You're listening to the reversing climate change,
podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace.
This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs
developing solutions to climate change.
Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change podcast
with Nori. I'm Ross.
Kenny and I'm one of the cofounders of nori and the
creative editor there and we are a carbon removal Marketplace
based in Seattle. Did.
I already say that? Siobhan, did I say that twice?
No, this is The first time here, alerting our listeners, that's
Siobhan Montoya, lavender from thanks a ton and Nori's mean
crew a shiv hey everybody. All right, apologies to our
wonderful guests sample to Kenan who's calling in with us from
Finland today and he is the CEO of see fix and he's going to be
talking to us today about first generation and second
generation, direct are capture, which is a topic.
I want to sink my teeth into because I think I might Might be
stuck in first gen and I might be stuck with all the
preconceived notions I have about first-gen Dak and what it
means and what it's going to look like.
And so I'm excited to hear about what the future is going to look
like, let's be forward facing here.
Before we start that Samba as I want to poke at that because you
people even like that, I imagine.
If you're a quote-unquote, first gen, doc supplier, you're
probably like simply pejorative, right?
It's framing them as the old way.
The Old Guard, they're out of touch.
They're doing technology is an appropriately scaled.
So, is this even a model that you like using?
Or I guess if your 2nd gen you probably do you like it?
Well, you know, you know, was have to have some Edge, you
know, to you. People to people, you know,
about on the, on the fences. But it's not about that and
obviously the whole space and the whole industry.
So young and is moving so fast that people are not not like
ready for second generation at the generate.
If there are genuine accommodate in a leapfrog, you you're going
to be shaking your head off my lawn, you know.
And we haven't really, really even you know, seeing what the
first chain can do so. So, you know, but you know, I
guess it's just a, it's a marketing term.
But but also, you know, it It's a real term in the sense that I
think second generation is often when, you know you've come
across, I mean, you've solved and come, you know, kind of
gotten around some of the, you know, early stage and first
generation problems and and yeah, I think we have, I think
we have done in a lot of areas. So so I think it's Justified,
you know, it's I think our listeners are pretty familiar
with the term. Direct their capture but just
Briefly summarize. What does it mean to be a direct
air capture method? What does that entail?
Well dark are capture means that you are removing CO2 or
capturing and from ambient air which is you know, like we know
it's a kind of a Dye Loop dilute solution are or mixed mixture
and and typically that is seen is just the removal component.
But I think You know, in the in the kind of, you know, second
generation, we're going to see that, you know, you can actually
integrate storage with with the direct Heir capture component.
So that's one of the things that that sets us apart from first
gen because it's actually comes with integrated storage.
Okay. Is that he has a necessary for
it to be second generations. And mostly about co-locating
removal and storage. Is that the main differentiator
between 1st and 2nd gen Wu? No, no.
I kind of touched it a little early, but the do now it's time.
Yeah. Well, I guess no.
Well dark are capture, you know, typically it's just produces a
gas of CO2, you know. And then, you know, you have to
a couple of, with some sort of a storage solution like, you know,
car fix or 44.0 one. Or something like that.
And and well, you know, here to, you know, it's kind of coupled
with the storage solution. But basically, I don't want to
go like too deep into stew to the kind of stuff that is
proprietary because, you know, we haven't filed by PR yet, but
I can talk in a broad level and basically, you have a, you have
a, you know, a process and, you know, it's what we do is similar
to, you know, Capture six, and have carbon, and a lot of
companies that build on chlor-alkali, you know, process
and splitting salt effectively. But this is not a, not an open
cycle process in the sense that we are not constantly taking in
new salt and, you know, splitting that.
And then, you know, let's say dump the alkaline component into
the ocean or, or, you know, in the desert somewhere or and then
the acid, you know, has to be neutralized somehow and or
disposed of So so this is basically we are, you know,
basically killing two birds with one stone and and the same
process, you know, that is you know, used to capture the carbon
dioxide from the air is used to dissolve magnesium out of rock,
you know? That is then combined, you know,
in this in this process and and the product is is a see that but
it's a crystalline magnesium carbonate.
And the biggest difference about this is that the reaction is
instantaneous. So it happens, you know, at the
plant immediately and it's you know, very easy to verify and
record and also Trace Krista material plus, you know I think
the business model is a little more flexible in the sense that
we're not just because the plan is actually putting out a
physical product. So for a million tonne, plant
per annum say for our, for the sake of argument, you put about
out two million tons of magnesium carbonate, a year,
which have half of the masses is carbon dioxide.
So, so, you know, you have a kind of a more diverse
Diversified business model, you're not just dependent on
selling CDR to the, you know, to the quite a few buyers that are
actually in the game at the moment.
Like that we all know like Shopify and Microsoft, and
stripe, or Frontier and So let's do this.
Wait, let me interrupt. Let's do a mental like a verbal
whiteboard. So if I was, if I was going to
be taught like what Doc is, what its history has been and where
it's going. So like the dark, the first
column on the left here of our verbal whiteboard would be
director capture that the machines we've all seen, right?
We've all seen pictures of these turbine like machines that are
sucking in air. We know they're going through
some sort of than it's just touching on a sorbent and then
it's being stored. I assume temporarily at Mozilla
Facilities prior to a more permanent storage which would be
injection underground or perhaps, it's being utilized.
What's going into materials? So am I correct in thinking?
That's kind of the DAC as we all know it like the original data
is saying we're going to suck it out with these turbines.
