How CDR can cross ‘The Chasm’ (Part 2 of 2) – Climagination with Jason Grillo

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Getting to a mainstream market is possible in carbon removal; here’s some thoughts on how

“A bit of advice given to a young Native American at the time of his initiation: 

‘As you go the way of life, you will see a great chasm. 

Jump. 

It is not as wide as you think.”

― Joseph Campbell


Welcome back! I’m writing this as a companion post to Part 1 where I proposed that CDR is at a ‘chasm’ point between an early market and a more mainstream class of customer. In this post (Part 2 of 2), I will offer some suggestions on how a carbon removal project developer might make that transition. Once again, I’ll adapt key principles from Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm to durable carbon removal, this time talking about specific actions which early stage companies can take that might yield success.

As a reminder, here is a graphic of Moore’s technology adoption lifecycle curve:

Image: https://smashfly.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/crossing-the-chas.jpg

And a shorthand reminder of the three segments most in play for CDR now: 

      1. Enthusiasts (AKA Innovators) who are most interested in technology for technology’s sake.
      2. Visionary customers who want to be the first to implement new solutions as the start of revolutionizing the way businesses operate.
      3. Pragmatists who are Mainstream customers less interested in being the first to lead, desiring lower risk products at higher volume, with more sensitivity on price.

Because these Mainstream customers are qualitatively quite different in their needs from Early Adopters, succeeding with that group is akin to bridging a marketing Chasm.

Achieving product adoption in this third, Pragmatist group requires a different set of tools compared to the first two. To that end, based on my reading of Moore’s principles here are some strategies that I have adapted to durable CDR.

A: Target a segment of customers, not a whole market. 

Moore talks a bit about finding a market larger enough to be A) financially meaningful but B) small enough that a company can achieve at least 50% of market share among those customers. Pragmatist customers are seeking ‘the market leader’ no matter what that market might be – this group might be geographically defined, or psychographically defined, but the critical point is to define a small enough segment that you can dominate while still making meaningful financial gains. 

Many companies fail by trying to define their market too broadly: “We’ll target all of forestry with our innovative CDR solution!” is, for a startup, an impossible task. Venture investors do like a 10-year ‘hockey stick’ growth curve showing how the company (and its investors) could be zillionaires…in 2037; but they also really like a startup who shows how the initial, well-defined, smaller market segment will get the company through the next 2-3 years. Defining and dominating a tiny segment of the market and getting your business started among mainstream customers in that group is a way to win.

Examples: Carbicrete is manufacturing cast concrete pieces using CO2 as a feedstock. It would be one thing if they were to target “all concrete producers” – a daunting task. Rather, they fixate on a specific starting point that would likely yield success, and then build from that initial group of customers in which the solution you provide is the dominant one.  Example 2: Goal300 is targeting Christmas Tree farms in the Pacific Northwest as customers who would apply enhanced rock weathering to soils. It’s a specific type of customer, who has a customized set of needs, but large enough to get the business started to bridge later to a more mainstream market.

Generating reference customers through word of mouth is the goal here. One mainstream Pragmatist customer will talk to other Pragmatist customers about their product experience: as they are more risk averse relative to Visionary customers, they value the assurance of having another person’s opinion on a product before buying it. Cast concrete purchasers who speak to other cast concrete purchasers. Christmas Tree farmers who talk to other Christmas Tree farmers in a particular region. 

Talk to a variety of customers in different segments when thinking through which one to target. And also listen for the needs of various internal stakeholders within that customer company (more on this coming up in Part ‘B’ below!).

A great way for such customer discovery is to attend the industry conference for that particular customer segment! Learn who they talk to, and how they relate to each other, and what their common needs are. Because insofar as a market exists, it moves at the speed of word of mouth from reference customer to reference customer, building momentum for success among the first mainstream segment to target, so that the product can get adopted by other segments after establishing itself as the market leader in that initial ‘beachhead’ segment.

B: Figure out how to satisfy three crucial stakeholder roles in your target customer. 

Those influencers within the customer entity, per Moore, are:

      1. The end-user: who uses the product you sell
      2. The technical buyer: who evaluates the qualifications of your product
      3. The economic buyer: who provides the financial resource to pay for the product

To illustrate, I’ll use the best non-climate example from my professional experience in pharmaceuticals:

      • The end-user is the patient, who uses the product to combat a disease
      • The technical buyer would be the physician prescribing the pharmaceutical, based on their expert evaluation of the attributes of the product
      • The economic buyer is the private or government insurance company – a ‘Payer’ in pharma industry terms – or in some cases the patient themself who pays for the pharmaceutical intervention.

For durable CDR companies in a voluntary carbon market, the end user could be the corporate sustainability professional who uses the carbon removal credit to report on the Net Zero goal achieved through offsetting (or insetting). The carbon removal purchase itself serves a useful purpose to that individual.

The technical evaluator could be an outside consultancy or internal group of technical people hired for the purpose of understanding the project(s) in play. Unlike pharmaceuticals, there’s no state-mandated licensure for prescribing CDR tonnage! A select few companies have large numbers of in-house technical staff who evaluate CDR projects as they come in. Most mainstream companies will not have these resources, and as such would rely on an intermediary, such as a marketplace, broker, or consultancy to provide that technical diligence. 

The economic buyer is typically the Finance department, where price for tonnage would be paramount relative to other projects that are recommended by the sustainability department – and external or internal evaluation teams. As I wrote previously, one way to convince a CFO is to demonstrate tangible economic value by pursuing the carbon removal project. Bundling the CDR credit through insetting with a physical product, or otherwise selling the physical product of carbon removing activity alongside a separate unbundled offset represents a revenue-generating prospect for the CDR company who can sell a physical product while removing excess atmospheric greenhouse gas. Note that there are many different types of projects, and not just offset projects, that the end-users and technical buyers would recommend. So valorizing the ROI is a pathway to be persuasive to the economic buyer audience, per CDR.FYI’s 2025 Market Survey

C. Market the whole product, not just the core product

An early stage Visionary buyer typically has performance expectations for the core product itself, and is willing to forego the supportive services that would make the purchase easier to handle. Pragmatist customers’ view is the opposite: they need surrounding product or service offerings that make the purchase easy to integrate into their existing business. 

For a Pragmatic class of CDR customers this could mean: insurance services, credit ratings, or even marketing materials that enable the sustainability office to feature the project in an ESG report. 

In particular, one big concern among Pragmatist customers is that the CDR supplier will go out of business, leaving them with an unsupported amount of CDR tons that they would have to answer questions about. Demonstrating post-sale customer support and contingencies would address this risk. 

Selling a ‘whole product’ could also mean working with a broker or other intermediary who would package the durable CDR credit with other credit types, such as lower priced nature-based carbon removal, avoidance/REDD+/Renewable Energy offsets, or industrial waste gas destruction credits. That would lower the average price per ton of the entire ‘market basket’ while providing different qualities of offset to the buyer. Rather than competing for a vanishingly small attention span for CDR, the offset would be considered alongside other types of projects on offer for a Sustainability office.

So how can a CDR project developer start to make the leap?

While these three tactical suggestions could be useful for durable CDR companies to make inroads into a market of Pragmatists, the greater issue could be making the internal leap of faith required to adjust to these market forces.

The thinking surrounding pursuit of an early stage customer – heaving a technically less polished, core product over a RFP Visionary transom and, well, praying – is not a strategy that would work to gain market traction among Pragmatists. Adjusting one’s own approach to understand the mindset of the mainstream customer, respect their needs and motivations, and meeting them where they are at will be the way to success. That’s why identifying that one small niche of a Pragmatist market is so important.

Oftentimes in other industries this has meant that the visionary startup founder does not have the skills or interest to speak on equal terms to an otherwise risk-averse customer. Visionaries are great at speaking with other visionaries; pragmatists with pragmatists. So it follows that bringing in new talent to meet broader mainstream needs might have the uncomfortable task of replacing a founder for the sake of company survival.

Getting across a Chasm is not an easy task. But, a necessary one in order for an early stage company to achieve its potential. In carbon removal the results can be worldchanging, provided the durable CDR company has the right tools and, more importantly, internal mindset to adjust and make the leap. It’s a challenge to be sure but one that is possible to achieve.

Jason Grillo is the Principal of Earthlight Enterprises marketing consultancy, Co-Founded AirMiners, and is a voluntary contributor to CDR.FYI. The opinions expressed in this writing are the author’s own and do not reflect the position of any employer or associated organization.

¹Disclosure: I was a voluntary contributor to help that effort.

CDR at ‘The Chasm’ (Part 1 of 2) – Climagination with Jason Grillo

“Every creator painfully experiences the chasm between his inner vision and its ultimate expression”  –Isaac Bashevis Singer

Summary: Carbon removal is at a ‘chasm’ point between early customers who are interested in visionary new products and a more mainstream market who desire pragmatic, whole solutions. There is some evidence that this transition is happening already in a very limited fashion.


Hi all, I’m writing today as a participant in and observer to the early stages of the Carbon Dioxide Removal market, which appears to be at a crucial point. The hallmark of CDR purchases so far has been characterized by early customers who are intent on ‘seeding the market’, leaving an open question as to who a customer would be beyond that.

CDR.FYI’s 2024 Year in Review¹  sums up CDR at the end of 2024 as a:

picture of a market that has been seeded and nurtured by a few hard-core buyers who have continued to increase their commitment while struggling to “cross the chasm” to the next stage of buyers who will further scale the market.”

