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. I'm Ross Kenyan I'm the creative
editor at Nori's carbon removal Marketplace.
Today, I have with me Eli Mitchell, Larson, researcher and
PhD candidate at the University of Oxford and the corresponding,
oh, Author of The Oxford offsetting principles advisor to
carbon direct, and he is leading the scope and group for a new
carbon removal, advocacy organization in Europe, a
parallel to carbon 180, welcome to the show.
You lie, thanks Ross, good to be here, so happy to have met you.
So happy to be engaging with your ideas, the Oxford,
offsetting principles made a big splash, and I've been thinking
about them quite a lot lately. So I'm happy to have a chance to
dive in more fully here. How did you get involved in
their composition? What led to them and why you
Personally, Eli. What how did your career and you
up here, thanks. Yeah, sure.
So, the ox are principles for NetZero aligned carbon
offsetting which is a bit of a mouthful, but we like to belabor
the title because it really is about that NetZero alignment
piece, not so much about the offsets themselves was a
document that was initiated by been Caldecott at the University
of Oxford. And his goal was really to bring
people together around this issue because everybody is
making NetZero claims. I often think that we've just
passed through the sort of honeymoon phase where everybody
makes it. At zero claim and says mission
accomplished. But now we're starting to enter
into the execution phase where, you know, CFOs sustainability
officers, mayors of towns, whatever it may be, they're
starting to realize. Oh shoot.
We've got to actually do this and we're going to need to buy
carbon credits. Or carbon offsets.
How do we do that in a way that allows us to make the claim I
have achieved? Net zero emissions.
It's all about that claim. And so what been Caldecott and
others did Steve Smith's they brought together a group of
academics at Oxford who covered a lot of different areas.
So people Who had deep experience of nature based
Solutions like you had been doing while he and Natalie said,
in people that had more experience on the governance
issues. The the economic pieces that
sort of geophysics of climate change itself, bringing them all
together and see if with such a diverse group of folks, we could
come to a consensus around. What does NetZero aligned
offsetting look like? And how can we make that useful
to all the people that are out there making at your
commitments? In terms of me specifically, I
started out in geology, geophysics and paleo climates,
but I ended up going into the private sector and doing some
first, some impact investing at New Island capital, and then I
co ran a start-up in Nepal, doing off-grid solar.
And I came to the kind of carbon management carbon offsetting
world through a kind of funny way.
I actually helped a charter Cruise Company, of all of all
Industries, execute their carbon management plan.
So I was brought in to consult for something called the
Jonathan Coulton cruise to actually, you know, help them
come up with a carbon fund. And that's when I really had to
dive deep into what are called Even offsets, you know all the
way back to George mombi has 2006 piece around carbon offsets
being indulgences and really just tracing the history of how
that all came about. And then it was really my time
at Oxford working with Professor miles Allen and others to really
understand these issues from atmospheric standpoint and from
the standpoint of what the planet actually needs.
How can we make carbon offset incredible?
I think we've had more critics of offsetting on, then people
who think that they can be made credible.
Also, I think this is going to be a really important Guy saying
discussion. I like to say this that Venn
diagram, where you've got the circle of people who want carbon
markets, voluntary, carbon offsetting to explode and scale,
and you've got the circle of people that are critics of the
voluntary carbon market. And I think I would actually sit
at the overlap of the two. I think there's problems with
the market, but I think we can save it.
We can make it, we can make it work.
Does everyone like and trust you as the Arbiter?
Does everyone hate you? Well, I definitely.
They wouldn't consider myself the Arbiter.
I'm definitely trying to be as I guess diplomatic is as I can be.
And all of us are to make sure that we're here to kind of make
carbon offsetting a means of actually achieving real climate
outcomes and calling it. Like it is there's instances
where maybe carbon offsetting isn't the right mechanism to
support certain practices and there's certainly room for all
solutions and we'll talk about that more later in the
conversation. Definitely.
Well, since you made such a point of framing this discussion
around NetZero, I think it might be most productive to start
there. What exactly is a net zero
commitment, but our companies trying to lock themselves into
right now. Excellent question.
You're right. So I mean I think the useful
thing is that the concept of Net Zero essentially has a
geophysical definition or at least it has a definition.
The ipcc that we can all the intergovernmental panel on
climate change, the ipcc that we can all agree on.
And that is a balance of store. Dishes in the sink.
So a balance of emissions essentially with carbon removal.
So the nice thing about Net Zero is that it encompasses a lot of
sort of different end States. You can be Net Zero and be
emitting no carbon or you can be Net Zero and be emitting quite a
bit of carbon as long as those missions are balanced with
removals and so when companies or entities non-state actors are
committing to NetZero. What they're doing is they are
basically putting themselves in line with what we know has to
happen to stop climate change because as a cumulative In CO2
is just going to keep building up and building up and warming
will continue until we reach Net Zero and Net Zero can only be
achieved when many many and eventually all sub entities
countries, cities and companies themselves are Net Zero or at
least collectively our Net. Zero is there some difference
between maybe a decade or more ago?
People were talking about being carbon neutral or climate
neutral. What's the relationship between
all of these? A lot of its designs like
corporate speak and it's hard. To know which one is which and
what it actually refers to. I think that's right.
There's still some ambiguity around that.
There's an effort known as the I think it's the United Nations.
Climate Champions and Thomas Hale at Oxford.
Has been really instrumental in leading this effort called the
race, 20 criteria. And the idea there is you know
we love lexicons. How can we make sure as
academics that these individual terms are?
Well, defined and that was really around Net Zero.
So the idea with the race is your criteria is, let's have an
umbrella set of criteria. Yeah, that can be applied to all
the other efforts, like the science-based targets,
initiative or other people who are opining on what Net Zero
means. Let's make sure they're all
aligned with this one thing. So I think that carbon-neutral I
was surprised to learn that. I think it basically means the
same thing. I think it basically also refers
to a balance of sources and sinks removals.
There's some I think usage of that term.
That might mean I think colloquially NetZero probably
means balancing emissions with removals whereas carbon Neutral
perhaps just because it's an older and Legacy term seems to
be a slightly less ambitious claim that often refers to.
Well you use offsets use avoided emission offset specifically in
order to achieve carbon neutrality.
So it seems like Net Zero is a more ambitious claim but there's
still some ambiguity around what those specific things mean.
And I think that's frustrating for corporates, but the good
news is Nazi, era, has a definition, and we can be very
confident of that. I want to talk a little bit
about that. Yeah, the famous George mom Bo
indulgences offsets comparison, which if you're talking about
removals, that sounds like an Indulgence that might work and
be okay. If it's just avoided emissions
or some sort of other type of offset, I can see why that would
rub people the wrong way and not be as accurate.
But could you say that carbon removal under NetZero, might be
indulgences. That actually work, is that
appropriate? It's fascinating.
I wish I could remember. A who to credit this next piece
to because what I really liked about one of the responses to
the mombi apiece was basically, you know, well actually, if you
believe that the Catholic Church does have a monopoly on the
Absolution of sin and if they're capable of accurately measuring
who has sinned more and, and less than actually offsets were
an incredibly efficient means of allocating.
