Center for Carbon Removal co-founders Noah Deich and Giana Amador, a non-partisan, non-profit organization based in Oakland working to clean up carbon pollution from the air, discuss carbon removal solutions happening today in the U.S. and around the world, such as carbon farming and carbon capture & sequestration, profitable and sustainable ways to reverse CO2 rise.
Transcript:
Lisa Kiefer:Method to the Madness is next. You're listening to Method to the Madness, a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley celebrating Bay Area innovators. I'm your host, Lisa Kiefer, and today I'm interviewing the co-founders of the Center for Carbon Removal, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization based in Oakland. Working to clean up carbon pollution from the air. I'll be speaking with managing director Giana Amador and executive director. Noah Deich.
This year the concentration of carbon in our atmosphere is up to 410 parts per million, maybe it's higher at this moment. And there's a lot more carbon baked in. This can't be a more exciting time for you guys to be doing your work. Can you tell us what the mission of your organization is? And that's the center for Carbon Removal.
Noah Deich:Yeah. Thank you again for hosting us. Excited to be here. We got our start here in Berkeley, not far away from this studio. And so, it's exciting to be back on campus. But yes. Our mission is exactly that. There's too much carbon in the atmosphere. It's causing climate change. And we need to figure out how to clean up some of that carbon from the atmosphere, as well as figuring out strategies for stopping additional carbon from being added.
Lisa Kiefer:How is it that you do this?
Noah Deich:So, in downtown Oakland, what we do is work to catalyze the development of a whole range of different solutions for cleaning up carbon from the air.
Lisa Kiefer:They call you a think and do tank.
Noah Deich:Exactly. Our goal is to have a range of businesses and new enterprises flourish in this space. We look at both natural solutions, so photosynthesis.
Lisa Kiefer:Carbon farming.
Noah Deich:Exactly. The oldest technology in the book to take carbon out of the atmosphere, but as well as technological options. In the same way that plants use biology and photosynthesis to clean up carbon from the air, machines can do a similar type of filtering CO2 from the atmosphere, pulling it back out. And we work to create innovations in both the way that we manage land and in the technologies that we deploy to clean up carbon.
Lisa Kiefer:But you are policy people, right? Am I right about that? You're not actually scientists, you're working with scientists to get this on a political agendas?
Noah Deich:Exactly. So business and policy, both are critical in addition to the science. And it's those three pillars of activity that are going to help inform the smart way to clean up carbon from the atmosphere. And in a way that's not just smart on paper, but actually benefits the communities around the world that build. And then deploy these new innovations and businesses that clean up that CO2.
Lisa Kiefer:I feel like it's an urgent topic and the Paris Agreements aren't going to fulfill what we need to have done by 2030. Two words that cause a lot of problems politically. Let's stop thinking about it as climate change. It's a waste product that we have to take care of.
Giana Amador:I think we tried to really take on that solutions oriented frame and say, you know, carbon is something that makes up all parts of our life. It makes up plants, it makes up you and me. And so, by being able to harness that carbon and take it from the atmosphere where it doesn't belong, and turn it into our soils and make our lands more productive, and use it to make valuable products like cements and plastics, really gives us the opportunity to harness that liability and make it an asset.
Lisa Kiefer:Instead of feeling bad about it or feeling guilty, it becomes a product that is recyclable.
Noah Deich:Exactly. It's turning something that's a waste into something that's valued. We have to not just talk about that. We actually have to show the way. And help people understand the different ways that they can take action.
Lisa Kiefer:So, what's happening right now, who's doing some demonstrable projects?
Noah Deich:So, I actually got the opportunity to go to Iceland a couple months ago where there's a really groundbreaking project. A Swiss company actually has figured out how to capture CO2 directly from the air using more or less a shipping container sized box. They've teamed up with a geothermal power plant in Iceland. Iceland has all of this great volcanic activity, and they harness some of that heat to create power. They have a little bit excess power. This box is sitting at that power plant, taking that free clean energy, and capturing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it underground. And they are working to essentially create this new type of waste management business where they are harnessing this abundance of clean energy.