We're going to store it and then we're going to inject it or use
it. And so that deck and my mind is
still just getting off the ground.
Would you say that's? That's correct?
Like we're seeing you know, obviously climb works.
Is the OG in the industry and now we have carbon capture with
our new project bison coming out.
So is that all kind of the DAC as we know it?
And then what would separate second generation deck?
Is it this coupling is it the the idea of storing on fight
illustrate that a little bit for us.
Well yeah, all those things. I'm trying to hold them all in
my head but the yeah, I guess, you know, like, I'm not going
going to names or specific processes, but but let's say,
when you talk about sorban, for example, in the storm in is a
big, big thing of the whole equation because, you know, you
know, you might have to make the sorbent, you know,
synthetically, and it might take a lot of energy and might
actually have a, let's say by available nitrogen in it, and if
you were to Deploy. Something like that, a ticket on
the scale, then you would inevitably bleach a massive
amount of nitrogen into the environment, for example, which
is already a big problem because of eutrophication.
And then, I mean, based or bins, for example, they are, you have
to make them synthetically and they are one of the most energy
intensive intensive chemicals out there today.
So I I think, you know, alkaline and Earth alkali metals clearly.
Are, you know, an interesting option there, but at the same
time, being what I like to call myself, a seasoned process
engineer or, you know, having been involved there for a long
time. I wouldn't typically want to
have a process with. Let's see if I can avoid it, you
know, to have too much material. Solid material handling, for
example, because solid material handling is something that a is
expensive requires a lot of investment takes a lot of
hardware and it's prone to failure.
It's typically you know, if you look at a biomass plant, for
example, then the Materials Handling is typically where you,
where you At the hiccups and so so there are a lot of things you
can do better. You know, I would like to say
that this process that we're doing doesn't have a single
moving part. I mean let alone the turbine or
the propeller at the top top of the structure and and of course
here, you know, you're talking about something like this.
You have two things, you have the core process and then you
have the concept that you build around that metal core process
and how you couple it, you know, with the environment.
For example, and I think, you know, one of the challenges with
first gen, they're here capture and you know, it's, you know,
yeah, challenges is that it's consuming a lot of resources, it
takes a lot of energy, electricity formal energy.
It takes a lot of water and chemicals.
So and it doesn't is this strike against a that people always
bring up those common argument against Afghans it Energy
intensive and so in terms of scale, so like if that's like
the kind of typical scale of energy consumption, what are you
looking at for 2nd gen in terms of energy?
Come like just compare and doesn't have to be an exact you
know wattage but in terms of scale, but we do some things you
know, we recycle the energy internally in this process so
you know like you know but but it still it does take a lot of
energy. I would say takes depending on
how much energy recycle internally.
Some the hydrogen that the the Electrolyzers put out, you would
be looking at 14 to 22 hundred kilowatt hours per ton of CO2
removed, but that it does include the storage component.
So, you know, you save a lot in the, you know, compressing and
you know, pipelines and or you know ships or or cooling, you
know, whatever. Whatever you do down the line or
injection, you might have to inject it, you know, against the
substantially high pressure, you know, much higher than the CO2
pressure itself. But what I wanted to say, you
know, the other thing That sets apart and is bit.
It's been kind of used as a club against our back is that it's
kind of, you know, doesn't isn't really tangible or something
that people can can see. And and, you know, it doesn't
really offer anything to the local community.
Let's say that if you build one of these massive plans and
you're going to pretty much going to have them in tens of
thousands of cities or Villages or the countryside.
So there should be something tangible and benefit that, you
know, you know that the local population or the society gets
from that I think you know that can have co-benefits and if you
look at look at our process, for example, water is one thing
instead of using water. We actually condensing a lot of
water because we control the relative humidity and
temperature and the temperature differences between, you know,
different flows and the are And so then instead of drawing up,
we're actually condensing a lot of water, but the source of that
water sea water, and we're vibrating some of that and then
condensing it back. So there's a small River coming
out of that plant. And actually, you know again if
you look at the million tonnes per annum plan, that would be
about 1,600 tons or cubic meters of water every hour coming out
of that plant. So it's actually it's a small
stream that you can grow in a boat you know, basically It's
and that would be saltwater desal and eyes.
And then leaving the facility in a stream of fresh water.
That could then be available for use.
Yeah, yeah, it's distilled water.
That is being evaporated from seawater and then condensed in
the contactor. You know, once again, this is a
direct are capture plan. So it does have a contactor
where you bring the store but into contact with the air, but
they are that reaches. The contactor is very humid and
the contactor is cooled as ice cold.
So, all that humidity condenses into the in In the in the
contactor and you're actually able to harvest that as as you
know, for for drinking or irrigation and the other thing,
you know what I'm talking about. The concept that we're building
around the actual technology is, you know, obviously solar solar
is the kind of most scalable form of energy and kind of
large-scale plans are based on solar or the initially, you can
do it anywhere where you have low-carbon electricity and
there's not a shortage of it. Like in Finland, right?
Today we have - we priced energy which is nice and it's been
negatively price for a couple of days now, so very nice but even
during daytime hours, it's negatively priced.
Yeah, and I last few days, it has been so, which is, you know,
nice because I paid a thousand, you know, per kilowatt hour or
something like that per megawatt-hour, last last winter
and then last spring, a year ago, it was just just crazy, you
know? So so yeah, what I was going to
say is that the other thing is this magnesium Innate.
So, if you're in the desert, let's say somewhere and these
plans will be built in the desert.