But no, I'm really joking. Because of course they weren't.
It was a, it was a really terrible system.
And I think what, the point that Mambo was making or one of the
many points he was making, and it's interesting how so many of
Critiques of offsetting kind of persistent are still relevant
today and actually I've spoken with him and tried to sort of
see if his his views have shifted on that.
And I think, you know, he really sticking to his guns because a
lot of what he says, you know, is still valid in some sense and
I think what he's really saying there with the Indulgence piece
is you're paying to get out of something, right?
And that's the idea that every offset every carbon credit it's
a two-sided transaction. We always focus on one end of
it. One of the transaction is money
moves from someone that has money to some in Project often
in the developing World. Often doing some really
excellent work either to sequester carbon or to have some
other benefit and that's almost invariably a good thing.
There's obviously concerns around that in some instances,
how that money is spent. But you know, that's the side of
the transaction. We focus on on the other end of
the transaction, the offset buyer, the person who ends up
with the carbon credit, they now have the opportunity to not
Abate, they get to basically for go reducing their emissions by
one ton in exchange, for getting this carbon I think that's
really the Crux of his critique, where if you're paying for
something that doesn't actually have that carbon benefit, then
you're actually generating more emissions.
Then how do you done nothing and not bought the offset.
Now, your point about carbon removals being kind of the, the
ultra effective Indulgence. I think it's really that
actually avoided emissions are emission.
Reductions. So, sort of the one side of the
coin and carbon removal both of these techniques are capable of
generating a carbon credit that is legitimate.
It's just that you need to prove something called additionality,
right? You need to actually prove that
but for the purchase of the carbon credit, the mitigating
action, the the reduction of carbon or the removal of carbon
would never have happened and I think really what we're saying
when we're saying that removals are superior.
I mean first of all, removals are the only thing you can use
to balance the residual emissions in the end State when
you're at Net Zero, but in the lead-up to that avoided
emissions or emission reductions are a bit problematic because
it's just really hard to prove Edition.
They also permanent sort of other criteria that you would
evaluate have issues too, but I think additionality
specifically. And that's why even in advance
of Net Zero, which is kind of the drop-dead date when we need
to be removing everything. We put up, even in advance of
that, there's plenty of reasons to be skeptical of avoided
Mission, emission, reduction offsets.
And so I think your point does stand.
Okay, that's good. I like about my points stand,
that's always nice. I'm trying to think about the
maybe I'm overdoing this comparison, but I think what
people don't like the Indulgence aspect of it either.
It's because it's not supposed to allow you to commit
additional sins. I think like it's Ivy by the
Catholic Church's case on indulgences or the Absolution of
sins. I don't think it except maybe
the case of going to war. I think that you can be absolved
ahead of time but you can't say like I'm going to cheat on my
wife tomorrow. Like here's here's some money to
pay for a new baptistry font or something like you can do that
right? Yeah it's it's funny that Almost
getting into this idea of ex post and ex ante accounting
ex-anti being when you pay for a carbon credit, where the
sequestration hasn't taken place yet you're paying you're paying
for someone to do that in the future ex post being where the
sequestration of the action has already taken place.
So maybe there's some analogy there.
I bet we could write something something, I think forgiveness
has to be exposed. I think you can't say, I'm going
to send and be forgiven ahead of time.
So I do ex ante offsets are also.
Additionally controversial. Right.
That's like a big fights. And over there.
That's right. I think a lot of people would
say, you know, it's important that if you're going to have
some lead time between when you pay for the carbon sequestration
and when it actually takes place that lead time needs to be
fairly short because obviously the longer it goes, the more
uncertainty there is and I think there's some great precedence we
can take from financial markets and also project Finance for
wind and solar where there you can contract these things and
you can reduce the risk of non-performance.
In other words, reduce the risk that the person from whom you're
buying an ex ante carbon credit. Won't deliver that credit or you
can Say, let's just get delivery of the credits, only as they're
generated almost like vesting into a stock.
Would it be helpful to kind of go into the doctor principles
themselves? I know you've talked about them
in the past on the program, but whatever it would be useful.
You think to the listeners, and to you too?
Yeah, I think this is a nice place to break in because
otherwise, we'll just, we'll Just Dance all around this.
So many complex issues that surround this entire discussion.
So of the for Oxford offsetting principles and we're going to
work our way through all of these He's the first one is cut
emissions. Use high-quality offsets and
regularly revised. Offsetting strategy as best
practice of Olives. So this sounds like something.
We say a Nori is emit less and remove the rest, but why have a
decarbonization first strategy and then negate your missions
after that? Why can't someone just, you
know, do business as usual and use credible carbon removals and
then get met zero. That way, what's wrong with
that? Great question and I love the
mitigation hierarchy you alluded to from Nori and just a note to
our listeners. There are only four principles
so this won't be a sort of 99 or 95 Theses, whatever it was that
Martin Luther Nails in my door. It's to happen.
That yeah, to extend the religious analogy.
But yeah, there's four principles and principle one.
Let's take the three components in turn, so the idea of cutting
emissions. I mean, this is really simple
stuff and this goes back to this idea of a mitigation hierarchy.
And I think the easiest way for me to think about it, is, you
know, we've got some subset of emissions that we consider what
we say is hard to abate. Or hard to eliminate and our
understanding of which emissions are hard to Abate, is always
shifting. For example, for a long time,
we've just stubbornly included steel production in there and
certainly the process emissions from Iron oxides.
That's something that, you know, it's really difficult to get rid
of its fundamental for the process.
It's not even an admission from the fuel, but like that's an
example, of a big chunk of a missions that we've always
considered hard or impossible to Abate.
We're going to need CCS or something.
Well, actually, there's been a lot of talk and progress around,
you know, using blue and green hydrogen, or Any other sort of
green fuels to do that same process.
So our definition of what hard to Abate is, is always changing.
But if we take it at any given point, if your organization,
your country, your city, or company, some portion of its
missions often, it's in the range of 15 to 30 percent that's
sort of economy or Global wide, right?
If you include, if you add up cement steel, Maritime transport
Long, Haul, Aviation agriculture.
You know, these buckets, whatever those are.
That's probably what. It's Priya to offset.
So we're kind of Beyond this point where it's really
permissible or appropriate to be offsetting your scope one
emissions your scope to emissions and just to cover what
those are cscope, one emissions, right?
The direct stuff coming out of your Smoke Stack.
If you will or from your factory scope, to emissions, being the
emissions associated with your energy procurement, which often
you can address through renewable energy credits, a
little, there are some issues there that does that actually
Advanced decarbonization of the grid.
Maybe maybe not. So it's really these scope three
or sort of Direct emissions that are typically the ones that are
most readily off. Settable unless, of course, you
know, for some organizations, their scope one emissions are
hard to Abate. If you're a cement factory, you
don't have a lot of options other than carbon capture and
storage. And so I think that's kind of a
good way. A good rule of thumb, to figure
out what you should be offsetting.
Now, your question is, basically your challenging that and
saying, well, why bother? And I think that that's in a
sense, true, if you had extremely high quality removal,
if you had, you know, extremely Only high durability of storage.