This post (Part 1 of 2) will be descriptive, talking about CDR’s early customer segments by drawing from Geoffrey Moore’s excellent Technology Lifecycle Adoption Curve, outlined in detail in his classic marketing book Crossing the Chasm

In Part 2 I will be more prescriptive, suggesting ways that CDR companies could cross the chasm to find new mainstream customer groups.

Here is a graphic of Moore’s adoption lifecycle curve that I’ll refer to:

Image: https://smashfly.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/crossing-the-chas.jpg

From this, three segments are most relevant to the industry now: Innovators/Enthusiasts, Visionaries (AKA “Early Adopters”), and the Pragmatist Early Mainstream. In doing so I’ll provide examples of CDR customers that are roughly in each of those segments to illustrate the nature of the voluntary purchasers to date.

A general sweep of this lifecycle curve paints a picture familiar to those who have followed the start of new technologies over time: Enthusiasts and Visionaries in an early market, followed by a much larger mainstream market, separated by a gap in expectations – The Chasm – denoting a marked difference in customer expectations for a more standardized, robust solution. Note how much bigger the Pragmatist segment is relative to the Technology Enthusiasts and Visionaries! Getting to that segment of customer is key to technology startups survival in the long run, and carbon removal is no different.

Technology Enthusiasts:

Description: This group (sometimes called Innovators) are most interested in technology for technology’s sake. They take pride in being the first to get their hands on something so they can experiment with it, and are usually the most forgiving of quality issues – priorities are access to anything new New NEW! 

To connect with these customers:  Features and possibilities are most important. No need to sell the larger vision – the technical aspects and ‘cool’ factor of being the first are enough to convince.

CDR Example: The first greenhouse customers from the famous Climeworks ‘Capricorn’ site in Hinwil, Switzerland which started selling CO2 gas in 2017 are the nearest Enthusiast customers. At 900 tons per year, Capricorn was a demonstration project relative to the scale of later Climeworks DAC facilities – it closed down in 2022. Notably its first customers were for the physical gas rather than for the carbon removal credits. The voluntary market crediting standards had not been developed yet, and the main application of this demonstration site was to provide a feedstock.

Visionaries

Description: This class of customer has a dream to transform the way business is done as a means of achieving a long range goal. That vision is the foundational basis of why they are making their usually high profile purchase. Typically, they are not very price sensitive at all, in service to the vision that they have for where the technology could go, and are willing to accept the product itself as enough – they’ll figure out the details later once the supporting services get sorted out. 

To connect with these customers:  Talk about The Big Vision about how this could revolutionize businesses, industries, and markets. (How to define those markets coming in Part 2…) In effect, they provide that first client for a startup, enhancing visibility and ultimately credibility through a successful pilot project – so the customer can show the world that this thing works on a limited scale outside a laboratory.

CDR Examples: In CDR, examples of this might be the first Stripe purchases long, long, ago (described in a Zoom event far, far away…)

Also, when Shopify began purchasing CDR in 2020 through its Sustainability fund, this was  clearly a move to be in the Visionary position, epitomized by the words of CEO Tobi Lütke: “We need more demand to get better pricing, but we need better pricing to get more demand. How do we solve this puzzle? By intentionally overpaying for carbon sequestration to kickstart the demand.”

One could argue that the Frontier Offtake purchases (and also its earlier Pre-purchases) also constitute this type of buying cycle. The large technology and consulting companies who constitute the Frontier buying group are doing so to seed the market for future purchases. 

To that end they have entered into long term agreements with several CDR companies who have the tech proven out enough to deliver over several years. This is a crucial step to help these firms enter the mainstream. The first production runs have an offtaker – and that’s crucial. The next step is to demonstrate they are less risky to more pragmatic customers outside of the Visionary customer segment.

The Chasm

While there are differences between Enthusiasts and Visionaries, the contrast in customer demand and size of market opportunity between them is not as great as between Visionaries and Pragmatists. 

A company selling the same technology to the same company might constitute a different customer on either side due to the rationale behind the purchase, price expectations, and sales style. Some companies are able to make this transition to meet Pragmatists customer needs at higher volume; some do not and do not make the crossing. I’ll talk about the definition of Pragmatists, and then provide some examples where we may be seeing some limited Chasm crossing already in CDR markets.

Pragmatists

This customer segment is interested in a whole solution that they can use for a defined business purpose. They expect progress to be incremental, rather than revolutionary, and have much higher standards of quality and are much more sensitive to price. They are not as interested in being the first to lead and demonstrate how business practices could change, and instead are more inclined to listen to other voices in their own industry and ask what standards exist for a new line of products on offer, which come with their own set of pre-prepared support tools. They also expect a selection of competitor options to choose from – which to them is a signal of a more robust, less risky set of solutions – and a rubric to evaluate these competitors so that their purchase might achieve the pragmatic business solution they seek.

It’s the rationale and expectations of the purchaser which are so different on either side of this Chasm. 

To connect with this type of customer: The large-scale purchasing Pragmatist is less likely to take a risk. They don’t want the pilot facility’s or ‘beta’ version of a product. Even with a First of a Kind (FOAK) facility, they would prefer not to have the first batch – more likely the second or subsequent batch runs. Showing them a ‘whole product’ (again, more details in Part 2) that produces results is more important than the core product alone.

CDR Examples: In Carbon Removal, the most pragmatic customer today arguably is Microsoft, especially in their 2023 and 2024 RFP purchases. The defining purpose of Microsoft’s behavior is in line with its 2020 pledge to by 2050 “remove from the environment all the carbon the company has emitted either directly or by electrical consumption since it was founded in 1975”. In short, they want the sheer tonnage that their portfolio of suppliers can provide to them through a rigorous RFP process.

Microsoft’s biggest project selections are the: the largest volume is Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Sequestration – which has been around for longer than many other CDR technologies, so it is more of a proven method. The chief project developers to date are large Scandinavian energy companies, who themselves are more risk averse than a small venture funded startup, and in general can count on large levels of national government support.

Notably Meta left the Frontier group of companies and initiated Symbiosis in partnership with Microsoft, Google, and Salesforce to focus on less technically risky Nature Based Solutions to achieve a different type of carbon removal at a typically much lower price than durable CDR is able to offer.

Conclusions

CDR has drawn customers from all three of Moore’s Enthusiast, Visionary, and Pragmatist groups – some have found Pragmatist customers, others are striving – and at times struggling – to do so. Not all will be successful at making the transition to a more mainstream market.

Nat Bullard in slide 71 of his 2025 annual presentation indicated that there are over 500 CDR startups in the world – that’s a lot! And the early adopter market is not big enough to support them all. Hard prediction: many will likely go out of business or consolidate at distressed valuations in the coming years.

To forestall a significant decline of the industry, early stage carbon removal companies are going to need to find ways to create more mainstream, larger numbers of customers who will be needed to sustain industry growth – and remove more atmospheric CO2

What specific tactics could CDR suppliers employ to grapple with the Chasm? Read on in Part 2 – coming soon!

 

¹Disclosing I was a voluntary contributor to that effort

 

Jason Grillo is the Principal of Earthlight Enterprises marketing consultancy, Co-Founded AirMiners, and is a voluntary contributor to CDR.FYI. The opinions expressed in this writing are the author’s own and do not reflect the position of any employer or associated organization.

Getting durable CDR off the island – Climagination with Jason Grillo

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” – John Donne

Hey everyone! It’s January and that means year-end data is now available – and lots of it! – from a wide variety of sources covering the previous 12 months of activity in carbon credit markets.  My goal in writing this post is to unearth some insights from the broader voluntary carbon market; my hope is for folks in carbon removal to consider how a broader landscape may affect their activities to durably remove CO2 from the atmosphere. To take John Donne’s quote a step further: CDR credits are not islands entire to themselves, but a piece of a broader carbon credits ‘continent’, a part of the main VCM. 

In that light, I’m going to totally nerd out analyze some year end data from 2024 about price and quality expectations and in the end suggest some integration strategies. I’ll use a market segmentation (alluded to by Robert Hoglund here) of three sub-markets of the VCM: traditional avoidance credits, Nature-Based removals, and novel/durable CDR. 

Traditional avoidance/renewables credits

Quality, quality, quality. For the bulk of credits retired in the VCM, one trend in 2024 is a flight to quality. Several sources noted this, in particular market analytics company MSCI, as measured by an increased the percentage of retired credits achieving MSCI’s rating of “A” or “AA” (6% to 12%), and significant decrease of retired credits rated “CCC” (29% to 15%), comparing Q2 2024 values to Q2 2022. Increased scrutiny as required by new regulations such as CSRD or California’s climate disclosure law may be a reason for this, in addition to media reports critical of carbon credits in this segment or lawsuits for greenwashing against major companies. 

As the market for carbon credits of any variety matures, the type of rating employed by MSCI and many others may allow a shorthand for sustainability professionals to evaluate projects and price accordingly by rating. If this trend to favor quality continues, then projects that remove CO2 from the atmosphere would get more attention – assuming CDR projects are able to obtain such high ratings.

Volume is flat. Purchasers’ flight to quality is affecting VCM volume as well: credits retired is plateauing in recent years (by some accounts slightly declining) at around 170 to 175 million tons retired annually, per Sylvera’s 2024 Year-end report.  That said, the market is demonstrating much greater volume relative to 2018 to 2020 totals.

Source: Sylvera

Increased demand for high quality has led to more Nature Based Solution (NBS) carbon removal project tonnage retirements, totaling 16% (blue + purple in the Sylvera chart): Afforestation/Reforestation/Revegetation (ARR),  Improved Forest Management (IFM), or Soil/Agricultural removal credits. The REDD and ‘Avoidance’ (i.e. Renewable Energy Credit) categories listed here are declining in volume, from 73% in 2021 to 58% in 2024 in a market of roughly the same size year-over-year. Carbon removal developers please note that for all the increases in volume in durable CDR, the entire market (for now) is only a sliver of the picture: 200k credits retired out of ~175 million in 2024.

