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CDR Challenges
What challenges do you see in scaling carbon removal initiatives to meet global climate goals?
I’m interested in a question that doesn’t get much attention compared to the technological and policy challenges facing CDR. It’s about how to communicate CDR in a way that helps people understand, trust, and get excited about it — while not conflating it with the bad behaviour in carbon crediting. This is important because, over the next year or two, many more people are likely to hear about CDR for the first time — whether that’s generalist investors or your friend who doesn’t follow climate news. What will be their first impression?
Probably confusion, or at least that’s the answer today. It’s difficult to wrap your head around carbon removal despite its promise. Does it include all nature-based and all technological solutions? (and does the distinction matter?) If “durability” is key to understanding removals, then how long is it durable? And wait: does it exclude “carbon capture?” These are some of the day-one questions facing outsiders looking at CDR. I was one of those outsiders about a year ago, and my initial confusion inspired a research project over 6 months at Cambridge University, where I’m doing a mid-career master’s.
I looked at the role of coordinated communications in helping to build trust in the “novel” CDR solutions that are just now emerging. As a comms director, I thought that few people can be expected to trust CDR and support the warp-speed acceleration it needs as long as it is a) difficult for a normal person to grasp if it is one or 10 things b) vaguely linked to offsetting and its disastrous reputation c) largely unregulated, meaning government is not a trust architect d) facing enormous technological development barriers that by itself could undermine belief in its future. Less obvious was what to do about it.
My research led me to recommend, among other things, loose coordination among suppliers in representing the mission and principles of carbon removal. I think there is a role for startup founders, in particular, to become ambassadors for an ecosystem that few people are aware of. That is arguably more important than promoting the technical particulars of their pathway. Talking to 20-odd people across the CDR spectrum clarified how “the industry” perceives a great deal of common ground and common aims despite its extreme fragmentation. That is something to build on. According to recent public opinion research, it is also likely that macro framings about the promise of carbon removal will resonate more than detail about each technology set.
Research themes
You said you talked to 20 companies for your research. What were some of the themes you heard?
A lot of CDR startups have talked about the importance of MRV in building trust. Interestingly, there was quite a range of views about what matters most in MRV. For some, the key question was about delineating roles and incentives within the MRV system, so I looked at it structurally. For others, it was about how public to be in sharing and verifying data. One wonderfully radical idea was to more or less livestream results from a DAC pilot plant to a database that stakeholders could see. For another founder, the audience for the verified or monitored data is what mattered most — in this case, the local community. There’s so much going on within MRV that it’s probably time to explode the unwieldy acronym and break it down to its parts, a bit like what’s happening with ESG.
Another strong theme was about “showing, not telling:” the desire to show carbon removal’s impact from real-world projects rather than talking about it in the abstract. There’s understandable frustration here since many companies are in their second or third year of pre-production buildout. I think it will help investors and the general public enormously to anchor their understanding of carbon removal around concrete projects that have proven benefits even on a nano scale.
I asked almost everyone whether they thought CDR solutions had enough in common to position “it” as one thing versus promoting each pathway on its own merits and leaning into the precise distinctions between all of them. The consensus was that CDR methods and companies had more in common than not. However, most of the people I interviewed said they had focused their limited energy on promoting only their company or sub-sector. So there is a lot to do there, and many sector conveners, from trade groups to investors, have a role to play.
Most relevant themes
What about your research seemed most timely or relevant as you were doing it?
Working in this space is an adrenaline rush because it’s always moving. Any given announcement or initiative can seem foundational to the future. One example is the EU’s recent Carbon Removal Certification Framework proposal, which suddenly (at least for those not involved in the negotiations) sketched out the basics of a global regulatory regime. Just this month, the SBTi opened a path for carbon credits to contribute to corporate net zero targets.
The importance of This Moment extends to positioning and communications, though no one comments on it. Young industry bodies like the Carbon Removal Alliance and Carbon Business Council are scaling and achieving critical mass in their membership, such that they could help this nascent industry adopt common positions. Cross-sector initiatives like the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Markets are deepening their reach while also integrating their protocols with those of registries and marketplaces. Buyers like Microsoft are advocating for the same principles as the registries, cross-sector initiatives, and even the EU regulators.
So by the start of 2024 there was a clear convergence of ideas about the pillars of a trustworthy voluntary carbon market. This is important because it provides a semi-agreed ruleset for any actor in the industry to adopt or at least interpret. That in turn could provide coherence to a space that is marked by fragmentation and, arguably, mistrust. There was simply not this degree of convergence one year ago, even if the signs were there. It’s astonishing how quickly this is all playing out in real time.
Another point about the timeliness factor: it’s clear that many CDR projects are “getting real” now, whether that’s showing a small pilot plant to investors or delivering their first tons.
This is what focused me, increasingly over the months, on the role that suppliers will have in shaping perceptions of CDR. Startups are often the face of emerging industries. It’s important that they promote their new industry as much as they promote their company. Think about EVs a decade ago. Did automotive regulators EV investors, or online car marketplaces become the face and voice of the EV revolution? Not really. It was Tesla. Elon Musk had that role for better or worse because he was a visible person with a visible product. The same could be said for the next few CDR companies that achieve Climeworks’ scale.
Real-world implementation
How can academic research bridge the gap between theory and real-world implementation in the carbon removal industry?
I am not an academic, and in fact my early career as a newspaper reporter trained me to find answers in a timeframe that serious academics would not approve of. So exploring this topic with the slow, methodical approach of a graduate degree was not easy.
To share some of the fruits of my slog: there is excellent academic research about public perceptions of CDR, especially from Emily Cox and Robert Bellamy. But in general there’s not enough. Of all the academic papers written on carbon removal through 2023, less than 5% involved the social sciences. It’s another indication that the “soft” policy and marketing sides of CDR do not have best practices that build on an accumulated body of knowledge. We need more smart people to pioneer this area — not just in the hard sciences.
In terms of bridging gaps between theory and practice, I found the most valuable resources outside of academia. I want to shout out to the Potential Energy Coalition and their insanely rigorous approach to testing climate communications strategies in 20+ countries worldwide. Ditto the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. More companies should use this! CarbonGap and CDR.fyi are brain trusts that I depended on like so many others. Also I’m looking forward to the second edition of the State of Carbon Dioxide Removal synthesis report on June 4. The first one was gold.
Resources like those above might not be academic, but they provide good data that helps people make decisions right now. I’m not sure the urgency of CDR acceleration suits the slower-turning wheels of academic peer review.
Explaining CDR
What’s the best way for a layperson to explain CDR to sceptics?
I think that depends on whether the sceptic is an investor, a policymaker, or a person on the street.
But in general, stay broad, sell the dream of the whole, make it personal, and avoid scientific jargon as in: “There are exciting new ways to remove carbon pollution safely from the atmosphere. We need them because reducing emissions is not going to get us where we need to be fast enough to protect the planet for your kids. Thankfully there’s not just one way to remove CO2 and store it away forever. There are more like 10 ways, all pretty promising, from turning carbon into a solid rock to speeding up the way oceans absorb it. We need all of these approaches because some will fail, even if some create whole new industries. The important thing is that a few of them work. We need to do everything in our power to reverse climate change and create a safe, liveable planet for our families.”