Removing carbon from the air with very low energy penalty,
storing it in a geological formation in perpetuity then why
not? I think.
Absolutely because the reality is the cost of doing that, at
least right now is so high, seven hundred dollars a ton.
Let's say it got down to a hundred dollars a ton even.
So if everybody were holding themselves accountable to offset
all of their scope 1 and 2 emissions with that expensive
solution, that would have the effect of a carbon price and it
would it would force them to mitigate because they The saying
why are we paying so much? Gosh, darn money to address
these group one emissions when we could just eliminate them.
Most people's cost of abatement will be lower, not necessarily.
But I think the bigger question is, you know, how long can we
afford to keep filling up carbon stocks?
And that's a nice way to think about, you know, what, the Earth
can do for us? I guess, I mean, we're really
relying heavily on the biosphere and lithosphere.
Meaning, the sort of, you know, layer of geology the subsurface.
And I think we have a good sense of how big, those carbon stocks.
Are and how much Headroom they have, how much more carbon can
we stuff in there? And I think there's been some
good work to think about that in terms of terrestrial carbon
storage, right? How much carbon can be put in
soils and in vegetation and there's also some sense of how
much carbon we can put into geological storage.
It's you know orders of magnitude bigger in fact than
the terrestrial storage. And so the real answer to your
question is, well, you know, sure why not.
Somebody can keep buying high-quality removal for all
their emissions. It's just that we're going to
eventually fill up these stocks that the Earth has Actually
provided for us these sinks. And when we do, so we're out of
luck. So we need to be thinking about
moving towards absolute zero. I often say the race to Net.
Zero is just you know, that's just a Finish Line that
immediately starts a new race to absolute zero.
And and that that sort of global rate is going to repeat itself
within many organizations, right?
They might achieve Net Zero or at least NetZero aligned
offsetting before they achieve anything close to absolute zero
missions, but they still need to be Thinking about that and
that's what I think. Science-based targets has been
really helpful at doing is saying we got to focus on what
that actual emission. Reductions plan is not ski to
principal one. I think the Headroom case for
decarbonizing first and the getting admission second is
really intriguing. I hardly ever hear anyone make
it though and I think it's because I'm speculating here,
and you can tell me if this is wrong, in your opinion, but that
I don't think there's a lot of faith and offsetting as a
strategy. I feel.
Most people think it's Grounded, in some cases of abuse or
greenwashing and rather than putting you know a $700 per ton
into geological sequestration, it'll be some dubious
three-dollar buck-fifty, sort of like avoided deforestation thing
and you're like they're going to claim it.
They're going to shout it from the rooftops and no one's going
to call him on it in a meaningful way.
Am I reading too much into that? No, it's a good point.
I mean, principal one here where we're saying use, high-quality
offsets, we're relying. Very heavily on those four.
Words. Use high quality offset.
Because the reality is it's a bit of a wake-up call that the
voluntary carbon Market. Meaning the collection of carbon
credits that are available the state of the voluntary carbon
Market is not good. It's quite dire.
In fact, I mean so many of the credits that you would go out
and buy right now. Don't meet the minimum criteria
that would allow you to say that their high-quality offsets.
That's this thing of this question about additionality,
right? Would the carbon benefit have
occurred but for your purchase is the carbon stored.
Permanently is the carbon benefit?
Achieved in perpetuity, right? Are you ensuring that you
haven't had any sort of secondary unintended
consequences on local communities or ecosystems.
There's so many elements there and the reality is, if you look
at what's out there, it's you know, 80% of avoided emissions.
First of all, it's very difficult to see what's avoided
emissions and what's carbon removal and we'll get to that in
a minute. When we talk about principle to
which is, you know, we've got to be shifting towards carbon
removal. How the heck can we do that?
If we don't even know what is a removal and what isn't?
But the reality is so much of what's out there, really Is hot
air and I think that's why we have an uphill battle.
But it's a battle worth fighting to actually regain trust and
build credibility. And that requires that, you
know, people be honest and open and transparent about the data.
They're collecting their need to also be ex-post analyses.
In other words, retrospective analyses, Barbara, hiya at
Berkeley is really prominent person.
That's been doing excellent work on that front to basically say,
you know, here's a carbon Market.
Here's a specific protocol that was used to generate credits did
it. You what it said it was going to
do. And if not why not, how can we
tweak the protocol and improve it?
So that the carbon credits that are getting approved are
actually additional. The actually doing something for
the atmosphere. So that's this piece about
maintaining transparency. But yeah, what's out there is
not great and I think having a higher threshold for what we
accept as NetZero aligned right. You mentioned proclaiming it
from the rooftops. That is what we want to do.
We want to declare Victory. We want to say I am Net Zero, we
can't do that. That's the entire purpose.
Purpose of the Oxford principles was to set out a perspective for
what you need to do in order to allow yourself to shout from the
rooftops. And and what we're going to talk
about that in a minute with principles two and three, it's
got to be this shift to removals and Long Live storage and it's
got to be ultra high quality offsets, then you can credibly
say you know, I'm on a journey to NetZero, right?
We're using offset skin and NetZero aligned way.
Great! Thank you.
Make my job easy. Why don't you just take us into
the second principle here? Okay, shift to carbon removal.
Offsetting Why? Why do that?
Why not avoided emissions? What is your motivation for this
section? Sure.
And I guess I'll just add one little thing on principle one
which kind of segments in which is this idea of maintaining
transparency. And that means you as a company.
As a buyer of offsets are being extremely transparent, about
what types of offsets you buy. And one of the key figures that
we've gotten a lot of feedback on from the Oxford principles.
Is this carbon credit taxonomy? So it's a figure in the
principles that gives you a flow chart that divides up, the
different carbon At types. And there's really just five
that we were able to identify and we can actually put all the
different carbon projects into those different buckets.
So, when we say, be transparent about what offsets you're
buying, what we mean, is be clear about what percentage of
your offsets come from, which bucket, so that you can be in
compliance with principle to, which says You must shift your
offsets towards carbon removal. So, there's this concept that
every carbon credit every carbon offset is either an emission
reduction, sometimes referred to as an avoided Chicken or it is a
carbon removal the former obviously requiring a Baseline
and sort of a counter factual assessment of what the world
would have been. If you hadn't had the current
project of course that same kind of you have to do that same
counter factual analysis for carbon removal as well.
It's just that it's a lot easier because the Baseline was doing
nothing and the action is to actually take carbon out of the
air and store it someplace and that's going to be really
important. I think we talked about
principle 3. Is this piece about storage.
You have to be storing the carbon somewhere.
But anyway principle to Says, You must shift towards carbon
removal and this gets back to what you brought up very early
in the conversation, you know, what is net 0?
And that 0 is when you balance any remaining emissions with
removals. And so that's the end State.
There's no other end State other than one in which everybody
who's still buying carbon credits is buying all carbon
removal credits now, does that transition have to happen
tomorrow? I mean, it would be great if it
could but as will get into the supply of removals is quite
scary. And also a lot of carbon credits
are Ambiguously, neither fully avoided emissions nor removals.
