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Today’s interview is with Peter Minor, CEO & Co-Founder, Absolute Climate.
Background
Could you tell me more about your background?
Peter Minor- I've always been drawn to solving big problems at the intersection of science, technology, and impact. After getting a PhD in mechanical engineering, my first real job was launching a startup accelerator for frontier science at UC Berkeley That was where I got my first exposure to climate technologies and carbon removal.
But I formally joined the CDR industry in 2019 when I built the Science & Innovation team at Carbon180, where I focused on advancing carbon removal through policy and cross-sector collaboration. That work showed me just how critical it is to get the foundational infrastructure of this industry right—from scientific rigor to market design. And I became convinced that MRV would determine whether carbon removal became an important tool in preventing harms due to climate change, or whether it would end up as carbon offsets 2.0. It was a radicalizing realization for me, and convinced me to leave the amazing team at Carbon180 to start Absolute Climate.
Inspiration
What led you to start Absolute Climate?
Peter Minor- After a few years in carbon removal, I felt I kept running into the same core issue: the carbon credit system lacks consistency, clarity, and accountability. Each registry sets its own methodologies, leading to a fragmented market where credits are defined and measured in vastly different ways. As a result, buyers struggle to understand what they are actually purchasing, and high-quality projects often go unrecognized.
Additionally, most registries face a structural conflict of interest—they are responsible for both setting standards and issuing credits. That’s like writing the test, then grading yourself on the outcome. It creates a natural incentive to prioritize volume over quality. I realized that, over time, this dynamic erodes trust and weakens the credibility of the entire market.
We created Absolute Climate to address these issues at the root. Our focus is on building the first independent, science-based standard for carbon removal. By separating standard-setting from credit issuance, we can bring transparency and objectivity to the market—and help ensure that credits actually reflect real, measurable climate impact.
Evolving Standards
Absolute Climate focuses on establishing a global standard for carbon removal. How do you see this evolving in the next 5-10 years?
Peter Minor- To be successful with our ambitions to limit global harms, we need CDR standards that help us understand the progress we’re making towards the goals set by the IPCC. Today, we don’t have this. We have a patchwork of inconsistent methodologies across voluntary and national compliance markets, few of which create a consistent framework for how projects are truly impacting the atmosphere.
Our goal is for the Absolute Carbon Standard (ACS) to become a trusted benchmark, providing the clarity and consistency necessary to align global ambitions. We envision a future where credits are evaluated against a universal framework, grounded in scientific rigor and independent review.
As the industry evolves, we see Absolute Climate playing a central role in supporting that transition—by setting the bar and helping the market move toward outcomes that are truly impactful and bankable.
Carbon Credit Impacts
The carbon credit market has been criticized for lack of consistency and transparency. What is your response to claims that carbon credits, as they stand today, aren’t making a real impact on climate change?
Peter Minor- Unfortunately, those concerns are entirely valid. The current system isn’t designed to clarify whether a project’s claims actually match the atmospheric impacts being promised. There isn’t a common set of criteria for whether carbon dioxide has been removed from the atmosphere, or a consistent baseline for impact, making it difficult to distinguish between credits that deliver real climate benefits and those that do not. The issue is compounded by the fact that emissions reductions and removals are often conflated, creating confusion about the actual effectiveness of the credits being purchased. This type of misclassification isn’t just a technicality—it can lead to greenwashing and wasted investments in projects that can’t actually meet their promised climate impacts.
This is why we built the Absolute Carbon Standard (ACS), which applies a universal assessment to all carbon removal projects. It doesn’t matter if it's DAC, ERW, or marine CDR. ACS provides buyers with a consistent framework for determining which projects to support, based on their impacts on the atmosphere.
Since we operate independently, ACS can be adopted by registries, or even governments, to ensure that carbon credits—whether they’re reductions or removals—are properly valued and differentiated. By doing so, we provide buyers with the confidence that the projects they are investing in truly align with their climate goals. This transparency can help restore trust in the market and enable the scaling of effective carbon removal solutions, leading to real, measurable impact.
Different Approach
Absolute Climate is challenging the norm by building a standard instead of a registry. Why have you taken this approach?
Peter Minor- The decision to create a standard rather than another registry comes down to the need for independence and incentives alignment. When a single entity both sets the rules and issues the credits, it is difficult to maintain objectivity, and quality can suffer as a result. It always ends up becoming a race to the bottom.
By focusing exclusively on standard-setting, Absolute Climate ensures that credit quality is evaluated solely on its scientific and atmospheric impact, rather than market pressures. We create a separation of power between quality assurance and credit issuance, ensuring that no one organization has the ability to reduce quality in order to issue more credits.
This approach enables us to focus on driving consistency across all carbon removal pathways, ensuring that each credit, regardless of the method used, is held to the same rigorous standard. That is how we build trust in the market—and how we lay the groundwork for the industry to scale responsibly.
Policy & Impact
The U.S. government has scaled back some of its climate efforts. How do you think this will impact the private sector’s role in climate change mitigation, and what kind of policy changes do you think are needed to drive real progress in carbon markets?
Peter Minor- When public investment or regulatory momentum slows, it becomes even more important for the private sector to lead. The private sector is uniquely positioned to step up and fill the gaps. Businesses, investors, and innovators have a critical role to play in continuing to build and scale the solutions needed to move us forward. And despite changes in the current administration, the need for carbon removal hasn’t abated one bit.
At the same time, strong policy is essential for long-term success. Clearer regulations around credit quality, stronger incentives for high-integrity removal, and support for monitoring and verification technologies will be necessary to accelerate progress.
The path forward is not one or the other. Scaling carbon removal will require close coordination between public and private sectors, each reinforcing the other to create a market that is transparent, accountable, and capable of delivering real climate outcomes.
Unbound Summits’ mission focuses on unrivalled connections, new insights and unbound CDR opportunities. You can learn more about Absolute Climate at https://www.absoluteclimate.com/ and on LinkedIn.