Purchasers are retiring credits. Despite the quality concerns and headwinds, the number of buyers who are retiring credits continues to grow. By this data, the number of organizations retiring credits has more than tripled since 2020.

Source: Allied Offsets

So to recap the traditional market segment – and overall picture – there are:

1) more buyers than ever in global offset markets, who are 

2) retiring just about the same amount of credits, 

3) of higher quality, with 

4) a greater percentage of carbon removal, including NBS, in recent years.

Nature Based Solutions

The flight to quality led to Nature-Based carbon removal credits getting to 1 of 6 retirements in 2024, compared to 1 in 10 in 2020. Registries for NBS credits adhering to ICVCM Core Carbon Principles, and CORSIA standards are a key factor driving this trend. That said, project issuances of NBS removal credits declined while NBS retirements remained steady in 2024 relative to previous years, with NBS offtake credit price at just over $20/ton per Allied Offsets 2024 VCM report

Source: Allied Offsets

So – there’s a possibility of an NBS crunch if this trend and preference for quality continues in 2025. The question is whether corporate buyers will continue to nature based removals or instead select durable CDR as a credit of choice going forward. And one factor influencing a more mainstream credit purchaser is price.

Durable CDR

Pricing will be a critical factor, with estimates of potential purchaser preference outlined in the CDR.FYI and OPIS price estimate survey, organized by CDR method, for both 2025 and predicted 2030 prices. (Disclosure: This week I joined the CDR.FYI team of collaborating volunteers)

One interesting cut on the data, noted in the report, is how ‘veteran’ carbon removal buyers would have different price expectations from prospective buyers of CDR credits. 

Specifically looking at their price expectations for “Good Value”, the team noticed that previous purchasers of durable CDR credits were willing to pay (usually) higher prices than those respondents who had not yet purchased credits. 

Given these price sensitivities for a new prospective purchaser, any carbon removal method will not be able to compete strictly on price, especially if sustainability offices face budgeting issues in future years. Instead, encouraging a portfolio approach that combines NBS removal with a small amount of durable CDR might be a way to establish a new market. Then, as the novice durable CDR purchaser gets more familiar, the price expectations would rise and possibly purchase a greater volume of durable CDR credits. 

In 2025, SBTi guidance on how to fit durable carbon removal offsets into a Net Zero pathway could improve the prospects for all durable carbon removal credits. That said, if credit customers believe they can get enough of the durability, additionality, and verifiability from Nature based solutions, then that would suggest a world where lower priced carbon removal credits in 2030 are favored.

Conclusions

Durable carbon removal is still in its early stages as an option in carbon credit markets. As the larger voluntary carbon market moves to a more quality-focused stage of development, registries, standards, and ratings will play an increasing role as purchasers evaluate projects that are ready to provide credits. Rather than competing strictly against other classes of carbon credits, durable carbon removal project developers who are keen to find purchasers would do well to consider how their credits integrate with trends shaping the sub-markets for Nature Based Solutions and traditional offsets. For as those markets shift, durable CDR could find opportunity for future credit purchasing to finance industry growth.

Jason Grillo Co-Founded AirMiners and is a voluntary contributor to CDR.FYI. The opinions expressed in this writing are the author’s own and do not reflect the position of any employer or associated organization.

Is Winter Coming? – Climagination with Jason Grillo

How reframing carbon removal can be a throughline to a prosperous industry

Photo by Ruvim Miksanskiy: https://www.pexels.com/photo/aerial-photography-of-snow-covered-trees-1438761/

“Knowing others is intelligence; knowing yourself is true wisdom” – Lao Tzu

Writing this in December as indeed winter is upon us, I’ve noticed a different kind of winter that may be coming to carbon removal: a general decline of interest in sustainability and climate among corporations who would be voluntary carbon market purchasers. In this post, I’ll explore the nature of this problem, recap how corporate rollback has happened before, and offer some potential paths forward. 

First, some context. While the last 5 weeks since the US election has seen climate scrambling to understand what the implications of Donald Trump’s victory might mean for policy, evidence has been piling up for approximately 18 months prior to that.  ESG hiring growth is down after a crescendo from 2019-2021, and very recently large corporations such as Coca Cola and Goldman Sachs are changing course on how to deliver on sustainability targets.

Declining corporate sustainability budgets may constrict sales opportunities among more mainstream voluntary carbon market purchasers.Indeed, it appears that while targets are being set, corporations are falling short of resourcing efforts to meet those lofty goals. Additional macroeconomic changes – real or projected – such as inflation, high tariffs, or the end of Zero Interest Rate Policy may cause customers and investors to withdraw support. 

For a case study in how a generation of startups might grapple with this, let’s consider lessons from “Cleantech 1.0” from approximately the mid-2000s to early 2010s. In that time period, a wave of startups created a myriad of carbon-free energy solutions – for example, solar, wind, EVs, batteries, or energy efficiency software. A scarcity of patient capital, low-priced competition from abroad, particularly China, and inconsistent government tax credit support consistently challenged companies working on solutions in these sectors.

The solar, wind, and battery startups were clear: they were not in the “alternative energy” business, they were in the energy business with the all-important Levelized Cost of Electricity (LCOE) as their benchmark. Demand for clean energy persisted and grew among energy customers, particularly due to Germany’s Feed-In-Tariff policy for solar, wind and geothermal. Support by Germany’s leadership, and experiential learning by deploying led to solar cost declines outpacing their forecasts by decades:

This enabled renewable energy companies in the early 2010s to survive – and thrive –  during the ‘long winter’ for climate investment between 2011 and 2019.

Two more examples from outside climate on the practice of business re-definition, one a failure, one a success:

      1. Railroads. In the early years of the twentieth century, railroads were a significant player in the United States’ and world economy, moving huge volumes of goods and passengers. Today railroads occupy a fraction of the economy since automobiles, trucks, and air transportation of goods and people appeared on the scene, taking away significant market share such that many railroads had to declare bankruptcy. The railroads’ failure: defining themselves too narrowly as railroad companies, not more broadly as transportation companies (For more on this see Theodore Levitt, “Marketing Myopia”).
      2. Professional wrestling. Yes, I watched my fair share of the spectacle on TV during my (awkward) junior high school years. What I didn’t realize then was that I was witnessing a redefinition of a business that decades later has thrived and grown. How? A philosophical shift in how they defined their business: specifically, the owner of the then-World Wrestling Federation quipped once that they are in the “sports entertainment” business rather than the wrestling business – that is, oriented to the customer rather than the process of wrestling itself. Nearly forty years later, World Wrestling Entertainment had revenue of over $1.3 billion.

To be clear, I am NOT suggesting that CDR startups become ‘climate entertainment’ companies! However I believe that companies who are developing solutions intended primarily to help the climate struggle to define their business in a broader industrial context to that frame them well for success with future customers in the event of a climate tech ‘winter’.

In short, consider the thought that ‘climate’ is not an industry: it’s an umbrella term for technology and business innovations spanning a wide variety of industrial sectors, that happen to yield low or negative emissions. 

For many carbon removal project developers, defining along industrial lines means redefining what business they are in, and figuring out who their customer is, so they can craft a solution in a time that may be challenging in the short term. Doing so could lead to solutions that are able to penetrate existing industries with better/faster/cheaper products and improve climate health as a secondary – and still very important – benefit

Finding a customer who can utilize the physical product or by-product of carbon removal would integrate carbon removal processes into a larger economy beyond credit sales alone. Deploying the technology for an end-use would generate customer revenue and also lead to cost improvements with experience, per Wright’s Law

Internally CDR businesses should talk about themselves in terms beyond what they can do for climate. This can happen in founders meetings, with investors, with marketing partners and others who they deal with to bring their solutions to market. And in doing so develop solutions that, for example:

…produce a soil amendment or improve soil health =  “we’re in the business of helping farmers deliver high quality food cheaply to consumers”

…generate energy in rural areas = “generating heat or electricity to places that may suffer energy scarcity”

…combine with building materials = “make it easier for homes or roadways to be built”

…use agricultural waste as a feedstock “ease the burden of disposal owners of agricultural land”

…create gases for fuel or specialty chemicals “enabling the new energy and materials economy”

Carbon removal business leaders can see beyond a purely technical definition of their product, retaining personal motivations to do well for the climate while seeking commercial markets that may not have climate as top-of-mind. Key question: In the possible absence of policy interventions or without carbon credits, how would a bottom-line motivated customer buy a solution to help their own business needs? 

What about carbon removal crediting? Offset crediting is still an option if there is sufficient interest among voluntary purchasers – this is still a relevant pathway to viability. That said, companies could decrease unit cost curves by pursuing insetting to deploy more projects, and in doing so lower their internal costs to enable creating offset credits for sale in the voluntary market.

Ultimately, compliance markets will be where carbon removal will see its greatest impact on climate, offering a dynamic quite different from motivations of voluntary carbon market customers. Redefining the business along a utilization pathway is a way of seeing a generation of carbon removal startups through to that time. Figuring out the fundamental business that a CDR company is pursuing could safeguard against market uncertainties as corporate sustainability interest waxes and wanes. 

Jason Grillo is a Co-Founder of AirMiners. The opinions expressed in this writing are the author’s own and do not reflect the position of any employer.

