S4 #9 | CDR Buyers Deep Dive - Part 2: Ready, Set, Buy!

Get in loser, we’re going shopping. In part two of our buyers deep dive, Tom and Emily move from motivation to mechanics. Because deciding to buy carbon removal is only the beginning. The real challenge is everything that comes next.

In this episode:

🏗️ Buying CDR Is Not Exactly A Trip To The Shops: Tom and Emily step inside the deal room to ask what buying carbon removal actually involves, and why the process still looks different from buyer to buyer.

🤝 Direct, Marketplace, Or Somewhere In Between?: We explore the major routes into the market, and how each path shifts who carries the burden of due diligence, education, risk, and relationship management.

📚 A Tiny Language Check-In: Offtakes. Pre-purchases. Payment on delivery. Emily makes sure we are all still speaking the same language.

💥 Buy Now, Pay Earlier: We look at catalytic buying, and why paying early can matter as much as buying at all. For early-stage suppliers, pre-purchases can unlock cash flow, credibility, and further finance. But for buyers, they also mean taking on very real delivery and technology risk.

💸 Money, Money, Money: Eventually, every lofty climate intention runs into the same question: which budget line is paying for this? We explore the internal mechanics of getting CDR through procurement, finance, legal, and contract systems that were not really designed with carbon removal in mind.

🧾 Internal Carbon Pricing, Revenue Shares, And Other Ways To Fund The Madness: Klarna explains its internal carbon fee model. Wise explains why it ties climate finance to revenue. The wider point: there is still no single standard approach, but serious buyers are finding ways to make climate spending durable.

😵‍💫 Why It Still Feels So Higgledy-Piggledy: Buyers, suppliers, and intermediaries are all building the path as they walk it, and that friction has consequences for who enters the market, and who gets left waiting for capital.

👥 Featuring

Guest insights from:

• Paolo Piffaretti (ClimeFi)
• Bee Hui Yeh (Patch)
• Brendan Molony (Docusign)
• Caroline Corbett-Thompson (Wise)
• Adam Fraser (Terraset)
• Ibrahim Sarwar (Artio)
• Alexander Farsan (Klarna)

Hosts: Tom Previte and Emily Swaddle

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Podcast Coordinator: Ellie Morris