Reversing-Climate-Change

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 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 Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 16 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/408-The-impossible-taxonomy-of-carbon-dioxide-removal-e3m54kn TL;DR Solo episode: host Ross Kenyon reads his own Substack essay arguing that a “perfect” carbon-credit taxonomy wouldn’t meaningfully unblock climate action. Useful contrarian framing for a taxonomy-obsessed field. Core mechanism: categories like avoidance/removal/legacy fray at the edges immediately, yet practitioners communicate fine anyway — Wittgenstein’s “game” problem plus Polanyi’s tacit knowledge. His diagnosis: the real blockers are narrative and how humans handle the discount rate, not categorization gaps. Honest as a corrective, overstated where taxonomy is regulatory infrastructure. No guest, no numbers, no market data. This is a philosophy essay read aloud, not an episode you mine for figures. He explicitly doesn’t dismiss taxonomy work — “valuable work for some purposes” — he just demotes it from the critical path. Ross Kenyon goes solo on episode 408 of Reversing Climate Change, reading an essay he published on Substack, The Impossible Taxonomy of Carbon Dioxide Removal. No guest, no interview — just Kenyon working through whether the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) field’s endless categorization projects actually matter. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 25 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/405-Does-Managed-MRV-imply-the-existence-of-Unmanaged-MRV--w-Varsha-Ramesh-Walsh--Offstream-e3l8cev TL;DR Offstream is repositioning from a DMRV (digital monitoring, reporting, verification) software vendor to “Managed measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)” — they do the work, not just provide a dashboard. Useful naming of an under-articulated category. Walsh’s claim: the head-of-MRV in-house hire is often more expensive than outsourcing the whole function. Plausible for small biomass developers, untested at scale. Most operational data in carbon projects still passes through a human at some point — bills of lading, odometer photos, clipboard entries. Honest admission worth hearing from a vendor. Thesis: every owner of a physical asset eventually becomes a carbon project developer. Big swing; light on the path to get there. Long surveillance-capitalism tangent eats ~20% of the runtime. Skippable. Ross Kenyon hosts Varsha Ramesh Walsh, cofounder/CEO of Offstream, on episode 405 to explain why Offstream stopped trying to be pure software and embraced what Walsh calls “Managed MRV” — a services-plus-platform model targeting biomass-based durable CDR developers (biochar, lumber mills with waste streams) and increasingly 48E ITC tax-credit work. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 18 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/404-When-will-insetting-work-for-carbon-dioxide-removal-w-Tom-Mills--Stripe-Climate-Fellow-former-e3kugqp TL;DR Tom Mills (ex-Stripe Climate Fellow, now at Mati Carbon) argues insetting durable CDR into ag supply chains is harder than the industry assumes — useful reality check. Coffee is the first ag value chain where biochar insetting actually pencils, driven by EUDR pressure, unmixed supply chains, and willing-to-pay CPGs. Plausible. GHG Protocol forces removals onto a separate ledger from scope 3 reductions — a structural block on insetting demand that’s underdiscussed. Important. “Supply shed” remains undefined; practitioners are setting norms by just doing it. Honest, slightly alarming. Real insetting business model = stacking non-carbon benefits (yield, pesticide residue, nitrate leaching, biofortification), not selling the ton. Worth the hour for value-chain folks. Ross Kenyon hosts Tom Mills — former Stripe Climate Fellow, now at enhanced rock weathering developer Mati Carbon (XPRIZE Carbon Removal grand prize winner) — on episode 404 of Reversing Climate Change. Mills spent his fellowship year on a single question: when does embedding biochar and enhanced rock weathering into Global South ag supply chains actually work? The honest answer is “not yet, and here’s why.” ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 11 Ju. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/403-How-to-get-max-value-from-carbon-market-consultantsw-David-LaGreca--EcoEngineers-e3kkn5k TL;DR When to call a consultant: as soon as you have a concept beyond a napkin sketch — useful framing, mostly self-serving but honest about it. Claim: a 1-6 month consulting engagement often beats hiring a $150-200k FTE for methodology, LCA, registry selection work. Plausible for early-stage developers. EcoEngineers’ workload has shifted from drafting new CDR methodologies (2022-2023 peak) to advising large energy/corporate entrants and operating projects. Useful market-temperature signal. Rule of thumb: AI tooling gets you ~70% of the way on methodology drafting; the last 30% is where expertise compounds. First time I’ve heard it quantified that way. Registry choice (Puro vs. Isometric vs. Rainbow vs. others) is undersold as a strategic decision that determines credit volume, verification cadence, and labeling eligibility. Episode link. Ross Kenyon hosts David LaGreca of EcoEngineers — a sponsor of the show, which Ross discloses repeatedly — for an hour on how durable-CDR developers should actually engage advisory firms. The episode is half practical (hire vs. contract math, when to fire a consultant) and half industry-state observation from someone who’s touched roughly 10 CDR protocols across 7-8 mechanisms. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Fri, 15 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/399-How-to-Pitch-Terraset-and-other-carbon-removal-buyersw-Taylor-Insley--Terraset-e3jd1gr TL;DR Taylor Insley (Terraset) says ~75% of developer interactions at Carbon Unbound are bad pitches — ambush style, no social grace. Believable and useful. Terraset claims 6-8x leverage per dollar deployed via its revolving fund model. First time I’ve seen that ratio cited publicly for them. Terraset gets ~450 projects in its intake pipeline against a team of three. Diligence bandwidth is the binding constraint, not capital appetite. Insley’s actual advice: relationship-building beats first-impression perfection; she discounts bad early pitches if the project matures. Ross’s “minor leagues” framing — Milky Wire/Terraset before Frontier/Microsoft — is the most operationally useful frame in the episode. Episode link. Ross Kenyon interviews Taylor Insley, Director of Strategic Growth at Terraset, the tax-deductible philanthropic CDR buyer. The episode is essentially a sales-craft conversation for developers pitching small-to-mid catalytic buyers, anchored on a Carbon Unbound Vancouver panel Insley did earlier this year. There’s also a long Ross monologue on status and in-group dynamics that you can safely skip. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 21 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/400-What-kind-of-leader-does-my-CDR-company-need-me-to-be-w-Julia-Reichelstein--Vaulted-Deep-e3jiss8 TL;DR Vaulted Deep is on track for ~50,000 tonnes of durable removal this year, up from 25,000 tonnes cumulative to date — credible scale-up for a non-biochar developer. Reichelstein frames Vaulted as a waste management company first, CDR second; gets paid on the disposal side, which sidesteps biomass-competition risk entirely. The Microsoft ~5M-tonne offtake (signed 2024) underwrites site development through ~2040 — the deal that turned them from operator into builder. Most of the conversation is leadership philosophy, not technical. Useful if you’re a founder; thinner if you came for measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) or geology specifics. Spin-out mechanics from Advantek get a rare honest treatment — including why venture-backed spin-outs are scarce. Ross Kenyon hosts Julia Reichelstein, co-founder and CEO of Vaulted Deep, for a wide-ranging conversation that’s roughly one-third Vaulted operations and two-thirds founder psychology. If you’ve heard Reichelstein on the technical circuit before, this is the softer cut — useful for understanding how she thinks, less useful if you want to interrogate the deep-well injection thesis. ...

Take on a podcast episode from Reversing Climate Change, originally published Thu, 07 Ma. Listen: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/reversingclimatechange/episodes/398-Scientists-vs--Engineers---the-Commercial-Pressure-on-Carbon-Dioxide-Removalw-Erica-Dorr--Samara-Vantil--Rainbow-e3j0jq0 TL;DR Rainbow’s head of science Erica Dorr and certification engineer Samara Vantil reframe the science-vs-engineering split as a false binary; both do applied work daily. The real gap is technical-vs-commercial. Useful framing for anyone who’s watched a salesperson promise a methodology change on a call. Concrete example: biochar lab samples cost ~€600 to ship Africa→Europe. That’s the kind of number that should anchor measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV) requirement-setting. Defense of Charm’s “cut scope” posture as courage, not laziness — diminishing returns on the last sample are real and worth saying out loud. When project developers can’t deliver a data point, Rainbow’s default is a conservative discount factor, not rejection. Worth knowing if you’re a buyer reading their credits. Ross Kenyon hosts Erica Dorr (head of science) and Samara Vantil (environmental engineer, certification) of Rainbow, the carbon removal standard and registry. The episode is a follow-up to two essays Kenyon wrote for Rainbow on whether durable CDR needs more field engineers or more scientists, and lands somewhere more interesting than either piece: the science/engineering line is fuzzy, and the harder boundary is between technical teams and commercial. ...