Podcast-Take

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. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 09 Au. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/is-enhanced-rock-weathering-ready-for-scale-with-dirk-paessl TL;DR Solid-phase and aqueous-phase MRV on the same plot can disagree by orders of magnitude — tons vs kilos of CDR. Not a rounding error. Carbon Drawdown Initiative’s 300-litre buckets have shown zero enhanced-weathering signal after 1,400 days on Furt soil. Publishing the null result matters. ~20,000 credits certified across three geographies via three different solid-phase methods, while Verra declines to write a methodology. That gap is the story. Carbon Plan’s Lithos critique implies ~8.3 tCO₂/ha/yr vs a new Suhrhoff et al. median of ~0.8. 10× is not a discount factor, it’s a different claim. Dirk won’t name a year for ETS-readiness. Mel won’t either. Take that seriously. Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart host Dirk Paessler (Carbon Drawdown Initiative) and geochemist Mel Murphy for a deep-dive on whether enhanced rock weathering (ERW) measurement is anywhere near the rigour policy frameworks like the EU Emissions Trading System or the Carbon Removal Certification Framework will demand. The episode runs long by the show’s standards and earns it. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 04 Au. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.com/p/7-i-should-have-used-my-retirement TL;DR Anonymous submissions podcast; three short letters from CDR workers read aloud. Total runtime under 5 minutes. Submission 1: venture capital’s 10-year return horizon doesn’t fit hard-tech durable carbon dioxide removal timelines. Familiar critique, stated cleanly. Submission 2: pushback on the “novel CDR steals from proven climate tech” framing — argues voluntary markets are doing exactly what they’re supposed to. Submission 3: a supplier who cleared every methodology hurdle since 2021 and can’t sell credits on the spot market. Bitter, and worth hearing. Not analysis, not reporting — it’s a vibes check on practitioner morale in mid-2026. Useful as a temperature reading, not as data. Ross Kenyon’s Climate Workers Anonymous is a curated read-aloud of anonymous, unverified submissions from people working in climate. Episode 7 pulls three that all land on the same nerve: the mismatch between what CDR practitioners were told the market would do and what it’s actually doing in 2026. Under five minutes, no guest, no debate — just the letters. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Wed, 05 Au. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-that-utilities-actually TL;DR CREW Carbon doses calcium carbonate into wastewater bioreactors, converting microbe-generated CO2 into stable bicarbonate — durable removal inside a closed, metered system. Just signed a Microsoft offtake for up to 23,602 durable removal units; total book now >$40M with JPMorgan, Google, Autodesk, Stripe/Frontier. Pitch to utilities is capex deferral + easier nitrogen/phosphorus compliance — CDR revenue is upside, not the core sell. Useful framing. measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) story leans on the closed reactor: mass-balance and effluent chemistry, not open-ocean modeling. Materially stronger than marine ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) on measurement. Regulated-utility sales cycles are the real bottleneck, not chemistry. Worth taking seriously. The Carbon Curve’s Na’im Merchant hosts Joachim Katchinoff, CEO of CREW Carbon, on turning municipal wastewater treatment plants into alkalinity-enhancement sites. The episode was taped before CREW’s Microsoft deal dropped, so the show notes carry the news; the conversation itself is about mechanism, MRV, and how you actually sell CDR into a regulated utility. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Sun, 02 Au. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/inside-the-framework-for-residual-emissions-with-injy-johnst TL;DR Residual emissions has no shared definition — the term drifted from IPCC modeling into corporate net-zero plans without translation. Useful framing. Johnstone insists “hard-to-abate” (technological limit) ≠ “residual” (broader, includes demand-side and normative choices). Overdue distinction. Proposes three buckets: near-term abatable now, medium-term (2040) plausible tech, long-term (2050) speculative — with 5-year reassessment. Warns the medium-term bucket is where optimism bias silently shrinks today’s carbon removal (CDR) demand. This is the real signal. Compares SBTi v2 and draft ISO net-zero standards: ISO handles residuals with more specificity, SBTi punts implementation into future decades. Sebastian Manhart and Eve Tamme host Dr. Injy Johnstone (Oxford Net Zero) to unpack her Drax-funded report What Are Residual Emissions? — a term everyone uses in net-zero pathways and almost nobody defines the same way. The episode is a 30-minute methodological conversation, not a market update. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 30 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/410-removes-new-Latin-American-carbon-dioxide-removal-accelerator-programw-Hans-Westerhof--Marian-Krger-e3mm7bh TL;DR remove launches a Latin America accelerator cohort with Milkywire funding, extending their Global South work beyond India and Africa. Concrete gap-filling, not vaporware. Central thesis: LATAM developers get shut out of buyer/investor mindshare by availability bias — the founders who can’t afford Carbon Unbounded don’t get RFPs. Fair diagnosis. Startups in the Global South ship biochar and soil samples to Europe/North America for lab analysis. Underrated bottleneck for enhanced rock weathering and biochar scale. remove is doubling down on non-credit revenue diversification — biochar into fertilizer, biocoal as pulverized-coal-injection substitute in steel. Explicitly fine with it not counting as carbon removal. Krüger’s counter-cyclical pitch: right now is actually a decent time to found a direct air capture company if your first commercial plant lines up with a 2030 compliance regime. Ross Kenyon hosts remove co-founders Hans Westerhof and Marian Krüger to announce a Latin American accelerator cohort, launching applications now with a fall 2026 kickoff, funded by Milkywire. The conversation is half program pitch, half a candid read on where Global South carbon dioxide removal (CDR) actually gets stuck — buyer psychology, lab infrastructure, and the increasingly obvious limits of a voluntary-credits-only business model. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Plan Sea: Ocean Interventions to Address Climate Change, originally published Thu, 28 Ma. Listen: <> TL;DR Ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE) scale-up talk is “far too premature” per Ken Paul; local knowledge should shape monitoring design first. Useful pressure on the field’s pacing. Fawn Sharp cites a Carbon to Sea-commissioned figure: ~$1T marine CDR value and 200,000 jobs by 2050. Advocacy number — I haven’t seen it independently sourced. Sovereignty-as-regulatory-arbitrage: in 2008, tribal nations could access Kyoto markets ($32/t) that US companies couldn’t ($2–3/t domestic). First time I’ve heard this mechanism on a podcast. Concrete partnership asks: direct capital access to Indigenous communities, impact benefit agreements, revenue sharing on mCDR in unceded territories — not just consultation. “Two-Eyed Seeing” framing: integrate Indigenous and Western methodologies up front, not run them in parallel and hope they converge. This episode of Plan Sea was recorded live at Carbon to Sea’s 2026 annual convening in Halifax, with Anna Madlener and Danny Głowacki hosting three Indigenous leaders: Fawn Sharp (five-term Quinault Nation president, former National Congress of American Indians president), Ken Paul (Wolastoqey Nation, former national fisheries director at the Assembly of First Nations), and Francesca Hillery (Tribal Carbon Solutions, Round Valley Tribes). The subject is how Indigenous knowledge systems and tribal sovereignty intersect with OAE development. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Mon, 27 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/the-eu-ets-scoop-verdict-our-honest-take-on-brussels-proposa TL;DR Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart disagree on whether the EU ETS removals proposal is a compliance market or a purchasing programme funded by one. The distinction shapes everything downstream. The cost assumptions look broken: €38/t transport and storage for bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS), €18/t for direct air capture (DAC). Developers privately say off by 2x+. The 250 Mt figure: Commission says target, proposal text reads more like an auction commitment. The rapporteurs will have to nail this down. Contingency asymmetry: non-delivered removals after allowances are auctioned have no backstop — unlike international credits, which trigger linear reduction factor adjustment. Biochar praised in the impact assessment, absent from the proposal. Nature-based solutions got a review clause; biochar didn’t. Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart use this debrief episode of The CDR Policy Scoop to say what they couldn’t in their earlier interview with the Commission’s Mette Quinn: their unfiltered read of Brussels’ proposal to bring carbon removals into the EU Emissions Trading System (ETS). It’s two policy insiders arguing productively, which is more useful than either of their LinkedIn posts alone. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Carbon Removal Newsroom, originally published Tue, 21 Ju. Listen: https://climateworkersanonymous.substack.com/p/5-maybe-cdr-is-a-good-decision-that TL;DR Not an interview: two anonymous written submissions from CDR practitioners, read aloud by curator Ross Kenyon. Sentiment data, not market data. Submission one names the current mood — Microsoft pausing, buyer scarcity, VC pullback, quiet consolidation — then argues second-time founders re-entering is a real signal. Submission two calls for cutting 2050 novel-CDR targets to 2–3 gigatons and abandoning the “compensate for residuals” framing entirely. Provocative, worth arguing with. The “reverse legacy damage, don’t offset ongoing emissions” reframe is the most substantive idea here — it has real implications for credit-market design. Twenty minutes, no numbers you can cite in a memo, but an unusually honest read on practitioner psychology. Climate Workers Anonymous #5 is not a normal podcast episode. Ross Kenyon (formerly of Nori and Carbon Removal Newsroom) curates anonymous submissions from climate workers, PostSecret-style, and this installment carries two longer analytical pieces from people evidently inside carbon dioxide removal. There’s no guest, no dataset — just what practitioners will say when their names aren’t attached. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The CDR Policy Scoop, originally published Wed, 22 Ju. Listen: https://shows.acast.com/the-cdr-policy-scoop/episodes/removals-enters-the-eu-ets-what-brussels-actually-proposes-w TL;DR The European Commission confirms a commitment to buy 250 Mt of permanent, domestic removals (bioenergy with carbon capture / direct air capture) for the EU Emissions Trading System — with a 2034 review clause. Commission cost modeling assumes no national subsidies layered on top. Given Nordic BECCS economics today, that looks optimistic. ETS operators can use certified removals for their own compliance from 2031 — no volume cap beyond deduction from the 250 Mt. Pay-on-delivery is the default, but Quinn signals openness to prepayment and offtake structures via Innovation/Modernisation Fund mechanics. Details unwritten. Commission’s own supply projection: ~48 Mt/year by 2040. The gap to the headline target is the real story. Eve Tamme and Sebastian Manhart got Mette Quinn — Deputy Director for Carbon Markets and Clean Mobility at DG CLIMA, and the official who led the ETS revision — on The CDR Policy Scoop five days after the Commission published the proposal. This is the closest thing to primary-source commentary you’ll get on the removals provisions right now. ...