But the key here is that transparency.
So you're actually publishing and sharing to your
stakeholders, what the breakdown of your offsets are and that way
any sort of Watch Dogs can actually observe and hold you
accountable and say, you know, you're making progress but not
fast enough. If organizations, like Microsoft
that we work with, you know, one of our clients are coming
direct. They have basically gone
straight to 100% removals, and that's been really challenging,
but really were Awarding also to sort of prove that that's
possible and the point behind the second principle is
equivalence here being set up between if you mobilize a ton of
carbon dioxide you are obligated to pull it out of the atmosphere
and store it somewhere. You can't just avoid future
emissions. You have to actually remove in a
very clear demonstrable way. Is that what it is trying to be
done here in the section? Yeah, exactly.
It's basically saying you can avoid emissions or pay someone
To reduce their emissions in advance of NetZero.
But once you get to Net Zero by definition, that means globally.
We're removing just as much carbon as we are emitting.
So that's sort of the physical balance that needs to be
achieved. Now, in that global net zero
state, it is possible that some well, it's actually certain that
some people will be gross positive emitters, and other
people will be net - emitters and those on the whole will
balance out. So, there might be a form of
Aviation that still has some emissions that need to be
addressed by removals on the ground.
There may be some agricultural processes that we choose to
continue in the same way and we counteract them with
commensurate storage of carbon somewhere else.
And I think you also hit on this point that some avoided a
mission. Carbon credits don't seem to
involve the apparent storage of carbon and that would be
something like methane or n2o destruction.
It's a bit mysterious. You kind of destroyed the Where
is the carbon being stored? Well, it's not really being
stored, except perhaps, in this sort of uncombusted fossil fuel
that you didn't buy in the case of clean cook stoves, which is a
bit of a weird, weird thing to wrap your head around.
But all the other carbon credits do involve carbon storage and
this is where we have this this 2 by 2 Matrix on one axis, you
can ask is the carbon credit removing carbon from the
atmosphere, or is it avoiding emissions to the atmosphere on
the other axis of this Matrix? You can ask is the place where
you're putting the carbon. Very, very safe place with a low
risk of reversal or a less safe place with a higher risk of
higher, physical risk of reversal.
Both of those buckets have value and actually really it's a
spectrum, right? It's a spectrum of different
degrees of risk and permanence but I think that's what we're
trying to identify as there's this Matrix and we need to be
shifting towards the removal side because that's the only way
we can actually balance remaining emissions and
principle 3 which we'll talk about soon.
We need to be shifting towards that long live storage that Risk
storage. I think we should go there now.
Principle 3 is shift to long-term Long Live storage
which is something that we spend a lot of time thinking about it
Nori. Permanence is obviously very
important. You definitely don't want
leakage. There are also limits to how
much you can reasonably offer in terms of permanence to a
prospective buyer of negative emissions when they're buying
from you. What should we be doing with
permanent? We think it's important, we
don't want leakage, but we also don't want to make it
impossible. Possible for anything in the
ecosphere to be considered carbon removal.
I think there's a lot of important scale it's cheap right
now. I think there's a lot of
interesting work being done to make carbon removal in the
natural environment, more and more productive and trustworthy.
But if all you care about is permanence and maybe Stripes
thousand your permanence is a good example of this.
Does that rule out the ecosphere and is that good or bad?
How should we be thinking about permanence?
No small questions? No, well I mean this point
about, does that rule out the nature based Solutions?
We're not and I think, the first point I'll make there is that we
need to be, maximally deploying nature based Solutions.
No matter what, particularly when they have co-benefits
around, ecosystem restoration and biodiversity.
So I think this is some really important work that not only
said in and Steve Smith. Others have done to kind of talk
about how do we think about the role of nature in solving our
climate goals, but also our biodiversity goals and all these
other goals we may have, I mentioned earlier that an offset
is a two-sided transaction. So we don't have to necessarily
Ali fund all of these conservation outcomes using a
carbon credit as soon as we choose to use a carbon credit.
We have to remember that that requires that, we hold the
carbon benefit that we are claiming is happening to a very
high standard. If we're going for NetZero
aligned offsetting, which we are because we're talking about the
principles and that's you know, everybody wants to do the most
people want to do things. The right way is what your maybe
trying to get out here that carbon removal in the natural
world or nature, based Solutions are important but perhaps, Oops,
they are not as appropriate for a carbon Market or for carbon
Financial assets to be utilized. Is that sort of what you're
driving at. Exactly.
I mean it's possible to support these outcomes in their own,
right? And that's the piece that we
talked about in principle of for.
But, you know, it's important to Value the benefits that these
projects provide in and of themselves rather than tying
everything to a carbon benefit first and having a co-benefits
second, what we refer to, as a co-benefit in a lot of cases
with nature based Solutions. Particularly project-based
read/write avoided deforestation.
Station where it's very difficult to determine
additionality. It's very difficult to control
for indirect carbon leakage. By that, I don't mean physical
reversal but carbon I mean this fact that it's a bit of a
waterbed, you start carbon at one location but you haven't
changed fundamental demand for food and fiber.
Somebody is going to grow that palm oil somewhere else.
So that issue of the carbon basically being reshuffled
around on the Earth's surface. But on net, you're not actually
increasing it. That's one issue.
And then third, and finally this permanence right?
Like you mentioned, how do we think about I think it's
unreasonable to always think about permanence as wherever you
physically stored. The carbon that specific parcel
of carbon must remain there forever.
Because that's a good level of guarantee that frankly nature
based Solutions, just could never provide.
We can never say that a given acre of forest or a given plot
of Farmland that Nori works with, right?
We can never say that. That's going to stay stored in
perpetuity inevitably pests disease natural disasters,
changes in management human intervention, whether legal or
illegal. Eagle.
Something will happen at some point to cause the physical
re-release or reversal that carbon and that's okay.
That's just what we have to accept for that kind of
solution. So that's why I prefer to talk
about the risk of reversal. When you put lots of carbon in
terrestrial stuff, it sinks when you sort of add more and more
carbon two, soils. And vegetation, what you have to
recognize you're doing is you're actually sort of stacking up
risk. You're putting more and more of
that carbon at risk. Because remember what you're
doing, you're actually moving. We're always moving carbon from
one sphere to Other. We've got the lithosphere, all
the subsurface we've got, let's call it the anthropocene fear,
the place where we live, and all of our oil tanks and are places
where we start carbon, and then we've got the biosphere and also
the oceans and the atmosphere. But essentially when we offset
fossil emissions, we are actively converting fossil CO2
from the lithosphere into trishul carbon in the biosphere
and and that's a riskier place for it to be now.
That's okay. But we just have to recognize
that that if the biosphere Your flips from being a net sink, to
be to being in that source. And there's a lot of work that's
shown that even in response to 1.5 degrees of warming globally,
which, you know, at this rate it's looking like, it will be
difficult to avoid. That will have impacts on the
biosphere, right? That's going to kick into gear,
various amplifying effects. This is this ecosystem climate
response. Some of these feedback loops
that aren't necessarily aren't yet.