CDR Policy Roads Less Traveled – Climagination with Jason Grillo

Paths to focus on for carbon removal policy in the wake of a US election

Photo by James Wheeler: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-pathway-surrounded-by-fir-trees-1578750/

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves” – Viktor Frankl

I wrote at the start of this Substack that it would be a series about carbon removal covering insights about carbon markets, workforce and policy. Today in the wake of the US election outcome, I am going to take on that third topic – policy – with some quick takes on what the US election in November 2024 might mean for CDR Federal and State policy efforts. As much as I’ll write about policy in this post, I can’t avoid the politics of the moment. My instinct is that while US Federal climate policy per se will likely take a step back or two (or three…) in the incoming administration, a reframing of policies that advance carbon removal specifically as an economic driver would be a path forward.

First, some first impressions of what’s possible at the Federal level in the United States. I’ll keep this as specific as I can to carbon removal since there are many, many platforms better equipped than I am to speak to broader policy impacts.

The clearest risk to support for carbon removal comes in how the Trump administration might restructure the Department of Energy, specifically the office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management (FECM) which has been administering the DAC Hubs and other carbon removal programs. Notably, the DAC Hubs in particular were authorized and funded by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), rather than the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) which passed on a partisan vote. So it is possible that the bipartisan nature of the BIL funding would insulate programs it supports from being scaled down. The tax provisions of the IRA – in particular 45Q – might be subject to repeal, under a scenario of unified Republican Presidency, House, and Senate.

Beyond the Direct Air Capture programs at FECM efforts the department has recently taken action on marine carbon removal (mCDR), enhanced rock weathering (ERW), and biochar might be subject to change as well. Look additionally to new appointments at USDA – which administers US Forest Service and Natural Resources Conservation Service, as well as Commerce – NOAA and National Institutes for Standards and Technology – which impact these methods of CDR as well.

For Congressional action, the upcoming Congress at the time of this writing (November 11th 2024), appears to have a thin Republican majority in the House, while Republicans will take control of the Senate. While a comprehensive climate bill (‘IRA2’) is off the table, other policy avenues are open which would require bipartisan support. For instance, the 2018 Farm Bill will be up for renewal, with US Congressman Don Bacon (R-Nebraska) having supported bipartisan climate friendly agriculture legislation in the past likely playing a key role. Biochar, ERW, and soil carbon sequestration advocates would take note. 

For DAC advocates, permitting and the intersection of DAC and energy policy would be areas to watch. Any efforts to reform carbon dioxide pipeline permitting (more on this below) would be a start. Also, the re-election of Michelle Steel (R-California), who has supported bipartisan geothermal energy legislation, suggests that advancing projects using a geothermal Fervo Energy’s new project will harness the earth’s heat to capture…energy source for DAC could have support.

Since Federal CDR policy may have to be meted out piecemeal, carbon removal policy advocates could then look to state governments as areas to advance policy ideas. I will recap some of the election results here, outlining particular actions to take in specific cases.

Washington State: Ballot Initiative 2117 failed resoundingly, with 62% voting “No”, thus preserving the state’s Cap-and-invest system for selling emissions allowances and reinvesting the proceeds into the State’s economy. A wide variety of organizations contributed to the “No on 2117” campaign, including corporations such as Amazon, Microsoft, REI, and British Petroleum (!) aligned with several unions and climate affiliated civic organizations. Key to the messaging was the economic benefit to the state in retaining the cap-and-invest system; additionally, there is evidence that the fiscal impact of the state losing $3.8 billion in revenue from 2025 to 2029 was persuasive to voters.

What it means: Revenues from the cap-and-invest system will continue apace to flow to the state’s accounts, which are set up to collect and disburse auction proceeds to advance the clean energy economy. For Carbon removal, this includes state grants that CDR companies are eligible for under the Clean Energy Fund.

Going forward, Washington can now pursue linkage in its Cap-and-invest system with California and Quebec’s cap-and-trade systems, as directed by the state legislature in the spring of 2024. How carbon removal credits integrate into this remains to be seen, however. First steps include the Department of Ecology writing a study – slated for completion and release in June 2025 – covering “the extent to which carbon dioxide removal is needed to meet Washington’s emissions reduction targets”.

South Dakota: Carbon removal pipeline enabling Referendum 21 failed, with 60% of South Dakota voters rejecting a measure that would have made constructing carbon dioxide pipelines easier in the state. Opponents had argued that passing the referendum would have canceled local governance and removed protections for landowners. 

What it means: Envisioned as a CO2 transportation pipeline for ethanol-based CO2 capture, DAC developers should take heed to consider local community concerns surrounding possible similar CO2 pipeline efforts.

California: California voters approved Proposition 4: a $10B state bond to be distributed to counties, local governments, and Native American tribes to support a wide variety of projects,including clean water security, reducing risk of flood and wildfires, and also improving marine ecosystem regeneration in aid of climate resilience.

CDR angle: With $1.5B slated for wildfire risk reduction, including forest thinning, California biochar producers could see a greater abundance of feedstock for pyrolyzing operations. It might also improve offtake for the biochar itself, which has uses for wastewater remediation. For marine CDR companies, $890M of the $10B is marked for coastal projects; a project that improves water quality and promotes coastal resilience that also removes atmospheric carbon dioxide might benefit. 

Louisiana: 73% of voters approved a constitutional amendment that revenue from state renewable energy projects, such as wind power, can be diverted to coastal resilience measures

Implication: Similar to California, to the degree that marine CDR projects – particularly in a coastal location – can add to the state’s ability to buffet against hurricanes, floods, and sea level rise, this would be a benefit.

Massachusetts: This is not directly election related, but noting that the state legislature will consider an Economic Development package in a special session, which contains many climate and clean energy provisions which would be important for CDR. The House and Senate had each separately passed their own bill and to agree on a common bill to send to Governor Healy for signature before the current session ends on December 31st. 

So what kind of pathways are best for policies to support carbon removal?

In my view, reframing the discussion of carbon removal policy in the United States as an economic development measure and not a climate measure could lead the way to successful growth of the industry.

Why? For one thing there is motivation to do something about climate. Voters – and surprisingly a high percentage (~40%) of Trump voters – at least somewhat agree that climate change is a problem:

But – even among some Harris supporters (~35%) – American voters are not willing to pay for measures to counteract its effects:

Carbon removal projects that show an economic benefit beyond the action of removing excess atmospheric greenhouse gas will be a winner in the policy environment that will likely emerge from the 2024 US election season. The ability to show tangible benefits to people in communities, in the form of providing valuable products or services, or well paying careers – not just project-based jobs – for people who are struggling in an economy that they (fairly or unfairly) perceive to be still ridden with inflation or unemployment. And that might affect how C-suite and corporate sustainability managers perceive the need for climate action, and by extension carbon removal, as investor Susan Su mentions here. The perception of the state of the US economy among Americans has diverged from how the actual economy is performing since the COVID pandemic. This suggests that policies that underscore the economic benefit to voters would find a favorable reception among government leaders at any level.

While there may be limited pathways forward at the Federal level, State and local efforts at CDR policy offer a potentially meaningful way to support the industry. Even if policies are not specifically titled ‘carbon removal’, policymakers can include CDR alongside general economic development efforts – and make a difference in their state, county, or municipality. Respecting the interests of those communities – particularly at a local level – is paramount, as evidenced by the South Dakota measure above. Project developers who are in touch with the communities where they operate can consider how to meet the needs of those where they operate. And that’s important: especially in this environment, building political support starts at the local level. 

This can move the conversation away from carbon removal being perceived as an expense imposed from outsiders, and rather as a source of revenue generating activities integrated into the economy and society, and coincidentally happen to draw excess greenhouse gasses out of the atmosphere. 

Venture capitalist Vinod Khosla wrote over a decade ago that for ‘cleantech’ to succeed it has to be perceived as ‘maintech’ – that it integrates within the industrial base as a natural progression of technology in the minds of customers. Reframing the conversation about carbon removal from a climate technology dependent on specific climate policy to a ‘maintech’ solution that integrates with economic policy is a step forward in an otherwise daunting national political environment for climate in the United States.

Jason Grillo is a Co-Founder of AirMiners. The opinions expressed in this writing are the author’s own and do not reflect the position of any employer.

Introducing a new tool for monitoring, reporting and verifying CO2 removals

Today marks the launch of a new interactive visualisation of the landscape for monitoring, reporting and verification of carbon dioxide removal methods, a joint project between the Grantham Research Institute and AlliedOffsets. Josh Burke, our Senior Visiting Fellow and Leo Mercer and Anton Root describe the purpose and benefits of the tool for policy practitioners, CDR developers and purchasers – who can use it to understand the market at a glance.

Why is monitoring, reporting and verification of CO2 removal so important?

Alongside actions to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, carbon dioxide will need to be removed from the atmosphere if the world is to meet the Paris Agreement climate goals. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) suggests carbon dioxide removal will need to be scaled up from a current base of around 2 Gt (billion tonnes) CO₂ removed per annum to at least 10 Gt by 2030 and 100-1,000 Gt over the remainder of the century to counterbalance residual emissions.

The proliferation of net zero targets, and by extension the use – or planned use – of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) has led to increased attention on the governance of CDR. A key component of this governance architecture is monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV), which is the multi-step process to measure the amount of greenhouse gases removed by a specific removal project and reported to an accredited third party.

Robust MRV can help governments and private sector actors overcome information gaps and asymmetries that may make it difficult for them to make investment or regulatory decisions. This is critical as the current crisis of confidence in the voluntary carbon market (VCM) has the potential to erode trust and confidence in CDR, halt capital investments and slow the integration of CDR into climate policy. Successful industries rely on standards and certification to ensure activities meet expectations. The CDR industry is no different.