So, there's not a lot of market nearby necessarily big cities,
where you want to haul this kind of cheap ball product.
So, amazing carbonate is actually, you know, when you
take it out is like Little Rock's and you can, you can make
pellets out of it, for example, or you clink it for us.
I heard on on LinkedIn, if you can, there are listeners can
hear. Yeah, it doesn't make sure have
a satisfying sound. It does have this kind of a
glass-like sound or, or surround sound like a surround know.
My, my laptop is all covered with the carbonate here.
I don't hear anything, so you just got a dirty for no reason.
Yeah. Sorry I'll follow.
I'll record it for, you know, how did you post?
Yeah, but I'm only assuming singing Bowl here for us.
Yeah, I'm actually, yeah, it's once it's once, it's like,
really crystallized. It's it is like, you know, kind
of a solid structure and And, you know, you that's when it
starts to have the sound like that.
It's interesting. Talk to me about building with
it, not to get ahead. But so we have.
We're talking about co-benefits 2nd gen DAC.
We have potential of listen up Californian, where water is
scarce and salt water is abundant.
We have the potential of you know, having this stream of
fresh water coming out of the plant, you mentioned on your
website. That this is something that you
can build with. This is a material that could be
used as a building additive. Yeah, you can press it into
bricks. As it is and it doesn't mean a
binder and it has a hardness that's comparable to Limestone.
So, on a mass scale, is 324. So it's limestone is a, you
know, if you visit European cities then and most of the old
cities are built out of limestone is a very good
material. I mean it's easy to carve and
and cut em, you know, sighs, but this is different, you know, you
have the same hardness, it's bright white, you know, so if
you build something out of that in a high, you know, in the
desert area, then you know, it's kind of, you know, No good
firmly because it reflects a lot of solar energy back and yeah
you can use it in a lot of ways you can use to build houses or
roads and or coral reefs. You know, you don't just want to
dump it in the ocean. You want to make bricks out of
it and then then dump a pile of bricks on which the corals can
can, you know, start building up.
So, but it's a question of whether there's a market or not
and it's a cheap bulk product. And I have to go back a little
bit because I was talking about the more diverse business model,
you know? Oh, that we have and and you
know instead of selling Justice, Just the cork or the CO2 removal
certificate to the software companies and internet.
You know, companies And others we wouldn't.
So, we're actually, it is more diverse.
You can actually sell it as carbon - like I used to be in
biochar at the car, both X. And you know, when we were
selling biochar, typically, you would sell the cork separately
from the physical product and, and then you would tell the
buyer of the carbon that they cannot make any carbon
negativity claims or, you know, that this is, you know, reduces
using double counting. Yeah, exactly.
So but we Some clients that wanted to, you know, do kind of
by the, by the carbon negative product.
So that we would stay up all the certificates into the backs.
You know, figuratively speaking and magnesium carbonate is
similar to that sort of thing. It doesn't, you know, quite how
is it? It's not as intense as yhr, you
know, with free. You know, kg per kg of CO2
equivalent. I mean 1 kg biochar, had
frequent kg CO2 equivalent. So when using carbonate only has
about fifty three percent CO2 but it's - and you know, we
don't need to sell the cork. We can just sell it as a carbon
- filler or a carbon - you know, construction material fillers
are used in a lot of different Industrial Products and
limestone is typically, you know, and silica and and carbon
black and things like that are, you know, typically filters of.
So, the point is that, you know, companies are able to make
carbon negative or carbon neutral product, you know, once
they kind of Recycle as much as possible and all their energy is
renewable, but they're still a little bit of carbon footprint
left. The only thing you can do is you
can use a carbon negative component, to kind of, you know,
offset the carbon footprint and we can we can do that.
So it's not just the CDR Market, it's also the industrial product
market and the kind of filler use.
So it's more diver questions about Raza.
Looks like you want to get one in.
Mostly just want to tell you to stay in your lane if doc starts
having co-benefits what's going to happen to everyone else, man?
Can you just can you just back off and just tap what I was
gonna say? I was gonna say, how could you
make Dak Unstoppable. Give it co-benefits.
Yeah. No it has to be and for people
to buy into it and you know, you know, not have the not in my
backyard attitude, then it's got to have, you know, something
good and and you know, this concept, you know, it's solar
powered. Or so around the plant which is
by the Sea on the desert. You're going to have a big array
of solar panels, probably like 500 hectares of them, you know,
several hundreds of Acres Thousand Acres, at least, at
least. So you're going to actually
going to be able to grow, grow food, and stuff under under the
panel's because it just provides a little bit of shade.
These are sodium tellarite panels.
So basically thin film and most of the light gets through.
So instead of you know making the land, you know, useless you
actually You know, make a narrable in a way and then, you
know, the last thing is that, you know, you're going to build
these plants carbon- from from scratch.
So once again, you know, by using carbon - materials like
biochar, and if we go into the dark side you know the contactor
once again, you know, when you when you moving massive amounts
of are you want to have passive, you know, systems or or you know
low velocities and laminar laminar flows which Is that, you
know, there's no turbulence. So, so in effect, you know, you
want to have an easy breathing system or like, it's like
sucking when you trying to breathe through a straw, you
know, you're changing the same amount of air but you're doing a
lot of work because you know, there's a small opening so you
have to make all the passages big so that you know, the flow
Logan, you know, Floyd had easily and and that means that
they're going to be big, you know, that's the downside of it.