I should say incorporated into the carbon budgets.
And so, if that's the case, if these places We started carbon
start to release it on mass who's responsible for that the
person who paid for the storage in.
The first place is a company that may or may not even exist
anymore. And if it's been this hard for
us to hold fossil fuel companies and others accountable for their
past contributions to climate change.
I don't see how it's going to get any easier to hold a
company, who is trying to do the right thing.
Let's be honest, accountable, for a leakage event and no
company wants out on their balance sheet.
That's why these protocols have in place these limits to
permanence and you probably know more about this than I do it
special. With soil carbon where you know,
you have these sort of hundred-year guardrails in the
California cover Market, where you say listen if you can
guarantee this for 100 years that's good enough for our
purposes. What I want to say I'm
permanence is that it's really about recognizing that the only
enduring sustainable and state. The only sort of sustainable
NetZero. And by that, I mean a net, zero
state that you can keep going in.
Perpetuity is one in which you're putting the carbon in a
safe place and you're doing so commensurate with whatever
you're admitting, and Is where this idea of sort of like, for
like so matching terrestrial carbon carbon emissions that
come from soils, that come from vegetation with storage in
those. Same or similar, soils,
vegetation and matching geosphere fossil carbon
extraction from under the ground with geological storage of CO2.
We think that's a really useful framing because that allows you
to basically match like, for like, that's fascinating.
So if you're an oil and gas major, you're expected to fund,
climb works or something like that.
You're actually Sending the captured CO2 back into a
geological storage environment. Yes, absolutely.
I think holding the oil and gas companies accountable and
basically harnessing this margin that they're making when they
take you know essentially mineral wealth out of the ground
and turn it into money. There's a big margin that's
taken out and actually a lot of it is royalties and taxes.
But you know what? If we held the extractors of
fossil carbon responsible for putting carbon back into the
ground equivalent with what they dug up it, Security says, let's
leave the most expensive stuff to the people who are most
actively making use of fossil carbon and let's leave the
cheapest stuff like avoided. Deforestation to the emissions
that really have no one to speak for it for them.
So these emissions that are going to sort of start burping
out of the biosphere in a decade.
Or so, let's say, you know, who's responsible for those,
it's really hard. We're not good as a species that
solving this Collective action issue.
And so, if we don't know who's responsible for those, it's
safer to match those against the sort of low-hanging fruit and
say, you know, while we have you, while we have your
attention, fossil fuel companies, while you're still
making money, while we're still using fossil fuels at all.
Let's take advantage of that and let's make sure that you are
contributing to storing a initially small, but growing
fraction of the carbon and this is a policy proposal from Miles
Alan. That's referred to as the carbon
take back obligation. This is something.
We've been working on, we can add the link in the show notes
but it's essentially a policy that would make companies do
exactly that. Say anybody who's digging up
carbon or bringing carbon into a given region?
Is responsible for cleaning it up at the Wellhead at the
beginning of the process and that doesn't let the emitters
Downstream off the hook. But it actually forces the
extractors to have what we call Extended producer
responsibility, the same way producers of paper packaging or
car tires, have to pay for the costs that their product
creates. Why would we treat oil and gas
products any differently? No, I think carbon take back
obligations require a separate show entirely because there's so
much there to are. You also saying though, that if
you're involved in agricultural emissions, then you should focus
on soil, sequestration or Land Based mechanisms for carbon
removal or is that an appropriate application.
I think perhaps that could be the conclusion but I think we
want to keep it with the Oxford principles one to keep it high
level and say look we can't you know all we can really say with
confidence is you've got to shift towards removals and
You've got to shift towards Long Live storage.
Now how fast you make that transition?
There is some evidence to back up how fast that transition
should happen and we can talk about that.
But, you know, it's going to ultimately be up to individual
companies and this is a voluntary market after.
All right. I mean, I think we all
understand that this needs to be a compliance Market.
We need to make this stuff regulated and we need to make
this stuff mandatory and in the interim because it's voluntary
carbon Market. There's only so much we can ask.
I think what we have to do is hold companies accountable and
say you know your Anger aligned with the oxidizing principles
but the rate with which you're shifting towards removals and
Long Live storage after let's say, three or four years is way
too slow. Look at go look at Microsoft go.
Look at this other company. They've already made a
transition to 100% removals, you know, get with the program it
allows us to kind of separate the high ambition, folks, from
the low ambition, folks, and that's probably the most we can
ask for now. There is this point about
matching like-for-like, and I think that's right.
That, you know, we should be always cognizant of the When
we're making when we're moving carbon from the lithosphere into
the biosphere or vice versa. Right now, we're doing a lot of
converting fossil fuels into trees and we can only do that
for so long. And really, to my point earlier,
we should get the folks who are most able to pay for the more
permanent storage, which we know we're going to have to do
eventually. Anyways, it's just a question
of, who do we hold responsible for doing it.
And when mmm, but you lie, since I have you here, can I ask you
for some free business advice? I'll see if I have anything to
offer about everything dry with soil, sequestration of farmers
that we work with the only required 10-year contracts for
permanence and there's so much that goes into these permanence
discussions. Because as you noted in other
markets, were 100 years, is the norm that's off-putting to a
number of farmers and Growers because that's ultimately an
obligation that will fall on their grandchildren or maybe
even great-grandchildren and who knows what is going to happen to
their farming practices in. At time, it's it's scary to lock
yourself into a deal like that. So we've gone for something
shorter thinking that once that land is converted it is no more
naturally fertile and valuable. And so there's some inertia
we're hoping plays out in that it remains that way, right?
But we can't but we tell buyers of these nrt's Nori removal
times. We don't we'd say like we can
only specify for this amount of time beyond that you need
greater permanence that you either need to buy more or
something differently. Ultimately Nori is not a soiler
ad company. We want to be involved in
Removals broadly in our thinking about permanence and if and how
these assets are fungible against each other.
In terms of permanence I'll put a pin in that let sauce.
It went to you next. But how should we be approaching
soil? Is this an okay way to think of
it? I think you're absolutely right
that you can't get somebody to sign on to a hundred year
agreement. That's unreasonable, and it
wouldn't make sense but the reality was a lot of
regenerative agriculture and soil, carbon project types.
As I understand it is, you're basically paying for a behavior
change and repairing the paying to kind of build up that carbon
In the soil but it is vulnerable to being re-released.
If the land ownership changes the management practices change.
So it's probably most accurate to think of it in this sort of
ton year framing. As in, you're paying to keep one
ton of carbon in the ground for one year, that's what you're
paying for your not, right. And so, I think that's an
interesting model that Zach Parisa.
From Soviet era has pioneered and it's it's a difficult thing
to wrap your head around and I've even struggled to because I
think it doesn't really fit into this framework.
And, and it's Result, it would only be appropriate to have
those sort of short-lived carbon storage methods in the interim,
as a transition towards more permanent removals.