Lisa Kiefer:What form is it in?
Noah Deich:So, it pulls it out of the air as a gas, and then it takes that concentrated gas, and it separates out all of the other pieces of the air. So, air is made of oxygen, nitrogen. And it filters out that stuff and it is left with this pure concentrated CO2. And what it does is it just injects that CO2 underground.
Lisa Kiefer:And that's still a gas?
Noah Deich:In a gas form and underneath the earth, the type of rock that this power plant is situated above actually reacts with CO2 just naturally. And it turns that CO2 into a stone. To carbonate mineral. And so it's, this is a natural process that happens all the time. The catch is that this rock is buried, so it doesn't have contact with the air. Or it would just filter out that CO2. And so, if you inject this pure concentrated CO2 underground, within even a couple of months, you start to see the rock transform from this dark black solid. It turns into this light gray carbonate material and it's amazing.
Lisa Kiefer:Like limestone?
Noah Deich:Essentially. That's one type of carbonate. And this is a different type of chemistry in the geology, but it's the same principle. It's turning what was once a gas into a solid, and it's permanently sequestered.
Lisa Kiefer:What do you do with all that rock? Where will that physical limestone go? I mean, isn't it going to be a lot?
Noah Deich:So, it's actually not that much at the end of the day when it comes to weight. So, we've put 2000 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere since the industrial revolution, which sounds like this massive amount. But there is more capacity to store that CO2 in our geology.
Lisa Kiefer:Underground.
Noah Deich:Underground many times over. The capacity is not the limiting factor. It's figuring out the engineering, the business models and the policy. And I think there are actually some really interesting ways that we can do that. Not with the geology but actually with our farming and our agriculture.
Giana Amador:The agriculture space is one that's really exciting and really near and dear to our hearts. The Marin Carbon Project, which is a research project that's coming out of UC Berkeley actually, that is applying compost to range lands. And I think this is a really exciting opportunity, because we always read these articles about why beef is so bad for the climate, but the Marin Carbon Project is actually able to turn that on its head a little bit.
Lisa Kiefer:Oh, that's interesting.
Giana Amador:And so by applying compost, which is really kind of just organic carbon to these range lands up in Marin, they're able to sequester carbon in soils. It boosts the productivity of the grasses that are growing, that are then grazed by the cattle. And those cattle can actually help sequester carbon in the soils. And so, they're producing a meat product that is more environmentally friendly. And one that again kind of turns this climate change narrative on its head where it's no longer about us doing things that are bad for the environment, but how can we turn our actions and really help fix this problem?
Noah Deich:It's really exciting to me that there's such a diversity of solutions. You can go to Iceland, which feels almost like an alien landscape, or you can go to Marin. And it's the diversity of solutions that's just the tip of the iceberg. We can figure out so many ways to harness our agricultural systems, our forests, our heavy industry, our manufacturing and our consumer goods. All of that can really change the paradigm of we extract carbon from the ground to make things. And instead we work to extract carbon from the air, put it back in the ground.
So, one of the companies that's really exciting, and one of the fields really, is cement. Which is a really boring topic for most people. But it turns out there are more Google searches about cement than there are climate change every year. And it's a billion ton industry. There's just a huge volume of material that gets moved every year. And it's a big contributor to climate change. But what companies are figuring out how to do is take waste CO2 from an industrial facility, eventually directly from the air, and recycle that into new formulations of cement that are actually stronger and better building materials.
Lisa Kiefer:Where's this happening?
Noah Deich:There are companies that are all over North America working on this. There's one called Carbon Cure that has a facility, in I believe Mississippi or Alabama. There's a company out of New Jersey called Solidia, that they have facilities around the U.S. You don't hear about this that often, because if you're in the cement industry, the idea of being a green product is not always associated with positive value for building materials. If you're building a highway, you don't want a green highway, you want highway that stands up.