So these structures are going to be huge and just to put it into
perspective, a one Megaton plant is going to have a diameter of
630 meters and the circumference of two kilometers.
And you know the contactor, you know, kind of frontal area where
the air flows into the contactor.
The the dimensions are ready to Kilometers by 110 meters.
So it's a massive structure and it, you know, you're going to
have plates on which your contact solution your assortment
is flowing and then the air is Flowing between those plates and
you're hoping that is going to react with the Goodyear sorban.
So you know, these are Mega structures and it means that
there's going to be about 400,000 tons of material
recycled plastic and biochar needed, you know, to make those
contactor plates. But the good thing is that
you're already carbon - when you start and you can probably sell
Some some, you know, certificates already when you're
when you're building it. So so you know once again you
got it all figured out, I thought the future of director
capture was going to be modular. This is the future that somehow
I had internalized at some point and the fact that there's going
to be even more colossal structures built then previously
is potentially unexpected to listeners, as well as to myself.
Is that, is that still on the table or just the economy of
scale? Work way better than the modular
approach approach. I know there's intersections
between these two paradigms, but I think, you know what I'm
getting at. Yeah.
I think it's going to be modular, but it's still going to
be huge. Yeah, there you go.
You didn't lots of other words? Yeah.
I mean, you know, here to I'm thinking about what is the kind
of trajectory or how do we go from you know, being in a lab
making a few handfuls of that product, you know, to making,
you know, two million tons of it a year And, and it goes up, you
know, in steps. First, you doing something that
does a kilogram an hour, then it's a ton per day and then
probably looking at 2,000 tons a year and then you go to module,
which might be like 10,000 tons a year and then you prove out
the module and then if that module is already big enough
and, you know, your your kind of reaping, some of the economies
of scale with that, then you know, you can just stack them or
or you know, Yeah. Stack them until Richard this
service sound? You know when you when you frame
it that way kind of in this year by year process, it sounds
achievable. But you know when you describe
this massive facility we're going to have solar panels and
crops growing under them and flow outflows of fresh water.
It sounds very utopian. But what are what are the big
hurdles you're already thinking? They're going to come up against
is it just policy-based? Is it just acceptance and
understanding of the process? Is what are the big hurdles?
Well, I try to work around all the hurdles like, you know, as
far as possible. And you know, one of them
getting around is like, you know, the storage component.
And, you know, or let's say that if you have a hydrochloric acid
disposal problem, then what the hurdles just like, okay, well,
Like you're talking about disposing, waste and waste,
sounds bad to people, and that that normally gets them up on
the barricades and, you know, so, it's better if you can make
a product of some sort and nobody has anything about
against making products, especially if they're carbon -
and, you know, just cleanable and all that.
So sorry, I was lost my train of thought there.
It's okay. So you're talking about building
around the hurdles and making. Yeah, it's something that people
do want it sounds so geographically like there's
going to be a big bottle. A and what do you think would
be? I mean so I used to work in
major utility developments for Caltrans for PG&E and a lot of
these, you know facilities we build take a lot of land and I
was always out there doing the environmental component, right?
And so If you want to build a new transmission line or
whatnot, you're taking up new space and on the one hand you're
like, oh this is in the Southern California desert, there's
nothing there. Obviously we know that not to be
entirely the case that there's there's quite a bit there.
And so what what would the impact be a doing this?
Truly at scale? Are there are there enough
sufficient sighting locations within desert?
Ecosystems that also are I assume they have to be somewhat
adjacent to the actual C so that they can have not too far of
transmission of salt water. Or am I incorrect in assuming
that? Well, I'm probably in most
cases, you do have rock salt formations and that sort of
thing, salt domes, we were to. So, you could be tapping into
those. But then again, if you want to
do ocean alkalinity and has been done.
Yeah, if you'd have to be by the Sea, you know, one, wait a
minute, you be doing DAC and you'd have apples of freshwater
and you be doing ocean, alkalinity enhancement.
No, I mean, sorry. I just if you ask that, you
know, wouldn't wouldn't want if they used to use solve the need
to proximity. Ocean.
But we don't need proximity to those who because of the salt
because we don't because it's a closed loop.
So we're using the same salt over and over again.
We're breaking it down and then the, you know, starting all over
again. But but the and yeah, if you're
in the desert and your solar powered, then you need to be by
the Sea because of the cooling and and the fresh water, you
know, the water management or the or the water balance.
But if you're in a cooler climate then, then basically
what you really need is a cooling source.
And you need to be able to create a large enough
temperature difference in your system, so that you actually get
condensation. So, so and it doesn't always
have to be a water producing system.
We could be as long as it doesn't dry up, but but, you
know, making one of these plants acceptable.
You know, you kind of come up got to have the local social
benefits or the benefits for the local Uncle people and, and
yeah, I think, you know, it sounds utopian, but I prefer
utopian or dystopian and You know, I think I just see a lot
of things, you know, come together and we just have to put
the first one together, so I think people will be inspired
and they want to replicate that at going to scale.
You know, I think it's easier. You know, in this case you only
need 1,000 plants, you know that are 630 meters in diameter, plus
the solar arrays, you know, around that.
So it's not, you know, space or land that is is constricting the
thing. I think it's more You know, when
you have more project like with biochar, you would have to build
a hundred thousand plants, probably to reach the Giga, ton
capacity. So how are you going to finance
all the bows and the kind of time and energy that goes into
those projects just developing those projects has is enormous.
So I think million tons in, you know, ten years down the line is
going to be your module and then then, you know, some, some
places you might see, you know, several million tons in a plant.