Furthermore, owing to the absence of internationally agreed minimum quality standards, multiple regulatory efforts (such as the EU Carbon Removals and Carbon Farming/CRCF Regulation) are developing in parallel to fast-moving technical developments in the VCM. This results in overlapping protocols for some CDR methods and incomplete MRV coverage for others. Consequently, the MRV landscape has become ever more confusing. This makes comparison and oversight of CDR difficult for investors and governments alike. Greater transparency is sorely needed.

From mapping the MRV ecosystem to launching a new interactive tool

With new protocols constantly emerging, the challenge for policymakers, researchers and investors is to maintain a systematic overview of activity and use this to improve policy. To shed light on this, as a first step in 2023 the Grantham Research Institute conducted an MRV ecosystem mapping exercise to help identify the number of, and interrelationships between, regulations, certifying entities and MRV protocols across the spectrum of CDR methods.

To qualify for inclusion, protocols had to provide guidance for CDR activities that lead to net CO2 removals from the atmosphere and carbon capture and storage (CCS). Protocols on the latter were included because CCS facilitates certain CDR methods like direct air carbon capture and storage (DACCS) and bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS).

In partnership with AlliedOffsets, we are launching today the next iteration of this work: Transparent Reporting and Certification for CDR or the TRACEcdr tool. This has digitalised our original research to create a new interactive tool for policy practitioners, CDR developers and purchasers. TRACEcdr combines the mapping efforts of the Grantham Research Institute with AlliedOffsets’ data-gathering on activity happening in the VCM.

What does the tool do?

The TRACEcdr tool responds to the challenges set out above by creating the first interactive digital tool to provide transparency and oversight to the CDR market. It involves three initial steps, two of which we can present today in the beta version.

  • The first systematically maps and digitalises the MRV ecosystem for all CDR methods, providing an interactive digital MRV ecosystem.
  • The second step illustrates the activity within the system by providing information on the number of projects and the volume of issued credits for each CDR method and MRV protocol. Data is provided on project registrations and issuances of credits from the AlliedOffsets database of over 32,000 projects globally, from 25 registries plus hundreds of unregistered projects.
  • The third step, due for completion in 2025, will overlay the results of a systematic evaluation of MRV quality by assigning scores to the MRV protocols that underpin credit issuance.

The outcome is an interactive visualisation of the CDR MRV landscape. The tool has been created with an eye towards understanding the market at a glance, allowing policymakers and investors to grasp the complexity and activity within the ecosystem such as risks and benefits of current market activity, where activity is happening, by what methods and eventually, how rigorous and credible underlying MRV protocols are.

How to interact with TRACEcdr

Upon opening the TRACEcdr tool, four levels of the MRV system are visible:

  • Level 1 is organised according to CDR method.
  • Level 2 is the entity that provides the removal standard for a given CDR method.
  • Level 3 details the MRV protocol and denotes whether a protocol is applicable in a national or international context and for voluntary or compliance purposes.
  • Level 4 visualises credit issuance projects per protocol. The larger the node, the larger the credit issuance. Clicking on nodes in the fourth tier enables the user to isolate and trace the connected nodes in each tier below.

Users of the tool can filter for different options such as whether the protocol is nationally or internationally focussed and whether it is for use in compliance or voluntary carbon markets. CDR methods or protocols can be isolated such that all activity can be seen more easily. Some protocols do not connect to the fourth tier of the ecosystem map either because they do not have any registered projects associated with them, or because AlliedOffsets has been unable to access data on those protocols at the time of publication (this is mainly for compliance issuance due to data protection regulations).

Key insights

A major trend exemplified by the tool is the dominance of ‘land-based biological’ methods. Although methods like DACCS have dominated CDR discussion and funding, the overwhelming activity within removals today – by the sum of MRV protocols, project number and credit issuance – are projects planting trees or restoring natural carbon sinks like peatlands and soils. Indeed, of the 117 MRV protocols that have been recorded in total (between 2005 and mid-October 2024), 29% are attributable to afforestation, reforestation and forest management (A/R), 18% to soil carbon sequestration (SCS), 9% to peatland and wetland restoration and a further 5% to BECCS. In terms of credit issuance, A/R accounts for 77% of all issued credits, with peatland restoration projects constituting another 19%.

The ecosystem is currently in a rapid state of development. In 2023, 22 MRV protocols were published, which was a small increase on the total of 19 in 2022. Protocol development in 2023 skewed towards biological methods with seven protocols, and SCS with three. Data from 2024 indicate more balanced MRV development, with 15 protocols to date including two for ocean alkalinity enhancement, two for biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) and two for CCS but also including single protocols for enhanced rock weathering, direct ocean capture and DACCS. 2024 may yet surpass 2023 in terms of the total number of MRV protocols published.

Although we observe a complex system with duplication and year-on-year increases in MRV protocol development, the majority of issuance is occurring through a few select protocols. For example, for peatland and coastal wetland restoration, Verra’s VM0033 protocol is responsible for 99% of issuance. For soil carbon sequestration, four protocols account for 97% of all issued credits, with Verra’s VM0032 and VM0026 respectively accounting for 31% and 30% of total issuance. For A/R, 90% of issued credits stem from just four protocols, with the California Air Resources Board’s Compliance Offset Protocol U.S. Forest Projects (compliance) issuing 64% of all credits (114 million).

This coalescence in the market has benefits and risks. On the one hand, it suggests that improvements to the dominant protocols could ripple through most of the system. On the other, it may indicate systemic risks if in the future new evidence indicates problems with these dominant protocols. For this reason, it is important that there are independent assessments of the quality and rigour of MRV underpinning CDR issuance.

Table 1. Overview of system activity

The numbers in brackets for the CDR method column indicate the total number of protocols per method, but we only illustrate the most popular

CDR method Registry Protocols with greatest issuance No. of projects No. of issued or sold credits % of total
Afforestation, reforestation, agroforestry, forest management (34) American Carbon Registry Compliance Offset Protocol U.S. Forest Projects 113 114,065,156 64%
Improved Forest Management (IFM) on Non-Federal U.S. Forestlands 150 26,243,535 15%
Gold Standard Impact Registry Afforestation/ Reforestation (A/R) GHG Emissions Reduction and Sequestration Methodology 62 11,389,778 6%
Woodland Carbon Code WCC Standard v2.2 2,118 8,955,223 5%
Soil carbon sequestration in croplands and grasslands (21) Verra VM0032 Methodology for the Adoption of Sustainable Grasslands Through Adjustment of Fire and Grazing v1.0 11 6,098,086 31%
VM0026 Methodology for Sustainable Grassland Management v1.0 48 5,786,488 30%
Plan Vivo PU001 Estimation of Baseline and Project GHG Removals by Carbon Pools in Plan Vivo Projects 10 5,209,137 27%
BioCarbon BCR0001 Quantification of GHG Emission Reductions from GHG removal activities 20 1,863,323 10%
Peatland and coastal wetland restoration (10) Verra VM0033 Methodology for Tidal Wetland and Seagrass Restoration, v2.0 30 4,802,658 78%
Peatland Code Peatland Code v1.2 295 1,268,675 21%
American Carbon Registry Restoration of California Deltaic and Coastal Wetlands 1.1 2 52,405 1%
Verra VM0036 Methodology for Rewetting Drained Temperate Peatlands v1.014 2 0 0%
Biochar (5) Puro.earth Puro.earth Biochar Methodology Version 2.4.1 44 295,827 100%
Verra VM0044 Methodology for Biochar Utilisation in soil and non-soil applications v4.0 8 0 0%
DACCS (2) Climeworks Carbon Dioxide Removal by Direct Air Capture 10 175,836 100%
BECCS (6) Puro.earth Geologically Stored Carbon Methodology v2.2 1 157,592 100%
Bio-oil storage (2) Charm Industrial Bio-oil Sequestration Prototype Protocol for Measurement, Reporting, & Verification 1 154,063 99.997%
Isometric Bio-oil Geological Storage 1 5 0.003%
Direct ocean carbon capture and storage (2) Equatic Methodology for Measurement, Reporting, and Verification of Electrolytic Oceanic Carbon Dioxide Removal 4 63,221 99.2%
Captura Carbon Dioxide Removal Pathway: Ocean Health and MRV 2 508 0.8%
Biomass sinking (1) Running Tide Framework Protocol for Multipathway Biological And Chemical Carbon Removal in the Ocean 2 18,398 100%
Enhanced rock weathering (5) Puro.earth Enhanced Rock Weathering in Soil Methodology 1 12,276 100%
Carbfix Permanent and Secure Geological Storage of CO2 By In-Situ Carbon Mineralization 8 0 0%
Ocean alkalinity enhancement (4) Planetary Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement MRV Protocol 0 8,684 97%
Ebb Carbon Measurement, Reporting and Verification for Safe and Effective Carbon Dioxide Removal 1 256 3%
BiCRS (2) Isometric Biomass Geological Storage 1 4,403 100%
Geological storage (1) Puro.earth Geologically Stored Carbon Methodology v2.2 1 587 100%
Mineral products (2) Gold Standard Impact Registry Carbon Sequestration Through Accelerated Carbonation of Concrete Aggregate 15 149 100%
Marine biomass sinking (1) Rewind Marine Terrestrial Biomass Storage 3 0 0%
CO2 capture, transport and storage (9) Australian Carbon Credit Units Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative—Carbon Capture and Storage) Methodology Determination 2021 1 0 0%

 

One more surprising insight, given that MRV development for CDR methods is primarily happening in the VCM, is the major role of compliance markets. Just under 60% of credits issued can be used in compliance markets, most significantly within California’s Air Resources Board programme. However, outside of California and in terms of novel durable CDR, there is no virtually issuance in compliance markets yet.