Lisa Kiefer:That's the reframe that you were talking about.
Noah Deich:Exactly. And so, the fact that they're able to make stronger materials that happen to be green, is an amazing thing and they don't even sell the green part. They're actually just selling a better product. Over time I think we'll start to realize that you can make better products that are also green, and it's that reframing of it.
Lisa Kiefer:You just quit calling it green and make $1 billion on it.
Noah Deich:Exactly.
Lisa Kiefer:If you're just tuning in, you're listening to Method to the Madness, a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley. Celebrating Bay Area innovators. Today I'm speaking with Noah Deich and Giana Amador, co-founders of the nonpartisan nonprofit organization Center for Carbon Removal.
What have you found to be your major challenges? You have a small staff.
Noah Deich:So, I think one of the biggest challenges is the chicken and egg involved in not having that many enterprises out there doing this today. The real way that we can show progress is by creating new companies that create jobs and.
Lisa Kiefer:So, somebody can go and actually see what they're doing and say, I want to do that.
Noah Deich:Right? So, we spent years looking into integrated assessment models that scientists were producing. And even for folks whose job it is to understand them, it's not a clear and concise thing that's easy to communicate out. But you go to Iceland and you see a machine that's pulling CO2 out of the air, and you can see the rock that has CO2 in it and the rock that doesn't, it's very clear. If you can go to Marin and see a farm and you just look at the fence and the farm that does these practices is it has more.
Lisa Kiefer:It's like night and day.
Noah Deich:Yeah, it's amazing. And so, having those concrete examples is critical. But in order to get those examples, we need to provide support for the pioneers. In this case.
Lisa Kiefer:So capital are you talking about?
Noah Deich:Capital is critical, but resources writ large. We need to enable students to explore this and create new things. We need to figure out how to get entrepreneurs the support that they need, and the training they need, and the networks they need. And then the last piece is the policy. How do we get them the supportive framework the public markets will not provide. Capital? How can government essentially bridge that gap and provide research funding as well as early risk capital, so that we can have a history of plants so the private sector feels confident scaling this up. And we work to fill that gap across those areas so that we can create this whole ecosystem. Tackling all of these amazing opportunities for carbon removal.
Lisa Kiefer:I know you're a young project, but have you had any major successes yet?
Noah Deich:One of the things that was most successful here at Berkeley is we marshaled a group of academics and philanthropists to encourage the national academies to write a research and development roadmap for carbon removal. Scientists were saying, we need more research, we need more activity to commercialize solutions. But nobody had gone in and done the details of, here are the 10 research projects for soils. And the 10 research projects for air capture machines. And laid out what it will take and in what sequence. And with the support of that network of scientific luminaries and philanthropists, they were able to go to DC to convince a number of the key funders for the national academies alongside us to get that study launched.
And we expect that to be open to the public, the spring time of of 2018. These big national academy studies, they tend to take a little longer, and err on the side of making sure they're getting it right and have consensus before they they release. But it should be soon. And that will really help inform the conversation about where to invest from governments, from universities, and even from the foundations and investors that are really forward thinking. And then we can move on from there into policy wins and investment wins. And that's where we think we're gonna see real impact.
So, I think we've already had amazing success with some policy foundations in DC, believe it or not, there is bipartisan support. That's the hope and what we see is that where some of these solutions are hopelessly polarized, this is the type of activity that can garner support from both sides of the aisle. In particular, the idea of cleaning up carbon from the air and supporting these early innovators is something that's widely acknowledged by Democrats and Republicans alike. And we've seen that reflected in some of the carbon capture legislation that has passed through the Senate and been introduced in the House.
Giana Amador:Some of the great feedback that we've gotten when we've been in DC and talking to some of these Republican senators or Republican representatives from states that are in the middle of America or potentially don't always prioritize climate change as their number one political priority, they're really interested in how these farming practices or forestry practices can help revitalize rural areas. Can make their farmers more money. Can make their lands more resilient.