If you have a good location, And there's plenty of coastal
deserts in the world and where the land is cheap.
There's very little people. If there are people, then they
are kind of stricken by drought and climate change and they
need, you know, a break basically have.
So, so this, you know, plan could offer one.
It seems like we've talked about this in previous show, but it
seems like the Arabian Peninsula.
Probably a prime candidate for something like this.
There's water, they're going to lose out on oil and gas pretty
soon or at some point they will. This might be one of those
replacement industries that could could be quite beneficial
maybe turn someone who might otherwise dig their heels into
an ally of the future of carbon removal.
Yeah. There's like you know, in South
America that's Atacama and then you have been immediately, maybe
me being Coastal desert, you have, you know, all the Algeria
and Morocco, ziz, really dry. And the Mediterranean is really
dry all over and Australia, India and Arabian.
Peninsula - color is, you know, Norma solar potential, and
you've seen some, we've seen some really cheap solar power
come from that region. You know, it's like, Like some
of the contracts are point nine cents per kilowatt hour and 44
news, new large-scale solar. Have you been following the news
about Fusion? That's come out in the last
month or so I've been keeping an active while infusion for for 20
years and I'm trying all the time though.
Well, yeah, you know, I'd love it, you know, just bring it and,
you know, we'll put it to use and I doubt it's going to be
cheap initially, you know, but But yeah, I welcome it.
You know I love to see fusion and I would do Fusion are being
infusion myself. If I, you know, wasn't doing
this how would Fusion change the location of attack 2.0 or what
it impacted at all? Well, it just means that you
don't, you're not kind of tied to a high solar potential areas
so you could basically build it anywhere in the cooler or darker
climate like you know, in the nordics. and, Print, just
curiously. I'm somebody who hasn't been
following the fusion discussion. What's the footprint?
Fusion, power plants? Yeah, I think they're comparable
to deficient plants at this point.
I mean, the but yeah, I have, I know, of a few different, you
know, new Fusion processes, but but you know, I'm not going to
be able to comment on on, you know what.
But yeah, I think one of the Arguments for nuclear is that,
you know, it's takes it has a small footprint.
We're going to do a shot on this at some point it should have
there's just too much stuff happening and I seen the I'm
already seeing the gears turning both inside at nor and I seen it
all swear to of linking up. You know, high energy intensity
carbon removal that is currently not LCA worthy.
But if it's abundant and cheap clean energy like the fusion and
maybe that changes the equation on some of these things, may be
a learning curve it and we just use it all.
All up doing silly things. That's also possible.
Yeah, no. I've been playing with those
thoughts, for a long time, than what if we had, you know,
abundant cheap clean energy, you know, that, you wouldn't have to
feel bad about using. And you could just, you know, it
wouldn't be a limitation, you know, that he'll I think someone
who's at the top of their field like this, having them on.
And then ask them the equivalent of like being Stoned on your
freshman dorm couch. Be like what?
If abundant energy Costner Thing, we could save the world.
Like I love that guy. /. Hate it.
But it's apparently, what I did she wanna know is there's
nothing wrong with, you know, speculating and playing playing
with thoughts, you know, sometimes, you know, you know,
you might see things. No, I agree.
I think it's good to kind of have your brain into a rubber
band that goes out into that expansive potential reality as
long as you know coming back at like okay well now that I that I
Played with that idea, what's the reality of it, you know?
But I do think that, you know, in general in climate Solutions
and carbon mobile, specifically, I like the idea of playing with
what's possible. I think, you know, Tito
Jankowski of are minors, talks about that a lot about, like,
just imagine what could be possible and I think that is a
positive exercise. Just just playing in general, I
think it'd be kind of help. Maybe I'm this is
self-aggrandizing cuz we like play a lot of annoying me lab
and we play, we bring Murmuring. We bring kind of some Delight
into the into the industry and so maybe it's the
self-aggrandizing, but I do think there's a role for
bringing in kind of this imagining what it could be and
and poking fun at ourselves. So they can we poke fun at
ourselves, we can sometimes find the true holes and in our ideas.
You know, I think Engineers typically they are kind of shy,
you know, when it comes to being very creative or, you know,
imagining things, they don't, you know, typically then, The,
you know, imagination. You know, people, they, you
know, hard math and art physics and, you know, that sort of
stuff. And I, you know, personally, I
think of myself more as a, well, kind of an artist.
I do play the guitar but but, you know, not so much an
engineer because I really need to be inspired and I need to be
in the right kind of mood and and mode, you know, to be able
to do something and give my give my best.
And I have a lot of engineering friends that, you know, they
just crunch, you know, crunch away.
And, you know, there's Like, they can go from one task to the
next one. And would, you know, one minute
orientation period in between, and I'm like, you know, well
it's like, could you be farther? My disposition?
Probably not. I think we've talked about this
on the podcast. There was I often like going
into brainstorming meetings or pitch meetings but the worst
idea possible and being the person to throw out the
crappiest idea because then that loosens up other people to throw
out the like half-baked idea or quarter baked idea and
oftentimes the best stuff comes out at someone who's like Like
this is terrible, but what about this?
And you're like that. Plus this boom, we just made
something that was great out of nothing because people felt
comfortable sharing an idea that was not really that polished.
So, yeah, I think creativity can do a lot but then again, I'm
also biased because I want job security but it's true, I think.
Absolutely. And you know, I mean, there's
that there's a risk of, you know, getting you know, label as
the village, not her, you know, more or less.