Now, again, back to my point about, you know, there are
plenty of reasons to be doing regenerative agriculture to be
storing carbons in soils and enhancing our soils and we
should be doing those and there's no reason why, you know,
there can't be additional claims that that buyers of credits
would make like if I wanted to have a net zero commitment and a
net positive impact on soil. Ation, I could do that and then
I could go out and fund regenerative agriculture on its
own Merit, not asking for any sort of carbon Credit in return.
So we have to think about models like that because that might be
an additional way to fund that behavior but it's definitely
difficult and I understand because, you know, we need to be
doing these things and yet they don't fit neatly into what we
know needs to happen from a geophysical standpoint in terms
of actually managing the carbon that's coming out and the carbon
that's going back in. I have this this Idea and feel
free to dunk on me. If you think I've made a wrong
turn that even if sort of the worst case here, the worst case
Beyond premature leakage for soil, carbon is that it only
lasts for ten years. And then the land is plowed up
and turned into a subdivision or something like that.
I think even buying us additional time of less carbon
in the atmosphere over the course of a decade or two or
three. While the more permanent
solution scale up, that still seems very valuable.
To me, I'm not sure exactly how it should be valued and maybe
it's not my place to judge. That's more of a, the market and
information needs to flow between parties to prevent out.
But is that right or wrong or some mix?
I think you're right that it has value in.
The big question is how much value and there is a way of kind
of quantitatively comparing the value of permanent storage to
the value of temporary storage and involves invoking a discount
rate. So it involves the terrifying
Prospect of deciding the degree to which we value.
True Generations, less than current Generations.
Well, with that, if you are capable of making those
diversions, I think it definitely has value.
And in the Oxford principles framing, what we're saying is
you know, it's important to keep escalating that percentage of
removals that you're buying and that percentage of long-lived or
low risk storage that you're putting carbon into.
And as long as you're on that quadratically increasing pathway
all the way to 100% by 2045. Because as I think, we'll see
with the new ipcc report, it's not 2050 anymore to get It's a
net zero for 1.5 it's probably something more like 2045.
So by the time we get to 2045 mid-century, we've really got to
be storing carbon permanently. We've got to be removing it from
the air rather than the accounting element of paying
others to avoid. So it does have value but it's
only part of the transition, it plays a role and we can't expect
organizations to only rely on that.
They need to show in good faith, if they're scaling up those
other Solutions at the same time, indeed, in this tinier
thing you bring up to, we have Thinking a lot about that as
well, because we think if permanence is the most important
factor about a given carbon removal, sort of being able to
compare against the amount of permanence that can reasonably
be guaranteed allows for some fungibility between these
different types of carbon removals.
I think I mean that's ignoring all the co-benefits and other
reasons someone might prefer to support blue carbon or something
else for their own reasons. But I also have this worried
that already took this Amount of time to educate policymakers and
buyers of offsets and negative emissions to think in terms of
tons. But now you've added temporal
Dimension to every asset to it kind of hurts my brain to think
about it. And I work on this on a daily
basis. So is it worth the cost to
re-educate Consumers and policymakers about thinking in
terms of ten years rather than tons?
Is it more trouble than it's worth?
Or is that the best way that we should go?
I would not embark on that project.
I would keep it rooted in the You know, races Euro criteria,
for what Net, Zero means things like the Oxford principles.
Other guidance that says, what does NetZero aligned offsetting?
Look like, it looks like using very high quality, offsets that
have a high certainty of carbon benefit.
It looks like shifting your carbon offsetting practices
towards removals. It looks like shifting your
practices towards Long Live storage, eventually achieving
100% And finally and so you got to do that, right?
But that's only a portion that's that's the sort of fraction that
you're escalating. There's there's There's some
leeway perhaps in what else? You're buying and maybe that's
where carbon credits that offer a carbon benefit.
But one that has less certainty or one that lasts for a short
amount of time. I think another way to think
about it is we should think about carbon stocks and sinks as
things that people need Steward. And so if you put carbon in the
soil and it comes back out, well, someone should be
responsible for when that carbon comes back out.
It's like think about the example of a lot of the
reforestation that she'll is doing in Southeast Asia.
Where they'll buy up degraded palm oil Plantation.
Well 20 years ago, that palm oil Plantation was a tropical forest
and it was destroyed and the carbon was released who was
responsible for that when they go back and re Forest that plot,
they want to sell you a carbon credit.
That says when you pump their fuel out of the pump the petrol
station depending on which country you live in you are
doing so with carbon neutral gas.
But they're basically matching that reforestation that carbon
sequestration with this. Carbon when in fact you could
argue it should go towards counteracting.
The original deforestation that took place 20 years ago.
So similarly if you pile up carbon in the soil carbon sink
and then it gets released, someone should be responsible
for cleaning up that mess. You know, you should have to
store an equivalent amount of carbon to what was leaked out.
And I think this can be accomplished with jurisdictional
based programs that cover, you know, not just an individual
project, but many, many projects where you say, you know, on the
whole To make sure that the carbon stock retains its value
and just keeps escalating up and up and up and if we ever have a
shortfall maybe there's a maybe there's a buffer pool that kicks
in but even better there's somebody who's on the hook to
actually go out and let's say top up the carbon storage back
to the value that it's supposed to be at.
Hmm, so that sort of thing about this this time, your thing about
then. So it sounds like, if we
shouldn't try to re-educate people in terms of the tinier.
And we also accept that a ton is not a ton is not a time.
So then are we giving up the dream of fungibility is that may
be a hurdle. Do you think that we should no
longer try to make carbon removal somewhat equivalent in
this in this way? Yeah.
I think what? We need to be focusing on is
honesty and credibility around carbon benefits.
And at this stage, you know, we're facing a market that's
voluntary, carbon Market, where, you know, maybe 80% of the
credits are renewable energy and avoided deforestation.
And these carbon project types that really just frankly can't
demonstrate that. They really did anything in the
atmosphere to a high degree of certainty.
So we're starting from a very low level so I think the battles
to fight now are to tighten the rules so that we actually have
to demonstrate Bill changes in the atmosphere due to the carbon
project. No.
Actual carbon benefits and that's those are the battles to
be fighting. I think introducing ton years is
possible. I think we just have to
recognize that the simplest formulation here is to basically
say, one out, one in if you're taking carbon out of a stock
which is what you're doing, whenever you dig up, some fossil
fuels, you've got to put carbon back in and if we actually have
those physical flows matched and we can we can ensure that I mean
there's a huge role for soil carbon there because there's
plenty of carbon belching out of soils all over the world at any
given time. And so why don't we match that
physical outflow with physical inflow?
Adding carbon two similar stocks.
So I think that that physical balance is really important
because the more we abstract away from that, with, with these
credits, we come into more danger around creating
situations where there's not fungibility.
I think a ton is not a ton right Frankie.