Noah Deich:And even if climate change is a bad word, people are experiencing the impacts of it. Whether it's getting more extreme droughts, more severe, we see fires here.
Lisa Kiefer:Hurricanes.
Noah Deich:And what we see is that the solution is what carries the day. People don't want to quibble about whose problem it is, who created the problem, how bad is a problem going to be? They want to know how do I make my community better with a solution. That's where I'm most excited about all of these agricultural techniques is they're not being sold on, hey, we're going to pay you to clean up carbon, farmer. They're saying, hey, make your soils healthier, more resilient. Make your farming operation more profitable, and open up new markets for these climate conscious consumers. Even if you don't agree with them, they're willing to pay a premium. They're not going to turn that down.
And so, that's one of the real opportunities to help farmers be on the front lines of climate change. Whereas traditionally they have not been on in that tent of climate solutions practitioners. And I think it's a huge missed opportunity from past climate action. And a huge opportunity moving forward to figure out how to harness these solutions. Because I think the signs that we do see are very positive and as we start to get more intellectual support for exactly what to do, building the policy will, and crowding in the investment dollars, will really help.
Lisa Kiefer:Can you tell me about your ASU collaboration? The Initiative for a New Carbon Economy?
Noah Deich:Yeah, and that's the other big win. So the New Carbon Economy is a group of universities and national labs with the shared vision that there are 2 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere that we have put there over the past hundred plus years of industrial activity. That causes a problem in the atmosphere of climate change. But if we're able to take it out and harness that and translate that 2 trillion tons into value, it's one of the biggest business opportunities that we've ever seen.
That's not gonna just happen. If that was an easy thing to do, we would be doing it already. We need lots more research across the spectrum of interdisciplinary fields, as well as topics. So, we need to have the economists and the engineers and the scientists and the policy experts all working together to figure out how to unlock the value of that CO2 in the air. One institution can't do it alone. In order for this to actually get to the scale to meet that promise, we need to work across a lot of different institutions.
And so, that's what we're working on with ASU right now. And it's not just ASU, it's about a dozen other research groups around the U.S. that all bring different capabilities.
Lisa Kiefer:Are there any local?
Noah Deich:Livermore National Lab is in the bay area, and they're one of the key participants. They've been doing pioneering work on this topic for years now.. And they're really leading the charge from a national lab space. The fact that they're sitting down at the table with institutions from across the U.S. that come from many states that are not necessarily known for their climate leadership, Arizona, Wyoming, Iowa, and Indiana that are necessarily associated with think California as climate leaders. But all of these other places are seeing the opportunity to be at the front of that new wave of industrial activity that also deals with our climate problem.
And that's what's so exciting about that consortium is they're going to move forward. And with that leadership, and hopefully the work that other groups like the national academies and the the philanthropies are putting together, they'll be able to start doing that pivotal research and figuring out how to collaborate with each other, and build the types of research networks and mega science projects that we need to really understand and crack the challenge around cleaning up carbon.
Giana Amador:A lot of these conversations are happening in a very siloed nature. Even in the academic community, technology developers, the people who work on climate science and the people who work on the kind of more natural versus engineered solutions, are all having these conversations separately. And we're really trying to pull that together to be a more interdisciplinary conversation. So that it's not just academic institutions who are doing the basic science and the applied science, but that they're making sure that the science that they're doing feeds into the technologies that the corporations are going to use, or the products that they're going to buy. And that the policy makers know what the research challenges are, that they know what sort of support people need to actually implement these practices. So, I think we're really trying to have an interdisciplinary, more diverse conversation that really connects all of these pieces that we'll need to be connected if we really want to make this part of our economy.
Lisa Kiefer:It would be great to connect the public too. I mean, I envision being able to walk over to UC Berkeley and see a demonstration product. And as an individual resident in Berkeley, be able to invest.