But I, you know I don't shown that. at, you know, I'm always,
you know, if there's a, you know, I like to play with
thoughts, you know, and it's, you know, easy to measure
yourself and your friends, you know, go down these imaginary
imaginary paths, you have anything like that, right now,
something that is really not ready for prime time, but it's
something that you're thinking a lot about Carbon removal related
or you know, only need to put that parameter on it.
Well, you just so what do you? What do you want to share you
clearly have something ready. My bees did really well.
Last winter and the honey honey Harvest is looking for a good,
and I'm going to get my cows back in a little bit.
They've been away for the winter because I was in California for
months, and so it's been, you know, a few months away from
them now and I love Of them dearly.
So it's going to be nice to get them back here and you're a
farmer to on you, do all these things.
And then you also Farm. Well, farming is a source of
creativity and kind of recreation and, you know, so
it's a kind of a, you know, you got to have a Physical exercise
and you got to have, you know you know I think I do shooting
to I'm not a gun enthusiast, but I do it for a reason because I
get kind of a feeling of success and achievement, you know,
because in my line of work, sometimes you have to work with
10 to 20 years before you actually get anywhere.
And you know, look at me, carbon will is the thing now but it
wasn't a thing 20 years ago. And so you know sometimes you
know, when you when you heat a steel Target here a nice clean
back and my brain is kind of wire.
No, because I used to play, you know, I was in the 80s and
within a lot of video games, so it caused my brain to be wired
so that I need that, you know, fairly rapid feedback.
And that gives me I figured out why does this feel so good.
And you know, because it's like playing playing a game instant
feedback and isn't predication. So farming to, you know, you get
you get to see things and you kind of connect to the rhythm of
the nature and and you know, it's nice and then you get
feelings of success and you kind of connected, and it's also good
for kind of, you know, Quieting down cooling off a little bit,
sometimes too. Is that how you got into bio
charted? The farming go to bio charted
biochar. Lead you to farming.
Tell us a little bit about your backstory and how you went from
somewhere, there's farming in there but then there was the
success with Carlo effects and then why you chose to quit
biochar basically and pivot into death A lot of questions I was
in, wasn't the first time I got involved with charcoal was in
1996 or even a few years before. That's when I built.
We were the lot one of the largest producers of charcoal in
Finland that year when I was in high school in 1990. 1996.
Yeah, I'm 1998. I joined a join the Army so I
was out of that for for some time, but then I came back and I
started working on gasification well from from, you know, better
part of 2000 from 2001 until 2004.
Yeah. Even on from 99 to 2009 more or
less, and then I got into pyrolysis, and we came up with
the idea of Bio coal which is kind of an established terms a
day, but it was our trademark. Back then.
And you know, the idea was that, you know, you take biomass and
you convert it into kind of a drop-in fuel for coal-fired
power plants and, you know, that way, you know, allow to reduce
emissions but that was too windy and there was the financial
crisis. And, you know, it was heavily
kind of involved with all these energy schemes which, you know,
you don't really want to be, you want to be an arm's length from,
you know, if you want to, you know, build something and so We
already knew how to build make biochar then and we had the same
machine. We used a carp effects, we build
in 2009 and we ever since the fall process, like what are we
going to do with biochar? So that we could make money or
have a business around? It was the business model going
to look like And in 2015 2016 we you know I had some ideas that
were refined and I saw a few openings like growing media, you
know, we're going to go we're going to go after pearlite.
And so then we took the old machine and and you know, break
it up again and it kind of you know refurbished it a little bit
and then we started carbon facts and that was 2016 and we did
pretty good. You know, we got the we did the,
you know, first mythology for biochar with Buddha and We
brought in a lot of, you know, biochar companies to put on time
and, you know, we, we also the market leaders in Sweden.
Pretty much in Europe in biochar and for a long time we let the
the CDR a great job or LED or kind of you know we're in the in
the top three or top five still four thousand times you know
delivered CDR. You know today you do got sick
of success there. Well no actually if you know
It's a tragic story. I didn't leave voluntarily.
I will my founding partner of threw me out because we had he
now owned like half of the company.
I was down to 27 or something like that, and it's a long
story. I was going to bring in a couple
of climate investors, you know, in of 21 but but there was, you
know, a late-night ideal and Ultimately those guys were out
and if you had to go to other guys were in, and by months, six
months down the line, I'm, they're asking me why I'm not
stealing any machines. I'm like, you know, why are you
asking me why we're not selling machines?
We're not supposed to sell the machines where we're developing
CDR projects and, you know, that is the way to scale, but I Char
and pyrolysis and CDR in particular, and but they had not
bought into that plan. You know, that we had, you know,
created with with the investors that I wanted to have. and I'm
basically, you know, it just went downhill from there, you
know, there was all kinds of and and in the end in the end of
last summer, we had a terrible trouble meeting, you know,
probably the, you know, we didn't really, you know, these
guys were, you know, I didn't really get to know them, it came
through the, the other guy, but the in the end, you know, they
wanted to go all into Hardware business, they fought the now is
the time to sell hardware and they thought that since we had
this, you know, Russian offensive into your Crane and
the energy crisis, you know, it was, it was really like, you
know, big, you know, last last summer.
So they thought the nobody's gonna be interesting to see the,
ER, because we've got describes the novel like, well, you know,
I don't think so, you know, and and then they wanted to go
all-in into a huge project. You know, that was the, we've
been trying to make happen for, for 23 years, and but we didn't
really find a way to make it work for everybody and the risk
would have been on us. And it would have been kind of
open book Cost Plus 10% and all the risk on us.