Carbon credits are extremely different, they're quite
heterogenous and I think maybe that's what we tried to do with
the Oxford principles, taxonomy is say there's fundamentally
different buckets of carbon projects and and they have
different roles to play and companies need to be clear about
what they're buying. They need to make sure that
they're on the right. Trajectory they need to
publicize that and share that, it's maybe not the most direct
answer your question. Because, you know, I think
there's a lot we need to educate and assist on when it comes to
high quality. Eating because if somebody just
goes out to the market and they just buy whatever they see
first, it's probably not going to be good and and are they even
going to know that? So I applaud the work of, you
know, a lot of journalists that I've seen who are writing these
up frankly, almost expose is where they sort of say, look at
this current project like, if whether you're a scientist or a
lay person like, does this does this hold water like it clearly
doesn't, you know a common sense can go a long way if you really
you know shine a light on some of these practices and people
say you know what this is just not It clearly, it needs to be
tightened. Well, how about you take us to
this fourth? Principal support the
development of NetZero aligned offsetting how might that
proceed, right? So fourth and final yeah, this
is really saying, in addition to making these transitions in your
offsetting portfolio, it's important that you as a credible
actor as a NetZero and actor are actually pushing off setting as
a practice in the right direction.
This mostly comes in the form of setting up long-term agreements.
So we Them as a bit earlier. But, you know, actually being
willing to engage with some carbon projects who are going to
need to show that they have a buyer for their carbon credits
over a period of time. So you can actually be very
supportive. Some of these nascent earlier
stage Technologies, by pooling Demand with other buyers and
actually engaging in one of these long-term off take
agreements. There's also this idea around
forming alliances with your industry.
Whether you're a group of lawyers or group of
universities, you're a group of some Producers who have kind of
common problems frankly and maybe common Solutions you have
a similar mix of emissions and and you can pull together and
actually maybe have strength in numbers and maybe have
principles across your industry that you can decide on together.
And then there's this idea around, supporting the
preservation of Nature and Restoration in its own right.
When we talked about this earlier, we're part of
participating in in a NetZero. Aligned trajectory is making
sure that all All of these different environmental crises
are addressed. And, although you need to be
certain and sure that if you want to declare net zero
emissions, the offsets you're using are actually producing a
tangible effect on the atmosphere, they're increasingly
only removals and they're increasingly only Long Live
storage. Now that is going to start to
limit the degree to which some companies in the 20.
You know, late 2020s 2030 2040. S can rely on some nature based
Solutions but again, that's no reason not to continue to
support. Those Solutions in their own
right and find ways. That governments companies,
everybody can make sure that enough money is going to
preserve what ecosystems we have left.
And also, after we achieve what I often call Peak Farm, in other
words, the peak amount of land under agricultural management
and we start to shrink that whether that's through more
efficient production or, you know, changes in diets that free
up land, we're going to start to, we hope have free land that
we can use to free from a carbon standpoint.
Right? Not not necessarily free free
lands to store carbon. Carbon on to allow, ecosystems
to flourish all of us. And we have to make sure that we
do that, even if it's no longer necessarily part of, or as
explicitly, part of a carbon Market as before.
Okay. Well, what do you think has
changed since the publication of these principles, Eli has
anything out of complexity or Nuance here, thinking, or have
you personally ditched any of these and said I do longer
support this principle? I doubt that's the case, but
what's happened to your thinking on it?
Well, we've gotten some great feedback and I think one of the
pieces that we've realized is this point that I just made
about really needing to emphasize the importance of
nature based Solutions as a means of solving, the sort of
dual crises of, you know, the biodiversity crisis.
And the climate crisis, I think we're seeing a couple of things
we're seeing in a sense, the principles were quite timely,
because a lot of entities are claiming to be Net Zero and
they're not. In other words, they're still
using avoided emission. Offsets, we saw a little Twitter
storm. Erupt a few weeks ago, when Mark
Carney, I think innocently but it accidentally tweeted that
Brookfield, asset management was not zero.
And of course it's not they, they buy avoided emission
offset. So I think we're seeing a rise
of people making claims that need to be pushed back against
whereas we've exited the honeymoon, phase of NetZero.
Commitments. Now we're in a period where we
actually have to hold accountable.
People that are making these claims and make sure that
they're actually aligned with the science.
And with things like the Oxford principles and science-based
targets guidelines and other Our other got forms of guidance.
So that's something we're seeing.
I think we've also witnessed a big Push by the fossil fuel
companies to support nature based Solutions.
But I think this we have to observe with great caution
because again I think we might be playing into their hands if
we're if we're supporting nature-based Solutions at the
expense of supporting some of the costs earlier but more
secure forms of storage with engineered Solutions.
I do worry about that that we're losing our Opportunity to
harness the ability to pay of these companies who are
profiting from from climate change.
Essentially, who are profiting from fossil fuels.
Hold them responsible for helping the development and the
evolution of these nascent removal Technologies.
Yeah, maybe that's a good segue to to share a little bit about
some some work I've been doing it and some thinking that we've
been doing around what does carbon Removal really need to
get up to speed because if you wanted to go full steam ahead on
the Oxford principles. Auro, where are you going to
find all that removal, right? There's definitely some
reforestation you can buy, but in terms of mineralization
enhanced weathering direct are capture biomass carbon removal
and storage. These frankly, quite expensive,
engineered solutions that deliver that higher degree of
confidence in terms of permanence, where you going to
get those, how are you going to develop that market?
Do you know, are you putting that on me?
We're trying man. Come on, yeah.
No, yeah, so I think we've done a I hope that is a useful
overview of the Oxford principles and kind of how they
came to be and where they are. I don't know if, if we miss
anything there, but yeah, one thing that's become clear since
the Oxford principles were published.
One thing that's certainly clear, is that removals need
help, right? First of all, organizations,
like carbon 180, have done an excellent job.
This is an independent advocate in the US who have really become
the locus of knowledge and support for carbon removal and
really a place for people to go and understand.
There's also something called the CD, our primer, the carbon
dioxide If a primer, which we can put in the show notes, which
is an excellent resource, I'm sure you've already talked about
that a bit in the podcast, but we're realizing is, you know,
I'm Bates, at the University of Oxford.
And so I'm exposed to kind of what's happening in Europe, but
also a little bit as an American, what's happening
across the pond and what we're seeing is that, you know, CDR
carbon dioxide Removal really needs Europe, and Europe, needs
CDR as well. And that is a piece of the
puzzle that isn't really happening.
So if you look back at the evolution of solar and wind some
of these other climate Ins, you know, Europe, played a massive
role in providing those deployment incentives.
The German feed-in, tariff. Other things that really allowed
these Technologies to flourish and develop.
And so I'm actually in the process of helping launch an
advocacy organization that will play this role in Europe that
will actually bring the conversation on carbon removal
in Europe to a healthier place. Because I think right now
there's a lot of concerns with carbon removal.
I think when people hear the word carbon removal, even in the
context of the Oxford principles when they hear that.
Oh wow. We have to switch all our Start
removals, I don't know. What do you think grass like to
be? I think people hear that word
removal and they think of the engineered solutions, they think
of direct are capturing these kind of new technologies.
When in fact removal encompasses, many many
Technologies and Pathways including the nature based
Solutions. Yeah, thanks for sharing all
that. And I'm so happy to hear about
there being more organizations dedicated to thinking about
carbon removal. I think it's specialized enough
that it really needs this level of care, and it is strange that
there. There's a lot happening in
Europe, but a lot of the discourse I see in Europe.