Noah Deich:That's what we need. And the question is how do we get there as quickly as we can and figure out ways for individuals to contribute what they can? So, if there are opportunities for people to contribute to a urban farming operation, for example, that sequesters carbon. Or if they're investors, if we can connect them to exciting new entrepreneurs in that space that needs seed capital. Or eventually are there ways for people to put their retirement in only companies that are aligned with this mission of cleaning up carbon from the atmosphere.
Lisa Kiefer:Yes. And that way we can vault over the politics.
Noah Deich:And in order to make that a reality, we have to create that foundation where the innovators are not just thinking about all of these ideas, but actually have the resources to go build out the things that can then get scaled up. And so, we're still in that phase of making sure we get the ideas into the market, not how we take the ideas that are in the market and really bring them to scale.
And so, it's going to be a marathon. Not a sprint for sure, but.
Lisa Kiefer:A short marathon, I hope.
Noah Deich:Yeah. Or a fast marathon.
Giana Amador:We're trying to make it as fast as possible. We think of this, the carbon removal field is something that's very analogous to the development of solar or wind. And so, we've been working on that problem since the 80s. And we're just now starting to see commercial deployment at meaningful levels. So, what we're really trying to do is accelerate that technology development curve and that solution adoption curve, so that we can help solve this problem.
Noah Deich:There are clear ways that we can improve upon that. We've learned what works and what doesn't for a lot of these energy technologies and just the general advancement of relevant technologies for manufacturing things in smart and additive ways and figuring out materials that work way better than they did 40 years ago. We are farther ahead. And so, how do we stand on the shoulders of what has and has not worked and make sure that it doesn't take us 50 years to develop these solutions? It takes us much less. So, that we have the option to scale up the ones that look most promising in the areas that need them the most.
We're convening universities across the U.S., and helping them identify what these key research needs are. And connecting those university researchers who are doing all this amazing work on the ground, with funders from corporates, foundations, connecting them to policy makers so policymakers know the value of this and what things that they can support when political conditions do change. That's what we mean by a platform essentially is creating that home where people can come and work together to get all of the resources that they need to succeed.
Lisa Kiefer:Tell us how you came to start this wonderful project.
Noah Deich:This actually started when I was in business school here. And I came to Berkeley just enamored of the energy innovation happening in the Bay Area. I was on the east coast myself doing more traditional energy consulting and passionate about climate change, but didn't see these big energy companies moving anywhere near as fast as they needed to in order to address the problem. But startups here in the Bay Area, completely different story. At the same time, the idea of cleaning up carbon from the air, it was this thing that scientists understood and had been talking about for a while. There was climate change discussion happening, but it just, it didn't incorporate this idea at all. And we said, why is that and how can we start to to change that? Is it right to leave this off the table?
Lisa Kiefer:Were you on the east coast as well Giana?
Giana Amador:No, I was not. I was here. So, I was an undergraduate studying environmental economics and policy.
Noah Deich:And where we got connected is through the Energy and Climate Institute. It's a fantastic organization that is able to provide support for both student fellowships, as well as new startups. And so, that's how we got connected is through both a a fellowship program that brought Giana into the energy and climate orbit, and a small fund that helped new organizations launch out of Berkeley. Which is where the Center for Carbon Removal came. And we teamed up. And what we set to understand was how do we bring this conversation out of the academic halls and into business policy and civil society discussion, because everyone cares about climate change. Everyone knows that we're not doing as much as we need to be doing and we're not as solutions focused. So, how do we put this on the radar and make sure that we drive towards action and make the promise of all of these solutions a reality quickly?
Lisa Kiefer:What's coming up in 2018?