I saw what my role would have been, you know, for the next 2-3
years, you know, and, and I couldn't go down that road.
So in the end, you know, they they fired me and that was in
the end of beginning of August. So it's 10 months almost no.
And they really, you know, didn't think that we were going
anywhere and they didn't think that, you know, that is what we
should have been doing. And I've seen a lot of Of you
know, equipment business. And I've seen a lot of projects
and I've still kind of very, very adamant that the right way
to go is to develop a few projects of your own, you know.
Maybe then 34 years down the line, even to free, you could,
you could sell them to third parties to, but it's good to
have a couple of, you know, plans of her own and solid
reference base before, you know, you possibly run into a
difficult client or difficult project.
And the assails projects are often difficult because the
clients often you know they don't use the feedstock that
they tell you that they're going to use and then when it doesn't
work they're going to blame you on and then you don't get the
money and then, you know, end up, you know, going back and
forth and trying to fix something.
The problem that is not yours. And, you know, kind of, you
know, burn myself out, you know, in that kind of business, a long
time ago. So so my body tells me, you
know, don't go don't go, there isn't, is it a big bottle necks
for biochar, still there? Is not a large-scale
manufacturer of Kilns or other devices, right?
I've heard people say this. I don't know to what degree,
it's true. But that is a bottleneck right
at the moment. Yeah, yeah.
Some of the equipment suppliers are are, you know, in short
supply. I mean they can make enough with
those machines and there's a long lonely time.
Probably could be two years with some, some companies me,
whatever though, if you weren't enjoying your work or the
relationships want, right? Or she's not.
Vertical, you're interested in serving their, I think you're
probably better off. Just moving on, at finding
something that you are passionate about and whenever
whenever you sell what you're working on now and become
fabulously wealthy. And then you move on diffusion
and then you solve that and then what's next for you, sampo seems
like the world is your oyster right now.
Got our. We just we just building him.
We've never been so complimentary show ever.
I also just appreciate I appreciate your candor because I
feel like I've been. I feel like with any, you know,
here we are. On a podcast, I appreciate your
candor because I think within CDR and climate in general, we
don't talk enough enough about the conflicts that can arise
within the startup ecosystem. And I think it is a very
supportive sector like much more than other startups.
That our Founders, there's a lot of support, but at the same
time, you know, I'm part of a various different groups.
Are we meet weekly to talk Founders and and the struggles
in the conflicts that arise and the people want to go in
different directions and I just think we don't acknowledge that
enough. Their community.
And so it's great to just hear you speak frankly about your
challenges and how you're recovering from them.
Yeah, I've had to take a little breather after that because
obviously, you know, it was a, it was a huge.
I put everything, you know, pretty much on the line and six
years and a lot of my kids grew up in that time.
And also, you know, you know, it took Financial sacrifices to,
you know, initially. So so, you know, but but yeah,
you know, it's an old rule of thumb, you know, you gotta, you
know, do what you, you know, like and you know, What would,
you know what you're good at? And you know, if you know,
people don't appreciate your talent, then you take your towel
elsewhere and, you know, sell it to sell to somebody else or, you
know, make her own fortune. And, well, that's what I'm
pretty much been doing. I've been an entrepreneur, all
my life and, you know, I have to work early to tend to your bees
and your cows. I feel like that would be the
calming, the calming outlet for her high stress, climate Tech
work. I'm also, you know, devoted Yogi
and I do meditate too. Hours a day and I'm a vegan.
You can have been on a vegetarian diet diet since 1998
and I'm gonna call you out then for your kill two birds with one
stone comment because I learned from my I'm a lifelong
vegetarian and my mother would always say no no Siobhan.
You can't, you feed two birds with one stone which was to be
the cheesiest most deplorable turn of phrase, you know,
defying animal cruelty. But But I remember it to this
day so when everyone, someone says that I had my head, I think
the two birds with one stone. Yeah, I normally don't use
violent metaphors or, you know, things like that but it's, you
know. Just yeah.
What I had, you know, at the moment it up.
Oh God, I'm sorry. No, no.
I was just, I was just, I was just trying to figure out if it
was from the King James Bible, or from Shakespeare, that's
always the game. When there's a weird old idiom,
I'm like, which of these two is it from?
It's one of the two. Yeah, Shakespeare is pretty
much, you know, everywhere. And I was surprised myself.
Once again, if you, if you read the King James, like the
gospels, and you read a hamlet, you're like, cool.
This is like 75 of the most commonly used idioms that are
still in use. Yes.
All Danced. He had to, you know, he was good
with the word and good with the with the pain.
No doubt, okay. An honor, this is, this is
outside of the, the meaning of this podcast, but I'm doing it
now. Yeah.
And you know, I'm kind of collector of phrases, you know,
my friends were, you know, coming up after me sometime some
point because I was just, you know, using a metaphor, you
know, after a metaphor or a phrase after a phrase and it
gets irritating after after a little while, you know because
Your Justina every time you open your mouth.
There's this. Speaking a metaphor?
Yeah, yeah. Well, do you?
I'm not while he's looking for this.
How do you fit two hours a day of meditation?