It feels more closely. Linked to geoengineering
debates. Maybe then exists only United
States. The might just be my perception,
that maybe it, maybe it's yours too.
I think that's, that's right. That the idea of removals is
somewhat frightened, people are concerned that there's going to
be some, you know, industrial capture or Industries are going
to use removals as an excuse to sort of lock in behaviors that
we don't want to perpetuate. And so we know at this point
that removals are a compliment, not it, Placement for emission
reduction and so their role is critical, not just for
eliminating those hard to Abate emissions but also, I really
like Polly Jean bucks point about, you know, Carbon removal
is a means of decolonizing the atmosphere.
In other words, it's a means of holding accountable those
entities and countries who put all the carbon in the air in the
first place. So I don't think really anybody
should be afraid of carbon removal as a concept because you
know, at this point it's very clear from the ipcc and other
sources that we're going to need it to achieve our temperature
goals, but there might be some very legitimate Emmett, fears
and concerns. So what we're trying to do is
launch a vehicle in organization and NGO, that's we call it, you
know, Carbon 180s little sister European sister because what we
want to do is three things, really support policy advocacy.
So be an independent philanthropic, Lee funded
Advocate, who can actually you know 10x the research budget for
carbon removal. Who can push for that deployment
funding? I mentioned deployment
incentives. That really kind of get these
things moving and developing and also Providing fair and safe
rules of the road because I think, you know, if you're
concerned about carbon removal, if you're, if you're concerned
about the idea of direct air capture a geological storage or
some of these Solutions, you know, the right solution I would
say is not to fight against them but to engage with them and say,
you know, who should be setting the rules to make sure that
they're done safely. I think it's really a matter of
society acknowledging that we will need to remove carbon and
that it's an important piece of the puzzle and that the mix of
carbon removal Pathways that we deploy Is really something we
need to decide as a society. But right now, we're at risk of
making that decision based on a lack of knowledge, a sense of
fear and and just simple heuristics like, what's the
cheapest thing? So, we want to change that.
We want to change the narrative and so that's why another thing
that this organization will do is convenient, EOS environmental
groups and help to are some of those concerns start to build a
coalition that's something that we've seen happen in the US, the
u.s. you can really build a coalition around the concept of
carbon removal and make sure. It's done responsibly and then
third and finally this idea of fund your education.
We think there needs to be a place for philanthropists and
funders to go to get up to speed with carbon removal and
understand how it fits into their strategy and how they can
actually support, not just fundamental basic research but
also lab exit, right? Getting Technologies out of the
lab and into the marketplace and supporting all these other forms
of advocacy and convening and the things that need to happen
to build a thriving ecosystem. So I'll just close with.
What the status of this organization is, we are
attending to be, you know, very collaborative and complementary
with other efforts that are at play in Europe.
So we're just trying to fill gaps here.
We're not trying to do anything that others are doing.
We've received some anchor support from the Grantham
Foundation from the climate Pathfinders foundation.
So we have an initial pool of funding to go out.
And so right now what we're looking for what I'd encourage
listeners to check out. Is we have a posting for an
executive director. So we're looking for somebody to
lead this organization to take on this budget.
You've raised these Partners Partnerships that we formed but
really build an organization that will be a champion for
carbon removal and in a way it's, you know, the face of
carbon removal for Europe, something that the u.s. already
has in some ways through Noah digestion and other excellent
members of the CDR ecosystem but doesn't really exist in Europe
yet. So your app needs CDR, CDR needs
Europe and we'll put in the show notes.
A link to CDR advocacy Europe.com where people can
check out the Ed listing and see if they if they they want to
support and get involved. I think there's going to be a
lot in the show notes today so you should definitely check that
out if you're listening last. I heard.
Yeah, you were looking for an executive director to lead this
new effort. What's the latest?
How's it been going? Absolutely.
Yeah. We've had some, some really
strong applicants from from really all across industry.
Climate activists, people that have worked in policy positions.
So it's been, it's been really exciting to see and we're just
going through that process now, but we're definitely still
looking for additional candidates who are Didn't, you
know, the reality is carbon removal is a relatively new
space and so the ecosystem doesn't really exist.
And so there aren't necessarily A lot of people that have deep
knowledge of carbon removal and all these things.
So we're looking farther afield. We're definitely looking for
people that have, you know, built organizations, people who
are able to set a vision and be a charismatic leader that can
inspire people and who are willing to be flexible
diplomatic, and thoughtful in how they learn about.
And then communicate the need for urban removal because it is
a very difficult topic. Its complex covers, a lot of
different areas of science. It has engendered controversy
and so we need someone that's able to speak to different
audiences and really help bring in the concerns and the
supporters and Skeptics of CDR from from very different walks
and areas. Are you guys going to start a
podcast? We could pick something up for
us, that would be fun. I there's a lot, right?
There's a lot to talk about. I think we're close to 200
episodes deep of this on Al You feel like I have a, had the
final say on anything. At this point I feel like at the
complexity is only increasing. Yeah.
But no I mean at least that's one of the reasons why it's not
that difficult to keep the show going is because they're
genuinely interesting and difficult problems.
And there's so many angles and I just discover new ones all the
time, but specifically for your efforts in Europe.
I wish you lots of success. I'm happy to see more people
thinking about this. I love seeing more people enter
carbon removal as a career. I love seeing thoughtful people.
Try to make some of these conversations happen.
I think it's really important. I get kind of discouraged
sometimes of the Timbre of the conversation gets a little too
aggressive or down area. And I like that.
There's an attempt to elevate it.
But anyways, not the not to go back to that familiar territory
that for as much as I talk about, not wanting to do it.
I have meta comments on it all the time.
I should stop doing that. Anyways though links all those
things are in the show notes, you'll have someone to follow.
Your work, personally, where's the best place for them to do?
So, yeah. Thanks, Ross.
Well, first of all, encourage anyone to check out the Oxford
principles for, that's your line carbon offsetting and actually
another paper that we're about to put out that I'd love to also
share in the show notes where we actually show a vision for how
you can operationalize, those principles, how you can actually
have an offset that has baked into it all of the things that I
just talked about. So if that sounds appealing,
this paper is for you. But in terms of following me,
I'm at Eli. I am Larson on Twitter.
You can check me out there. And yeah, I'd be Keen to hear
from anyone. So we'll include some ways to
reach me in the show notes and I really look forward to
continuing these conversations, me too.
Happy to have you back some time to talk about future papers and
research, Etc. There's clearly a lot here.
I left a lot of comments of yours go by without responding.
Even though I wanted to, I don't know if you knew that Eli was
like, oh I know that comment the comment has four or five
noteworthy things now that I didn't monologues through them.
So I'd love to. I wasn't good.
It wasn't, it wasn't a factor of the way in which you speak so
much as the content is important.
And there's a lot to say about all of it.
Anyways, it's a good sign. There's more to talk about and
we'll have to do more in the future.
But in the meantime, thank you so much for coming on the show.
It was a lot of fun and I'm grateful for having you here.
Thank you Ross. My pleasure, thank you.
And thank you for listening to if you like what we're doing
here. Please rate and review us on
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