Note that the data are derived only from those projects that are registered on a registry adhering to a protocol included in our analysis. Many novel companies and projects are in the pilot phase, meaning they are not adhering to any protocol when selling credits. This carries risk for buyers, but it also allows the suppliers to launch and sell credits quickly, without needing to develop a protocol and certify against it, a process that can take years. We can expect this to continue over the next decade, as pilot projects begin to issue credits and more projects come online.

Future plans for TRACEcdr

The release of the beta version of the TRACEcdr tool today is an early step in promoting openness and transparency in CDR markets. We are using this release to product-test and gain insights and feedback from user experience. The data will be updated on a regular basis. Further iterations will include more visualisations, and more data added for each of the protocols and a second release in the second quarter of 2025.

Access the TRACEcdr tool at https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/tracecdr/. We welcome user feedback – please send to l.w.mercer@lse.ac.uk / j.burke2@lse.ac.uk.

Josh Burke is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal and a Senior Policy Fellow at the Grantham Research Institute; Leo Mercer is a Policy Analyst at the Grantham Research Institute; Anton Root is the Co-Founder of AlliedOffsets. The opinions expressed in this writing are the authors’ own and do not reflect the position of any employer.

The Price is… Wrong? – Climagination with Jason Grillo

Carbon removal prices are going to reflect value to the customer rather than cost of production. Here’s how.

Photo by Eva Bronzini: https://www.pexels.com/photo/blank-tags-in-close-up-photography-8058803/

 

“The purpose of a business is to create a customer … The customer never buys a product. By definition the customer buys the satisfaction of a want. He buys value. … But price is only part of value. There is a whole range of quality considerations which are not expressed in price” 

– Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices

 

One of the questions I hear (frequently!) is “what’s a good price per ton for carbon removal?” Or a variant “What price is carbon removal converging on?” While it sounds like a shrewd question to ask, this assumes that all carbon removal tons are equal – that this is a commoditized market in 2024. Nothing could be further from the case. 

My argument in this post is not only that the attributes of projects and methods of carbon removal are highly variable, but that different customer segments perceive different benefits from carbon removal credits. I’m going to suggest a pricing analysis tool below which addresses these customer segment needs from a couple different angles – stay tuned! 

But before addressing these customer segments, let’s level-set with some terminology points.

 

First, Cost vs Price: These are different terms. A ‘Cost’ usually refers to the internal expenses needed for a supplier of a good or service to produce a unit for sale – in this case a voluntary market credit representing one ton of CO2 removed. (FOOTNOTE: Not talking about methane or nitrous oxide equivalents). These take into account labor, cost of the physical resources for production, energy, transportation, and cost of capital.

A ‘Price’ refers to what a producer of a good or service charges to a customer at exchange. The difference between Price charged to the customer, and Cost to the supplier is the Profit margin.

To illustrate, here’s a chart from a conference presentation I recently gave:

 

Second, Price vs Value: What a supplier charges to a customer for one carbon removal ton is NOT the sum total of the entire value that the customer derives from the purchase. The buyer of a carbon removal ton realizes a value beyond what the market price is that the seller charged for that ton – otherwise they would not have purchased it to begin with.

State of pricing today: A wide variety of value propositions to a customer lead to a wide variation of prices, especially since customers are in 2024 starting to figure out what the value to their organization is of the durable CDR credits purchased. 

Indeed, this is exactly what we are seeing in the 2023 State of CDR report (2nd Ed.) prices based on 2023 market conditions:

What price is the “right” price? They all are! Customers are not irrational, even though there is a high degree of variability in these CDR prices. For example, a customer believed that for Direct Ocean Capture CDR $1,402 per ton is a valuable ton to buy: they wanted to see the exchange happen. Another customer believed that for biochar a $131 ton of CDR is a valuable ton to buy. For each of these customers the price was justified by what they used the durable CDR ton to achieve.

Different customers had different rationales underlying their purchasing decision, value propositions, and thus different price points. The reason for purchasing could have been to neutralize Scope 1, 2, or Scope 3 emissions directly, could have been for branding purposes of being perceived as good stewards of the earth, or perhaps to lock in relationships with suppliers for future credits, or simply to signal support for early stage innovation. SBTi’s Beyond Value Chain Mitigation work offers examples of these reasons. 

 

My takeaway: the rationale for purchasing credits drives the perception of value, and thus the price a supplier is able to charge to cover their costs of supporting their business.

Evidence: These self-reported motivational customer segments are evident in the NASDAQ Global Net Zero Pulse report chart below (Sept 2024):

Granted these are for carbon credit markets writ large – i.e. traditional offsets and less durable nature-based solutions, not only for durable carbon removal – but I would offer that the structure stands, regardless of the type of carbon credit, be it avoidance, less durable CDR (<100 years), or higher durability CDR (>100 years). There is no monolithic rationale for buying durable carbon removal today. When a potential buyer reports that “prices of credits are too high”, the lesson is not that buyers think “you should find a way to lower your costs”, rather “prices are too high for what you are offering to meet what the customer views as valuable now”. The options for a startup to take, therefore, are either:

A) figure out a way to improve the value of the durable CDR credit delivered to the type of customer you are trying to address or 

B) Find a different customer who will find what you are delivering to be valuable.

Which leaves carbon removal suppliers at a standstill: if all prices are valid, then what should I charge?

One answer lies in a powerful survey tool that may be helpful: a Van Westendorp model. This technique can yield an acceptable price range for a given set of potential customers.

The four very specific questions asked in Van Westendorp analysis are:

      • At what price would you consider the product to be so inexpensive that you would feel the quality couldn’t be very good?
      • At what price would you consider the product to be priced so low that you would feel it’s a bargain?
      • At what price would you say the product is starting to get expensive, but you still might consider it?
      • At what price would you consider the product to be so expensive that you would not consider buying it?

The result, a chart that looks something like this example, with one line tracking each of the four questions, price points on the X-axis, and % of respondents who accept the price for that line description on the Y-axis (e.g. 80% of respondents consider $20 ‘Acceptably cheap’):

Source: sawtoothsoftware.com

And there are several ways of segmenting the data, assuming a large enough set of respondents. For instance, a survey team could segment by industry and see the different ranges represented there. Or ask intake questions (like in the NASDAQ survey example above) to divide up the respondent pool by motivations. Or conduct two sets of questions and change the delivery to be in 2025 vs 2030.

Additionally, you can ask these sets of questions twice, once for lower durability carbon removal, and another time for high durability carbon removal. Charts like the one above would have different price ranges for different purchase types. 

This would yield price ranges that offer a quantitative look at how much the value that a customer feels derives into a specific price that a supplier would charge. Then, suppliers would be able to focus on cost targets to become profitable and support their growth – and ability to satisfy the wants of new customers for their products.

The move from cost-based pricing to value-based pricing for CDR credits is just in its infancy, as many early stage technologies are just now starting to move down the internal cost curve. As internal costs decline in future years, startups can drive value by discovering a price point in line with what the customer’s willingness to pay will be, rather than purely to break even on operational costs. Even in the current market, CDR credit supply companies can learn a wealth of knowledge about building a value proposition story that unlocks a customer through offering additional benefits or driving home the message about the quality of carbon removal credits. And in doing so build sustainable businesses that use voluntary carbon markets to drive impact for the customers they serve as well as for the climate.

What do you think? Let me know here

Jason Grillo is a Co-Founder of AirMiners. The opinions expressed in this writing are the author’s own and do not reflect the position of any employer.

Free CDR Career Advice! – Climagination with Jason Grillo

TL;DR working to find a job in carbon removal can be hard work itself – some advice below on how to find the right team fit.

Photo by fauxels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-people-holding-each-other-s-hands-3184433/

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom” – Aristotle

Part of my dream for the carbon removal industry is a future where many thousands of people find gainful, meaningful employment for work to remove the legacy of excess greenhouse gas. For that vision to become reality – removing the first one billion tons before we believe it is possible today – requires a workforce that is educated, trained, and well-matched for the CDR jobs of the future.

To that end, through the people I’ve been lucky to meet in the carbon removal industry, I’ve been asked quite a bit about how to find a job in CDR. When welcoming new folks into AirMiners, the question of how to find a job is probably the topic most on the minds of those who are new to our community. That’s why in AirMiners we’ve done  two  events ( about this topic – Heidi Lim in particular has some excellent (and oft-cited advice) here.

One pillar of this is: how much can I expect to earn in carbon removal? And that data has been difficult to find. That is, until today with the release of an excellent global salary report created by the CDRJobs.earth team led by Sebastian Manhart.

Building on that hope for finding a job that inspires the best of you is why I’m writing this for you as a CDR job-seeking reader: to help you save time by asking three questions of yourself, about what makes you most effective to direct your efforts to fruitful career goals. 

Please note that these self-revealing questions constitute my own personal advice, and your own results may vary.

First, what is your one functional superpower that you bring to the table when approaching a carbon removal company? To be blunt: what is the one thing that you could do immediately in a new role without any on-the-job training? 

‘Functional expertise’ could be marketing campaign creation, operations or program management, corporate financial expertise, or any one of a wide variety of technical skills. And what concrete results have you driven in executing on this skill? In business school my classmates and I practiced the STAR framework to handle interviews: Situations,Tasks, Actions, and Results. What was the Situation you found yourself in, what Tasks were before you to achieve, what were your Actions to attain that goal, and what were the Results you ultimately arrived at. Quantifying those results is especially important: “I developed R or Python to research and analyze X number of deep datasets” “Our marketing campaigns achieved a 200% ROI!” / “We delivered this $5M project ahead of schedule and below budget” marks the success that attracts interest.

