on public registries showing identical output across monsoon and dry season. Concrete, checkable, damning if true. dMRV (digital measurement, reporting, verification) providers check data completeness/format, not plausibility against public rainfall records. That’s a real registry gap. Water-for-quench competing with irrigation water in rain-scarce regions — a farmer-cost story the “farmer-first” crowd doesn’t tell. First ~15 minutes is Ross’s AI-doom monologue. Skip to the submission unless you want that too. Ross Kenyon’s Climate Workers Anonymous publishes anonymous submissions from climate workers. This episode’s submission is a pointed critique of artisanal biochar carbon credits from someone who’s clearly been reading registry data. The first ~15 minutes is Ross editorializing about artificial general intelligence and Stripe’s “singularity is here” investor memo — you can skip to the submission without loss. ...