And I ask that, is that CD are adjacent because should we all
be doing two hours of meditation as we build our city, our
Solutions, well, my girl tells me that businessmen should do
for you hours of meditation a day because you know, the mind
is racing and you should do a one hour and at midday or, you
know, early afternoon as well just to, you know, keep your kid
to, you know, keep the reins But you do it early in the morning
and do it late in the evening. And you know, the boot has said
that you know the best time to practice your mind is between 4
and 7 in the morning. So you know ideally do it then
or then around 12:00 midnight is also good unless if you need to
be in bed, you can do it earlier.
No, I'm not kidding. When I said I was like proud
when I got up to 15 minutes so you're really putting me to
shame here. No, I'm not shaving anybody, you
know the thing is that I was I had a hard time you sitting five
minutes initially and I might was breaking sweat, you know,
just as soon as the thought of sitting down or doing, you know,
as asanas or anything like that, you know, it just, you know,
immediately I started sweating and it, I don't know how it
created that kind of reaction in my in my body but you know,
first you do five minutes, you do 10 minutes and You little by
little you grow into it and after 20 years, you can't eat or
sleep if you don't do meditation.
So quite often you know if I'm getting the morning it's because
I made it hate it too long. So you know it's it's just hard
to part to let go. Sometimes I was mostly just
going to ask are you with all of your other ridiculous
experiences here and achievements?
Are you also see male hyah Well, I want the best shot shooter in
my regiment. I still have a like a golden
golden medal but that's that's nothing.
I mean finish are typically pretty good, pretty handy with
rifles and most of the males have, you know, gone to the
military when served serve some time and everybody knows how to
handle a little guys. But I actually, I'm competitive
shooter. I do cowboy action shooting.
So it's kind of a I've got a are so many layers.
I feel like we're peeling back the mineralized carbon layers
and finding out more. You can put on Rose person.
Siobhan, but he's like the most celebrated sniper of all time
but in the winter war against the Soviets, during World War
Two, it was like I'm just looking at Wikipedia is like
500. Yeah.
That was a commercial firm count but, you know, the unconfirmed
God could be double, you know. Yeah.
And yeah, here. Always said that.
Well, I just did the job today at that was given to me as good
as I could. And, you know, You know, it's I
mean, matter of fact, Nordic nature.
I have to show you this. I've got a little dent in my
finger, because I did so much shotgunning last Sunday and we
shooting at a barrel. And the, the task was to kind of
flip it over, you know, with the shotgun so that you shoot it
once, it kind of go a little bit and then you have to shoot it
again quickly, so that it would talk over and I had to do a lot
of times, but then he was a kind of kind of a stage You know, me
and them of action. I'm Kai but cowboy action right
there. Yeah, yeah.
And I have two cows and I can actually call myself a cowboy, a
true Cowboy, but I don't have my 10-gallon.
Cowboy hat, you know, just, you know, within reach house and I
was too bad like friends with Julio Friedman, the Wrangler.
Yeah. He's got a stage Charisma, he
knows what talking about to have to respect that.
He's only person I know who has like a dedicated carbon removal
Persona in that kind of way I love you, too.
I am the carbon Wrangler and that's that is who I am.
And what, what is this? You're showing, you see you
going down. Oh, it's being Wrangler.
Speak. Yeah, that's what I'm on the
phone. That's what you can see.
This is, you know, sadly it is not from Shakespeare or King
James or the King James. That's, that's always my
gristick don't have to guess. I'm just, like - just as pretty
good, you know, take the bull by the horn and that's the You'll
never be a bull. I guess I was trying to make,
make it sound Shakespearean. All I came up with hostile,
wrangled nine carbon, but I was like just waiting for the next
car movable mean and you know, see we got some good ones.
Have to make one for will have to make one for this show.
I had some ideas that led in my brain during this, so I'll make
some and tag, you ready? One on like, the co-benefits of
DAC. Back and make fun of that.
Yeah, me get, you know, paddling my canoe down the proverbial
stream coming out of my dad planned, and, you know, going
down to the to the Village, you know, to the farm.
Good budgets, do you think we're working with over here?
How do you think we do? We take a crappy image.
That's already been used and we stick them sick text on it.
Well, that's that works. Keep doing it.
I love it. Yeah, I laugh out loud.
Sometimes, you know, when I see the car removal means something
like every. And I am glad because sometimes
you get noticed too that are little people will say like well
these are really quite Niche to carbon removal me.
They're like, well yeah, there's plenty of more, generic
environmental memes Pages out there.
They don't need more of those, but carbon removal as a
community, we need those. Well, I need those and, you
know, it's just like sometimes, you know, I think, you know, I
really like when you when you live and breathe, you know that
that you know trade then, you know, a lot of those things are.
So so real to you and and you know sometimes it just really
hits hits. You know this choir and like I
said, I laugh out loud sometimes and I applaud you.
Thank you and keep you in mind. You're like are your Lids like a
customer Discovery call all the second and now we need the
sudden here figure out, okay, this effect, I'm glad to be able
to be complementary, you know, Thank you happy with me and it's
making you laugh. I think that's an important
thing to do. Well yeah rap, yeah we good.
That's wrap it up. I think we're good.
I think we went all the way from Daft to farming to cowboy
shooting. So Julio makes an appearance.
That's always fun. Yeah, yeah, I'll take note, I'll
challenge Julio you know to a couple of shooting match anytime
I think that's beyond the remit of his Persona, I don't know
that there's a lot of target shooting.
Obscure target shooting competitions in his daily but
no, but that's how we dress that's how we dress when we go
to the, you know, cowboy action, you know, I should hope so I
should hope. So thank you so much for
listening. If you could please subscribe
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