Noah Deich:So, a couple of really exciting things. First is figuring out how to get this university consortium, the New Carbon Economy consortium to scale. We need a lot more research, and we need to do it fast. So, there's going to be research roadmaps that come out from this consortium, as well as we'll start to see the beginning of the projects that are the fruits of this collaboration. I'm very excited to see where that goes. We're also hopeful that there's going to be activity both in the business community and the policy community. And one thing that I'm really excited about is figuring out how to get new entrepreneurs into this space, making money, cleaning up carbon and turning it into value. And so, we're thinking about how to build that entrepreneurial ecosystem, and leverage all of this Silicon Valley experience in building new companies to do that for carbon.
The policy conversation actually might move quickly. What we've, what I've learned is to stop making predictions about what will happen at all when it comes to policy at this point. But we're seeing so many new opportunities for policy makers to create impacts around healthy soils programs, which are in six states across the U.S., and on the docket in many others. As well as really innovative carbon capture policies that both at the federal level and here in California. So, I expect there to be a lot of progress on both the business and policy front. Exactly where that ends up is kind of anyone's best guess. But I think this'll be a space to watch in 2018 for sure.
Giana Amador:The really exciting thing is that we're seeing this almost turning point for the carbon removal field. When we started in 2015, we constantly had to explain what carbon removal was, what we're doing, and why it's important. And we're starting to see that conversation change, and we're starting to see carbon removal featured in more news publications.
Lisa Kiefer:I read it in The New Yorker. The New Yorker.
Noah Deich:Exactly.
Giana Amador:And so, I think that turn is a really exciting point for us, because now it's not what are you talking about? But how can we help move this forward? The New Carbon Economy consortium is a really exciting place for our organization and for all of these research universities to start putting science into action and really making that business case for carbon removal solutions.
Noah Deich:The resources that we see talking about this, not just The New Yorker, but other major publications aimed not just at scientific audiences but at the mainstream public and the business community and philanthropy community, that has changed dramatically even in the past year. And we have a weekly newsletter that compiles all of those resources. So, as a shameless plug to go to centerforcarbonremoval.org and sign up for that newsletter. And I think what we'll see over the next year is just a complete shift in the narrative coming out into looking at all of these different sources of action and activity. And that conversation moving to solutions, not just, hey, this is a potential problem that we weren't seeing or an opportunity that has not yet been achieved.
Lisa Kiefer:Or more action oriented.
Noah Deich:But yet here's what's happening and how people are seizing that opportunity and solving the problem.
Lisa Kiefer:So, if listeners want to get ahold of either one of you and learn more about your organization, what was that website again?
Noah Deich:Centerforcarbonremoval.org.
Lisa Kiefer:And they can actually reach out to you individually from that site?
Noah Deich:Yes.
Giana Amador:Definitely.
Noah Deich:This feels like the frontier of the climate change conversation. What we need today is pioneers who don't necessarily know what lies ahead, but are excited to go on these expeditions professionally with their volunteering, with their investing and chart new territory. And to me, this is the unexplored piece of a climate conversation that's going to be pivotal for our society going forward. And in order to make that succeed, we're going to need so many more people in this space who are pioneers in spirit, and are out there trying to navigate all of the uncertainties. But knowing that where we're headed is this incredibly important and valuable activity. For me personally, figuring out how we can get more great minds and fearless leaders into this space is the most important thing to actually achieve the potential.
Giana Amador:There's so much that we can disagree about, but really what we've seen in the carbon removal space is something that unlikely allies can come together and work towards. And that's something that's been really empowering as we've done this work. Something that keeps us going. And that I see really accelerating this space at a level of progress that we need to address this issue of climate change. Moving forward, we should really work to expand the tent of people who are working on climate change, expand the tent of solutions, and really work together to address this gargantuan problem.
Lisa Kiefer:Thank you so much, Noah and Giana for coming in to Method to the Madness.
Giana Amador:Yeah, thank you for having us.
Noah Deich:Yeah, thank you for hosting.
Lisa Kiefer:You've been listening to Method to the Madness, a public affairs show on KALX Berkeley, celebrating Bay Area innovators. You can find all of our podcasts on iTunes university. We'll see you in two weeks.
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