You’ve worked at the intersection of policy, markets, and climate innovation. What first drew you to carbon removal, and what role do you see it playing in the broader climate response?
I came into carbon removal by way of geologic storage. I met John Rupp in grad school at Indiana University. He was one of the first and leading scholars of geologic storage of carbon dioxide when there were very few people studying it. This was before 45Q existed and before large-scale enhanced oil recovery operations were up and running, so it felt like cutting edge work. John got me reading all the great papers (Friedmann, Benson, Greenburg, Hovorka, Kelemen, Goldberg, etc.) and I fell in love. I spent my time studying the policy and economic world of storage and was lucky to work at the Indiana Geological Survey on a technical project in the Mt. Simon.
CDR is an interesting proposition. It’s a shame we even have to do it. But as you look at the value of fossil fuels, it’s tough to imagine a world where we truly get to zero demand or usage for them. They are too cheap (emissions costs notwithstanding), too useful, and too pervasive in the global economy to see a short or even medium term large scale demand drop. But over the long term, as better alternatives arise, like electric vehicles replacing gasoline powered cars, and renewable energy can replace coal and gas for power generation, we can expect to see lower demand. Whatever remains, and whatever non-fossil emissions we have left, will need to be removed from the atmosphere. That, coupled with the even longer term ability for CO2 to begin drawing down legacy emissions, gets us to net-zero and net-negative respectfully.
CDR isn’t just a climate play. There are many co-benefits of different pathways that can improve soil quality, deliver economic benefits, reduce acidification, increase ecosystem diversity, and many other advantages.
You recently took the helm as Managing Director of the Carbon Management Research Initiative at Columbia. Tell us more about the role and why you chose it.
Breakthrough Energy made the difficult decision to close its policy teams in March. That was tough because I truly loved my team and my time there. I was blessed to work with brilliant people and get access to conversations, places, and information I never dreamed of being privy to. Afterwards, I was approached by Jason Bordoff at the Center on Global Energy Policy to reboot the Carbon Management Research Initiative (CaMRI), which was previously run by a mentor and friend, Dr. Julio Friedmann.
I jumped at the opportunity. Filling Julio’s shoes is nearly impossible. His program was focused on technoeconomic research and analysis, much of which shapes the way we think of carbon management today. I’ll be bringing a slightly different lens, drawing on my background in policy, regulatory frameworks, and economics to expand the scope of the program.
Over the next few months, we will be building out the program to focus on evidence-based, impartial research. The goal is to explore the ways any country or group could use carbon management to achieve their goals.
We will be taking a global focus, and working with countries, governments, NGOs, companies, and policy makers around the world to provide them with the policy, regulatory, and economic tools they need to realize their carbon management goals.
If you can only choose one thing, what would you like to accomplish during your tenure at Columbia?
I got into policy because it’s the necessary and perfect complement to technology. We can do amazing things when incentives meet ingenuity. With that in mind, my goal is to influence the way the world thinks about carbon management. Whether that is specific ideas being written into legislation, companies using our frameworks to deploy capital, or a better understanding of the public on the value of carbon management, I want to effect change.
At the same time, I want to help cool the temperature of the carbon management discourse. It’s an understandably controversial topic, especially given its ties to the oil and gas industry. But it doesn’t need to be that way. I hope to accomplish a more harmonized and level head view of carbon management across funders, NGOs, civil society, governments, and the public so we can build projects that we want, and recognize fraud and abuse when we see it.
There’s been a lot of focus recently on scaling carbon removal through private-sector demand. What do you think markets are getting wrong about carbon removal right now?
The question of all questions: How do we scale CDR? How do you scale a necessary suite of climate technologies, all with different readiness levels and scientific certainty, and with a lack of a harmonized market?
Private sector demand has been the biggest and most important enabler to date for CDR. What firms like Microsoft, JPMorgan, and Frontier (amongst others) are doing is nothing short of heroic and we will all thank them one day. These are corporate-led, philanthropic efforts that are pulling the industry from its nascent beginnings into something resembling an “industry.”
We are always going to see private demand play a role, but governments need to start taking a bigger role if we are ever going to reach gigaton scale. We need policy to incentivize and a regulatory regime to compel compliance, using CDR as a pathway. Every major climate technology has scaled with private and government support, and CDR is no different — except that without an implicit or explicit carbon price, there’s a very limited market for its benefits.
I could write a whole report on the failures of carbon markets but realistically the fix is challenging. Set too stringent of rules and you get complete demand destruction due to cost of removals, and you fail to scale. Set them too loosely and you get fake and fraudulent projects that damage the name of the companies trying to build good projects, and you lose public trust.
Fundamentally, I think the market needs to begin pruning and punishing the truly bad operators more strictly. $1 carbon credits are not real. $5 carbon credits are not real. We need an agreed-upon floor that ratchets up over time. And that can be achieved in part by harmonizing the best standards, while simultaneously creating policy and regulatory regimes that push for high quality deployments. We need clear market signals.
What’s something you think the CDR industry is over-indexing on, and what isn’t getting enough attention or investment?
The entire field isn’t getting enough investment. If you look at the proportion of CDR in net-zero models (1% to 15%) it’s not getting anywhere near that level of investment. Governments should be putting more money into research, development, and deployment. More companies should be buying high quality removals.
We are also over-indexing on net-zero as a concept, especially this early on. Let companies purchase high quality CDR regardless of how it fits into their “sustainability plan” or if they even have one. Every ton matters, and every tenth of a degree matters.
What does it actually mean to make carbon removal equitable and democratically governed in practice, not just in principle?
Equitable for whom, and democratically practiced for whom? The answers to those questions will vary with each project and geography. We should be careful not to prescribe one-size-fits all rules on technologies and projects that may not apply in all situations. Trade-offs are real, we must confront them in good faith. We can build things that are good for companies, communities, people and the climate. We’ve been doing it for decades and I see no reason why CDR should be any different.
What’s a promising shift or signal you’re keeping an eye on that gives you hope for the future of carbon removal?
There is an amazing talent pool in CDR. Some of the best and brightest people are drawn to the solution, from engineers, to communicators, to policy experts and beyond. We are going to go through some version of a contraction in CDR. It was inevitable. But we must retain the best people, and so far I’m seeing that. I’m bullish long-term on CDR. The people in the industry will make it happen.
