The-Carbon-Curve

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 Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 25 Ju. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-is-not-one-thing TL;DR Counteract has screened 1,000+ CDR companies, invested in 27 — one of the widest dealflow vantage points in the sector. That alone justifies the listen. Core thesis: carbon removal is a category, not a pathway, so no single financing model fits — CREW’s small-ticket wastewater units vs. big DAC infrastructure need entirely different capital. Most striking claim: e-SAF costs $1,000+/t CO2 abated vs. $200–300/t durable removal, so aviation mandates should accommodate a removal share. Useful framing for policy fights. “Policy is expectation management” — the landfill tax analogy for how compliance signals unlock private capital. Not new, but well argued. Counteract is pivoting from early-stage venture to a “delivery fund” for first commercial projects. Worth watching who they raise it with. Na’im Merchant hosts Richard Barker, partner at Counteract, the 2021-vintage early-stage fund dedicated to carbon removal, on The Carbon Curve. The episode is an investor’s-eye tour of how capital actually flows into CDR (carbon dioxide removal) right now — pathway by pathway, with biomethane as the cautionary historical parallel. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 26 Fe. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/policy-wins-and-growing-pains-as TL;DR FY26 appropriations gave durable CDR (carbon dioxide removal) real wins: $45M for the DOE purchase prize, $70M+ for RD&D, despite the President’s budget zeroing them out. Genuinely surprising. DAC (direct air capture) Hubs took a hit: $1B of remaining funds repurposed to small modular reactors, leaving ~$800M. Obligated grants untouched. 1 million tons delivered milestone is mostly biochar — Peter Minor frames the concentration as a warning sign, not a victory lap. Sharp framing. Consolidation (Terradot/Ion) read as maturity, not panic — scale matters more in CDR than most industries for project finance and offtake credibility. Gianna Amador: per-ton price is the wrong KPI in the prove-and-learn era. Worth chewing on. Naim Merchant kicks off a new “Removers Roundtable” format on The Carbon Curve with Gianna Amador (Carbon Removal Alliance), Erin Burns (Carbon180), and Peter Minor (Absolute Climate). The hour is a US-centric stocktake: where federal CDR policy actually landed a year into the new administration, what the consolidation wave means, and whether the field’s talent and narrative survive the right-sizing. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 11 Ju. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/is-carbon-removal-stronger-than-the TL;DR Three Toronto operators (Amplify, Mangrove, CarbonRun) argue the durable-CDR vibes are worse than the fundamentals — useful corrective if you’ve been doom-scrolling. Venture was the wrong instrument for an infrastructure sector; the “missing middle” between VC and big-bank project finance is the real bottleneck. Accurate diagnosis, no easy fix offered. CarbonRun’s first verified river alkalinity issuances exposed how optimistic pre-audit limestone-to-feedstock ratios were. First time I’ve heard an operator say this out loud. 1,100+ permanent CDR companies counted across public lists — Vlaar predicts consolidation via acqui-hire, not a clean die-off. Plausible. Affordability framing in government budgets is the under-discussed existential risk for compliance demand. Worth taking seriously. Na’im Merchant’s Toronto Climate Week wrap puts Trish Nixon (Amplify Capital), Brandon Vlaar (Mangrove Systems), and Luke Connell (CarbonRun) in one room to take stock of durable CDR a year after the US political shift. It’s a finance/measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV)/supplier triangle, recorded live, and unusually candid about what isn’t working. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Wed, 25 Ma. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/why-carbon-removal-needs-a-new-story TL;DR Höglund argues CDR should shift from “speed and scale” to “prove and learn”: drive down costs, nail measurement, reporting, and verification (MRV), demonstrate at relevant scale. Useful reframing. Voluntary demand likely exceeds compliance demand through ~2040. EU ETS + UK ETS maybe a couple hundred million tons total by mid-2030s. First time I’ve seen the number stated that bluntly. Aviation and shipping legislation (ReFuelEU, FuelEU Maritime) effectively locks CDR out as a compliance pathway. Advocacy gap, not science gap. “Last resort” framing was a self-own. CDR is rate-limited, not stock-limited — building capacity today doesn’t deplete future capacity. High-profit/low-emission buyers (tech, finance) sustain the beachhead market; heavy industry won’t buy voluntarily and shouldn’t be expected to. Reflects reality, not aspiration. The Carbon Curve, Ep. 62 — Na’im Merchant interviews Robert Höglund (Milkywire, CDR.fyi co-founder, Marginal Carbon) for a state-of-the-sector check-in. The conversation is essentially Höglund’s argument for retiring the “we need 6–10 Gt by 2050, scale now” narrative and replacing it with a more sober “prove the methods, drop the costs, serve future decision-makers a credible menu” frame. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 16 Ap. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/seven-buyers-in-a-trench-coat TL;DR Microsoft pausing new durable CDR purchases isn’t the story — the story is they were ~80-90% of the market to begin with. Correct framing. Governments committed $45M to CDR purchases, spent ~$0; private sector spent $10.5B. Striking number, worth citing. Jack’s case: voluntary buying was always a house of cards; policy has to take over. Hard to argue with at this point. Defense of enhanced oil recovery as a legitimate scaling pathway for direct air capture. Will annoy some, but the argument is coherent. Dream policy: low-carbon-intensity product standard embedded in trade, with CDR compliance pathways. Interesting, underdeveloped here. Naim Merchant interviews Jack Andreasen Cavanaugh, who runs the Carbon Management Program at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy and previously led carbon management policy at Breakthrough Energy. The episode is a reaction to Heatmap’s reporting that Microsoft is pausing new durable carbon removal purchases, and Cavanaugh’s weekend piece arguing the real failure is governmental, not corporate. It’s the cleanest articulation I’ve heard of “the voluntary market was always structurally fragile” — read the episode post if you don’t have an hour. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 30 Ap. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-is-stuck-in-low-earth TL;DR Friedmann argues CDR 1.0 built the scaffolding (registries, raters, taxonomy) but isn’t structured to close commercial deals — reframing, not bashing. Five pillars to unlock CDR 2.0: technical readiness, project assurance, standardization, bankability, transactional ease. Useful checklist, light on novelty individually but coherent together. Headline claim: deals die at the CFO, not the CSO. Risk management, not price, is the binding constraint. Rings true with what buyers actually say. Pointed critique: 5,000-ton pilots don’t interest 100kt-scale buyers like Microsoft/JPM/Airbus. Sector is still over-indexed on first-of-a-kind storytelling. Intro segment announces the Quebec Surficial Mineralization Hub at Thetford Mines — 800Mt tailings, Frontier RFP open through May 22, 2026. Naim Merchant hosts Julio Friedmann (Chief Scientist, Carbon Direct) to walk through Carbon Direct’s new “CDR 2.0: Five Pillars of Successful Project Deployment and Delivery” report. The episode is essentially a guided tour of why durable carbon removal deal flow has stalled and what specifically needs to change at the buyer-procurement-bank interface. There’s also a 4-minute opening from Merchant announcing the Quebec Surficial Mineralization Hub partnership between Carbon Removal Canada, Frontier, and Thetford Mines. ...

Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 30 Ap. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/carbon-removal-is-stuck-in-low-earth Naim Merchant hosts Julio Friedmann, Chief Scientist at Carbon Direct, to unpack the firm’s new “CDR 2.0” report. The thesis: durable carbon removal has reached “low Earth orbit” — markets, registries, raters, a buyers coalition all exist — but the next stage requires a different operating model. Friedmann lays out five pillars: technical readiness, project assurance, standardization, bankability, and transactional ease. ...