The Carbon Removal XPRIZE has been a major focal point of the CDR industry for years. And Mati Carbon just won the $50M Grand Prize. How did they do it, and how did their surprising and counterintuitive approach to enhanced rock weathering win over so many other contestants?

Shantanu Agarwal is the Founder and CEO of Mati Carbon, and he's on the show today to discuss how the various novel ways they went to market against the advice of others all added up to being an XPRIZE winner.

Sometimes being mission-driven means breaking all of the other rules!

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Mati's website

Email Mati: contact@mati.earth

Carbon Removal XPRIZE

Everyone thinks of national and international governments leading or failing on climate change. But what about cities and smaller political entities? How can they lead on climate and carbon removal when larger entities may be focused elsewhere? Since carbon removal infrastructure is likely to end up at least partially within urban or periurban environments, how can we prepare ourselves and our policies for such a near-term future?

To answer these and so many more questions, Christiaan Gevers Deynoot, the Founder and Program Lead of the City CDR Initiative joins host Ross Kenyon (who also serves as a Strategic Advisor, Communications for the City CDR Initiative.)

This becomes a discussion about the big questions of political order, whether we prefer bottom-up experimentation and ferment or top-down legibility and scale, and to what degree the agony and the ecstasy of central planning may be present for CDR at the municipal level.

This show gets highly philosophical and highly practical, which is a terrific combination when one can get it!

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⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Arbonics⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Resources

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City CDR Initiative on Linkedin

The Federalist Papers

Napoleonic Code

James C. Scott's Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed

Haussmann's renovation of Paris

Should every dollar spent in carbon removal be maximally catalytic? Or is it okay to try to get a really good deal for your net-zero target? What even is this industry for?!

Joining the show today—somehow for the first time ever—is Robert Höglund, a long-time CDR-watcher and writer; Co-Founder of the carbon removal's data repository-of-record, CDR.fyi, and the Head of CDR at Milkywire.

Robert endures a barrage of questions about how his thinking on carbon removal has changed over the years, and him and host Ross Kenyon try to ferret out what it actually means to be catalytic. Is carbon accounting just for knuckleheads? The truth... may surprise you.

This Episode's Sponsors

⁠ClimeFi⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Arbonics⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Robert Höglund on LinkedIn

Robert Höglund's website for his advisory work

Robert Höglund's many articles

CDR.fyi

Milkywire

348: Is a Lack of Open Science Holding Carbon Removal Back?—w/ Freya Chay & Tyler Kukla of CDRXIV & CarbonPlan

333: Coproduction & Additionality: How Do We Draw the Line for Carbon Removal?—w/ Grant Faber, Carbon-Based Consulting

"Collective Action Problem" on Wikipedia

The Dark Knight ferry scene

Everyone's focused on carbon credit offtakes and Voluntary Carbon Market purchases, but the compliance markets represent the vast majority of carbon assets in circulation. How do these markets work, and how might carbon removal interact with them in the future?

Mike Azlen is the CEO and CIO of Carbon Cap Management LLP, a firm which trades within various compliance markets.

We discuss why private traders like his company can help price discovery in compliance markets, and address some common criticisms of market-based approaches to climate change (both VCM and compliance markets.)

Carbon removal is going to figure into various compliance markets in the future, but how exactly will that work? Might that be the demand boost that carbon removal needs to scale?

There is also bonus content from this episode about some of Mike's observations about VCM failures. It will be released on Saturday, May 24th. Become a paid subscriber to access it when it is published!

This Episode's Sponsor

ClimeFi

⁠⁠⁠⁠Arbonics⁠⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠⁠Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics⁠⁠⁠⁠

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Resources

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Carbon Cap Management LLP

Carbon Cap's Resource Library

Seemingly everyone in carbon removal says they want more data transparency and the sharing of scientific results. Why isn't open science more present, and how can we get more of it? Could a pre-print server for CDR be part of the solution?

Today is the official launch of CDRXIV ("cee-dee-archive"), a new initiative from CarbonPlan that aims to spur scientific conversations within the carbon removal community.

On this episode, Freya Chay (the CDR Program Lead at CarbonPlan and a Member of the Advisory Board to CDRXIV) and Tyler Kukla (a CDR Research Scientist at CarbonPlan and the Content Manager for CDRXIV) are on the show to explain how pre-print servers drive progress in other scientific fields, why CDR needs one, and how it may change our industry.

If you'd like to submit data and/or a paper for publication to CDRXIV, please email hello@cdrxiv.org, or visit their submission portal here.

This Episode's Sponsor

⁠⁠⁠Arbonics⁠⁠⁠

⁠⁠⁠Listen to the RCC episode with Lisett Luik from Arbonics⁠⁠⁠

Become a sponsor by emailing carbon.removal.strategies[at]gmail.com

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Resources

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CarbonPlan

CDRXIV

Submit research to CDRXIV

335: How Nori Created a Direct Air Capture+Storage Methodology: A Case Study—w/ Radhika Moolgavkar & Rick Berg

Carbon removal only has a few exits. Today’s guest was involved in two of them, and he’s bringing his lessons.

Jim McDermott is the founder and CEO of Rusheen Capital Management, LLC, an investment firm that makes a few early-stage bets and works with companies much more closely than most investors do. He's had a long and storied career in energy and as the founder and CEO of Stamps.com.

Jim shares his lessons from exiting 1PointFive and Carbon Engineering to Occidental Petroleum (who also just bought Holocene, another direct air capture company). He lays out his case for alternatives to the classical venture approach, and proposes a new philanthropic model he believes has a chance of filling in carbon removal’s (in)famous demand gap.

Listen in to lessons for entrepreneurs during tough times and Jim's predictions for direct air capture and the carbon removal sector as a whole.

This Episode's Sponsor

⁠⁠Arbonics⁠⁠

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Resources

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Rusheen Capital Management, LLC

1PointFive

Carbon Engineering

Occidental Petroleum

Holocene

"Why Oxy’s Acquisition Of Holocene Signals A Maturing Carbon Removal Industry" at Forbes, by Phil de Luna

In carbon removal, landing a major offtake agreement—like Microsoft’s purchase of 44,000 credits from Carba—is often seen as the holy grail. But what happens next? How does the money flow, and can debt financing bridge the gap between signature and scale?

In this episode of Reversing Climate Change, host Ross Kenyon unpacks the deal between Microsoft and Carba, a waste-to-value biochar company turning landfill-bound biomass in Minnesota into durable carbon removal.

With credits to be delivered over five years, Carba needed capital to ramp up production. Enter Structure Climate, which is financing the deal to help Carba meet its commitments—showcasing a compelling model for how debt finance can unlock climate impact.

Guests Andrew Jones, CEO and Cofounder of Carba, and Matt Schmitt, Founder and CEO of Structure Climate (where Ross serves as an advisor), walk us through the mechanics of the deal, the role of debt vs. equity, and what this means for the future of carbon removal finance.

Resources

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"Carba Announces 5-Year Carbon Removal Credit Purchase Agreement with Microsoft" announcement

Structure Climate

Carba

Microsoft's carbon removal program