Not to discount passion – which is important – but a Grade ‘A’ record of performance plus passion is a compelling story. At the time of this writing, our industry is still in an early enough stage that top functional expertise from different industries will find a ready-made home. Not many have been in CDR for more than five years (myself included!), so bringing a strong transferable set of skills is by far the best way to build a compelling narrative to land a new role.

Second, what type of carbon removal do you like best? 

There are a wide – and I mean wide – variety of CDR methods on offer in these early years of the carbon removal industry. The trick is to figure  out which type of CDR suits your skills and interests – as soon as you can – which makes career searching in CDR  much easier. That way as a job seeker you can home in on how the superpower identified above can be useful in, say, marine CDR, Direct Air Capture, biochar, enhanced rock weathering, Measurement/Reporting/Verification, or any other type of carbon removal technology that provides meaning to you.¹

Carbon removal is a new enough industry that you as a job seeker can ask yourself what sparks your interest in a particular method of carbon removal. What is it about that method that makes you like it more than others, at a high level? If you don’t have that perspective, fortunately AirMiners own BootUp program² provides such an entry point, offering a broad overview of state-of-the-art CDR methods over the course of several weeks.

Most importantly get out and talk to people who are starting up these organizations! Find them on LinkedIn, at networking events, even (gasp) in our main AirMiners community or elsewhere. Ask yourself whether you can envision you working at the type of jobs for people in that method of CDR is a good fit.

Third question: what size organization would you like to work at? The landscape of carbon removal is very much the landscape of startups, though the term ‘startup’ covers a lot of ground in terms of risk and reward. Maybe you are a founder of a company. Maybe you are Employee Number 5, or Number 25, or Number 125 – all of those are new, small STARTUP businesses, with a high degree of risk around technological approach or business model. 

The real introspection to work on is: “in what environment am I most effective at driving results?” Will your 1 or 2 skills from Question 1 above be best unleashed with structure and resources? Or with freedom and latitude without as much to fall back on? Every person has different preferences – and prefers things at different points of their career, especially when factoring for personal and family needs.

The larger a company, even along the more differentiated a role tends to be, and possibly the more hierarchical. Smaller organizations tend to be flatter, favoring those who consider themselves generalists. Plus, compensation – especially for pre-revenue companies – would be more for equity rather than cash. 

Different people in a similar situation could pursue widely varied pathways. For example a recent graduate might want to develop the one functional skill that they know they want to fulfill throughout the next several years of their career, then climb a career ladder or switch companies. Or another recent graduate would say ‘nah, I need my space’ and found a startup or two (or three) in their first years in industry. Knowing yourself and where your talents may best take root – that’s the essence of how to start a job search.

And an added bonus question: How effective might you be in a remote vs. hybrid vs. in-office work environment? The COVID pandemic led to the rise of remote work, with some reversal of that trend in recent years. Fortunately many CDR companies – including small startups – are willing to take a risk and seek talent from a truly global pool rather than limit themselves to a particular geography. 

This post started off with the goal of developing a professional workforce in carbon removal; my hope is that you as a job seeking reader find the career journey a bit easier by asking questions of yourself to guide your job search in a new and growing field. 

Thanks for reading, and wishing you good job hunting!

 

Jason Grillo is a Co-Founder of AirMiners. The opinions expressed in this writing are the author’s own and do not reflect the position of any employer.

Mind the CDR Gap – Climagination with Jason Grillo

 

TL;DR: A gap exists between where we are and where we need to be in carbon removal by 2030, but with the right factors in play we can overcome it sooner than anyone thinks is possible today.

Hi there! 

Summertime travels are wonderful – the result of oftentimes weeks of planning for where you’re going and how to get there. In the carbon removal industry, we’re moving forward to a destination where gigatons of excess greenhouse gases are removed from the atmosphere.  “NetZero by 2050” is certainly an admirable target – we need to understand where the industry needs to get to by midcentury.

As much as future projections focus on 2050 goals, they can seem, well, a bit distant: nowhere near as much emphasis has been placed on what an interim 2030 goal might look like. And that’s an important goal because we can know now whether or not we are on track, and take actions if needed to meet an end-of-2030 target. A specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goal – 6 years away at the time of this writing – can inspire action today which can make that midcentury vision a reality.

That’s why I’m writing today about what might be 2030 interim CDR milestones for climate goals, a gap in where we might be, and a path forward to tackle that. 

To do this I’m going to outline a target, then use publicly available data sources of leading novel CDR methods to extrapolate a portfolio of projections to 2030. As defined in the State of CDR 2nd Edition report, “Novel” CDR includes DAC, BECCS, Biochar, Enhanced Rock Weathering, and marine CDR methods. 

Fair warning: this analysis includes many assumptions about future growth of various CDR sectors – and I very much welcome your scrutiny and constructive critical eyes. So please, comment away using the link at the end of this post!

 

What does a 2030 target look like?

To start off, let’s characterize the 2030 destination.

Fortunately, the aforementioned State of CDR report, 2nd Edition offers an excellent starting point. I’m presenting two scenarios outlined in Chapter 3 of that report: one where our climate settles on 1.5 degrees C without overshoot, and one with overshoot. The data for this comes from the data resources accompanying the report – again, publicly available, and free of charge!

The State of CDR team made multiple estimates, with a median of 260 Megatons of atmospheric CO2 to be removed in the year 2030 for the climate to be on track with the scenario of 1.5 degrees of warming without overshoot, and 70 Megatons with overshoot. 

Data sourced from State of CDR report, 2nd Ed, June 2024

Others have speculated that the 1.5C number requires as low as 190 Megatons; additionally or as high as 285 megatons. For the purposes of our gap conversation, I’m comfortable to stay with 260 megatons for a 1.5 degrees Celsius result without overshoot.

 

Where will the 2030 Megatons come from?

The short answer: everywhere! All solutions are on the table; a portfolio of approaches – some of which are not delivering tonnage yet – are going to contribute to getting to the result. To forecast what a 2030 scenario might look like I’m going to use some existing estimates here from citable sources, and also create some projections of my own based on growth assumptions.

 

Contributions by DAC and BECCS in 2030 

know that Microsoft and Frontier in particular have gone quite deep in funding new BECCS projects, particularly in Scandinavia. The State of CDR Report Chapter 3 has an excellent chart (below) based on companies’ announced plans to build and deploy BECCS and DAC capacity through 2030. BECCS in particular is indicated to have a capacity of ~20 MT in 2025, rising to ~60 MT by 2030; DAC in 2030 is also projected to be 60 MT, for a 120 MT total between these two methods.

 

Some caveats: this likely reflects the facilities’ nameplate capacity, so actual tonnage removed – might not perform as well. 

Second, as with all company estimates, delayed and canceled project deployments may diminish future results. 

Contributions by Biochar in 2030  

Per CDR.FYI we know that Biochar is delivering the vast majority of CDR tonnage today and is selling well now, and is poised to grow in future years. By how much is an open question. For the 2030 estimate, I am going to assume linear growth of tons of biochar produced based on the 2023 Market estimates from the International Biochar Initiative/US Biochar Initiative 2023 Global Market report

Growing from ~96,000 tons to ~352,000 tons represents a 3.6x increase in physical char produced over two years from 2021 to 2023. Assuming this trend of linear growth continues, then in the year 2030, 31 million tons of biochar worldwide would be produced. And since one ton of biochar contains ~2.8 tons of CO2 (source: 2023/24 European Biochar Market report), that figure represents approximately 87 million tons of CO2 stored in the year 2030.

Note that this figure is the tons of physical biochar produced rather than the quantity of registered carbon credits from them – regardless of whether a biochar producer is selling credits, the physical char stores embodied carbon and represents carbon removed from the atmosphere. Adapting a phrase, if a tree gets pyrolyzed in a forest, and nobody registers the credit, it still does reflect removed carbon (and yes will probably make a sound 😉).

Contributions by Enhanced Rock Weathering in 2030

For ERW, the data are a bit more scant, though the Boston Consulting Group offers insights from their 2023 report on carbon removal. With a forecast that 33 megatons will be removed by the entire CDR industry in 2030, 9% of which is ERW, BCG’s result is that ~3 Megatons of CDR will be achieved by enhanced weathering in that year.

That said, I offer that there could be some upside to this – weathering rates and CO2 uptake rates are still under research. And it is possible that deployments may outpace estimates as of now.

The estimated gap

The sum total of those four methods that we have credible 2030 estimates for is 204 megatons to be removed in that year, leaving a gap of 56 megatons to be fulfilled by other methods or by outpacing the projected trajectories of the methods mentioned above.

How to make up a gap? 

  1. Bring additional methods to scale.

Marine CDR in 2030 could contribute to reducing the gap mentioned above, however it is challenging to estimate since most startups are not (yet!) reaching volume at the time of this writing. However, I agree that a suite of marine solutions could be enough to fill the gap (and more on that below) however, projecting into the future is a challenge.

Fundamental research now in mCDR would set the stage for significant deliveries to take place in the year 2030 – particularly for Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement, or macroalgae sinking. BCG suggests a 100Mt in 2050 figure across all ocean methods, rather than offer a 2030 estimate.

Biomass burial and storage is also just now starting to gain a foothold, with over 180,000 tons sold and over 3,000 tons delivered at the time of this writing per CDR.FYI. This solution is scaling rapidly. Assuming that 75% of the 180k tons sold to date are delivered in 2024, and this grows at the same rate as biochar 3.6x every two years (yes, a big IF), then burial solutions would contribute 3M in 2030. 

 

2. Keep pushing to outpace the estimate of the four methods that I included above (BECCS, DAC, Biochar, and ERW). Growing any field of carbon removal is not inevitable, but rather the result of people researching, deploying, and learning how to efficiently advance the practice of removing excess atmospheric greenhouse gas. The ability to advance faster than forecasts is not fanciful – but happening for key climate technologies already. 

It is my belief that carbon removal can model the systemic adaptations present in these industries – innovations in financing, policy advancements, improved social license to operate through awareness and endorsement – leading to deployment and expansion beyond linear estimates. 

In other words, we can close the carbon removal gap – and despite the many challenges that carbon removal faces, that can happen sooner than anyone thinks today.

 

-Jason Grillo is a Co-Founder of AirMiners. Opinions expressed here are the author’s own and do not represent the position of any employer.

Engaging Communities on Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement: Insights from Two Workshops in Sequim, Washington

Authored by Giulia Belotti, Research Fellow at the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal and Sara Nawaz, Director of Research at the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal

Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park. Credits: Doug Kerr/Flickr

Marine carbon dioxide removal is moving from the lab into the world. Now, the enterprise is no longer an abstraction, but is becoming real for the communities where field tests are being conducted and larger deployments are being planned. Against this backdrop, the need for meaningful, robust, and replicable mechanisms for community engagement and input are becoming more pressing and urgent.

We report here on a recent set of workshops that we designed and hosted in Sequim, in Washington State. We describe an innovative approach to engaging community members in (m)CDR, designed to showcase best practices for future engagement efforts. Additionally, we outline the key questions and actionable insights that emerged from the meetings. Most notably, community members expressed a strong willingness to learn more about the technology and its implications for development in the region. However, they also raised significant concerns and reservations across various aspects of (m)CDR, including but not limited to social, ecological, and political dimensions. These concerns underscore the importance of engaging local communities in ongoing (m)CDR research and future deployment efforts.  

Our team at the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal is leading on other community engagement efforts in Washington State and elsewhere. We welcome feedback on our process and findings. Please be in touch with Sara Nawaz [snawaz@american.edu] and Giulia Belotti [gbelotti@mail.ubc.ca] with any feedback. 

The Setting

Located on the northern edge of Washington State’s Olympic Peninsula, Port Angeles is nestled between the Pacific Ocean and the wilderness of Olympic National Park. Home to about 20,000 residents, it is the largest town on the Peninsula.

Port Angeles sunrise. Credit: Anupam Ts/Flickr

In this unique setting, California startup Ebb Carbon is proposing “Project Macoma.” Project Macoma will use ocean alkalinity enhancement (OAE), a marine carbon dioxide removal (m)CDR) process, to draw CO2 from the atmosphere. OAE involves adding alkalinity to the ocean, which triggers chemical reactions that convert dissolved CO2 into bicarbonate and carbonate molecules, ultimately allowing the ocean to absorb more CO2 from the atmosphere. Alkalinity can be added either by spreading ground minerals like olivine or lime into the ocean, or through an electrochemical process that splits seawater into acidic and alkaline streams. Project Macoma will use the latter method. Seawater will be pumped into a series of tanks, treated to become less acidic, and then returned to the ocean, where it will combine with CO2 to form bicarbonate.

This isn’t Ebb Carbon’s first project in the region. The startup is already testing the technology at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) in nearby Sequim, though on a smaller and more contained scale. Partnering with the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, PNNL, and the University of Washington, Ebb Carbon is drawing water from Sequim Bay, splitting it into acidic and alkaline streams, and using most of it for further experiments before releasing it back into the Bay. Project Macoma aims to take this process a step further, by testing the process at a larger scale.

Community engagement: the missing piece of CDR research

Interest in novel mCDR approaches like OAE is rapidly growing among the scientific community and policymakers. However, so far focus has largely been on technical feasibility and natural science aspects of the technology, with community engagement sidelined or delayed.

Yet, social engagement is essential at every stage of a CDR initiative, especially since this field is still emerging. Involving communities early on should not be aimed at gaining public buy-in – it is a vital step toward ensuring equity and justice. Understanding who stands to benefit and who might be adversely affected by mCDR must be a primary goal of any engagement effort. Moreover, a well-informed community is better equipped to make decisions about how, or even if, CDR technologies should be implemented in their region. Ultimately, this approach shifts the process from being a top-down imposition to one where communities actively co-produce knowledge and help shape the development of these technologies. This can help engender community support for projects and often contributes to more thoughtful design.

In other words, meaningful social engagement goes beyond simply presenting a project to the public and asking for feedback. For mCDR initiatives, engagement must fully capture the complexity of the technology and ensure that community concerns and priorities are genuinely integrated into its development. Even well-meaning stakeholders can struggle with how to achieve this.

Recognizing this challenge, our research team at the Institute for Responsible Carbon Removal at American University is committed to fostering more participatory and deliberative approaches in (m)CDR research. As part of this broader commitment, we organized two engagement workshops in the Sequim region. These workshops aimed to showcase best practices for initiating meaningful community engagement on mCDR, with a particular focus on OAE. Dr. Sara Nawaz, the Institute’s Director of Research, received funding for this research from ClimateWorks Foundation.

What did we do?

On June 4 and 5, 2024, we hosted two day-long community engagement workshops on mCDR in Sequim, Washington. With the trial projects discussed above on the horizon, this region could become a significant site for large-scale OAE deployment in the future, by Ebb and other companies looking to leverage the favorable local environmental conditions. Engaging communities at this early stage is essential to ensuring that local voices are heard and considered.

Over the course of these two days, 38 participants representing a diverse range of affiliations joined the workshops. Attendees included staff from environmental non-governmental organizations, Tribes, recreational groups, shellfish farms, marine resource management committees, local government, and educational institutions.

The workshops began with a foundational introduction to CDR, aimed at helping participants become more familiar with the existing landscape of these technologies. Following this, we introduced information about OAE, offering insights into the current state and potential of this particular approach. After each presentation, we made sure to give participants plenty of time to ask questions, share their curiosities, and voice any comments. We also encouraged them to share the first things that came to mind – whether images, thoughts, or associations – when thinking about CDR and OAE. A colleague from Ocean Networks Canada, Dr. Kohen Bauer, served as the technical expert for the workshops, providing detailed information on mCDR and OAE and answering participants’ numerous questions.

Throughout the discussions, we maintained transparency about the state of knowledge of OAE, including its potential unintended consequences and broader implications. Importantly, we were clear about our role as independent researchers, emphasizing that this work is not being conducted on behalf of Ebb Carbon or any other CDR company.

Following the presentations, participants were guided through two interactive activities designed to deepen their understanding of the complexities associated with OAE. The first was a “best-case and worst-case scenario” exercise, where participants were prompted to write down their hopes and concerns about OAE deployment in the region. Using sticky notes, they captured their thoughts, ranging from environmental benefits to potential social impacts, which were then shared and discussed collectively.

The second activity was a scenario-based exercise that divided participants into four groups. Each group was assigned a unique scenario, presenting different contexts for OAE deployment, including variations in political climate, climate change status, governance and funding structures, and potential ecosystem and community impacts. Groups rotated to explore all scenarios, discussing the elements they found most promising, the challenges they foresaw, and how realistic they considered each scenario. This dynamic process allowed participants, many of whom were new to OAE and, more in general, CDR technologies, to engage critically with the issues, fostering informed opinions and preferences about the future of these technologies.

What did we find?

Our initial observations from the workshops reveal that participants are generally open to learning more about (m)CDR and are eager to be involved from the early stages. However, while participants appreciated the information shared, many expressed a need to better visualize the scale of mCDR efforts to fully grasp how much CO2 removal is required to meet climate goals and what this entails in practice. For instance, many confessed that it was difficult for them to picture how their region would look if mCDR were implemented on a large scale. Therefore, they suggested the incorporation of slides that visually demonstrate such impacts in future presentations, or using metaphors to better convey specific quantities. This aspect was especially crucial for participants, especially when it came to understanding the operational chain of OAE. Concerns were raised regarding the potential creation of a new industry, as well as the amount of resources extracted, energy consumed, and emissions associated with these efforts.

How mCDR is implemented emerged as a key concern. Participants stressed the importance of involving communities throughout the process and showed a clear preference for government- and community-owned projects. There was significant skepticism about private corporations, particularly those connected to the fossil fuel industry, due to fears that these entities might use carbon removal technologies as a way to avoid more ambitious emissions reductions. Linked to this, the status of climate change mitigation emerged as a crucial consideration. Participants emphasized that mitigation efforts should be prioritized, viewing mCDR as a complementary component within a broader array of solutions. Discussions frequently centered on the potential trade-offs that communities would inevitably have to face in a future characterized by climate change. There was a strong recognition that decisions about what can be sacrificed or justified in the context of climate action will likely evolve as the crisis progresses.

Participants also highlighted the necessity for a transparent and open Monitoring, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) process, ideally managed by an independent entity, but potentially supported by local groups of citizen scientists. This underscores the importance of keeping communities actively involved as these technologies are scaled up, ensuring that their evolving concerns and insights are integrated throughout the process.

Moving CDR research and development towards more participation and deliberation

The workshops conducted in Sequim mark an important first step in establishing best practices for community engagement in mCDR research and development. More importantly, they represent the beginning of what we hope will be an ongoing relationship and collaboration with the local community. As OAE technology progresses from trial phases to larger-scale deployment, our goal as a research Institute is to continue deepening this engagement, fostering not only broader participation but also moving towards meaningful deliberation.