As a nascent industry, carbon dioxide removal is often misunderstood by the general public.
And that makes CDR humor very niche. Maybe only 5% of people will understand it, but those who do really, really appreciate it.
Just go to a Halloween party dressed as the Climeworks stock photo, and you’ll see what we mean.
Jack Andreasen serves as Manager of Carbon Management in US Policy and Advocacy at Breakthrough Energy, an organization committed to scaling the technologies we need to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. He is also a prolific writer of memes in the CDR space.
On this edition of the Reversing Climate Change CDR Happy Hour, Nori Meme Lab colleagues Ross and Siobhan sit down with Jack to discuss what drew him to carbon dioxide removal and describe his role in ‘carbon middle management’ at Breakthrough.
Jack shares his frustration with having to defend CDR in conversations with people outside the space, explaining how he thinks about the criticisms of direct air capture and the misinformation perpetuated by the mainstream media.
Listen in to understand the range of opinions around the visual aesthetic of solar or wind farms versus DAC machines and get ideas for creating your very own meme-inspired CDR Halloween costume!
More from the show
Ad-free episodes and other benefits come with a paid subscription.
Carbon Removal Newsroom, the news show that ran alongside this one, is over. Its episodes are still up, on the feed Climate Workers Anonymous now uses.
Carbon Removal Memes is still going.
Resources
‘Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Nancy Pelosi Leads Gazpacho Police’ in The Washington Post
Jason Hochman on Reversing Climate Change S3EP20
John Oliver’s Piece on Carbon Offsets
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hey, you’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. I’m the creative editor and one of the co-founders of the Nori carbon removal marketplace. I have Siobhan Montoya Lavender here with me. Hey, Siobhan. [unclear] Hey. We’re doing this little canned intro because we’ve been trying to do these warm opens on the show for the Meme Lab writers’ room, right? It’s almost like if you’re having a happy hour after work — you work in carbon removal, you still want to be around carbon removal, but maybe not the kind of show you’d be taking notes on. That’s what we’re doing, right?
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Probably. That’s what we’re doing. Please grab a drink and join us, if this is your Friday happy hour.
Ross Kenyon: Indeed. Yeah, I think it’s working in the way that we are intending, and I hope you enjoy it. And we forgot to do this when we were talking to Jack Andreasen at Breakthrough just now, who’s also a big meme lord. So anyways, keep forgetting. Yeah. Is there anything else that even needs to happen right now? We just send people into this? Was this even necessary? I don’t know. I don’t know. Here we go. Meet Jack Andreasen. Okay, here goes. Bye-bye.
You’re listening to the Reversing Climate Change podcast by the team at Nori, the carbon removal marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change.
Yeah, so you’re at Breakthrough, you’re saying, Jack. Jack Andreasen, is that correct?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, Breakthrough Energy. So, yep, I’ve been there since October of last year and I’ve really enjoyed it.
Ross Kenyon: You were saying that you get a little less spicy than Breakthrough Institute and people confuse you. Do you get like mean tweets by accident ever?
Jack Andreasen: No. I mean, usually we’ll just get quoted in a news article or something and they’ll just, like, errantly put in Breakthrough Institute. But yeah, [unclear] quite the hot takes that the Institute comes out with, the internet.
Ross Kenyon: What’s preventing you from the hot takes? What’s holding you back?
Jack Andreasen: It’s just, I’m just not a hot take guy. I just, I can’t handle the heat. I would immediately relent under the pressure of Twitter mobs coming for me. So I know myself and I stay in my own lane.
Ross Kenyon: Fair enough. What’s the opposite of a hot take? I thought cold soup. I wouldn’t call you gazpacho, Jack. Is that—?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, no, but I have been, after the whole, you know, gazpacho police debacle that happened earlier this year with Marjorie Taylor Greene, instead of Gestapo saying gazpacho — my fiancée and I have thought about doing gazpacho police as a Halloween costume idea.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, there’s like a Soup Nazi angle in there. There’s a whole lot of different directions to take it. What would you even dress as?
Jack Andreasen: You know, I think I would maybe be a tomato [unclear] and then maybe she would be a mason jar or something, you know. We’re still workshopping it, but I think there would definitely have to be some sort of, like, signifier that we were gazpacho, and then maybe like a police hat as well. So, yeah, you know, we’ve got a month, two months here to work through that. But yeah, it’s early on.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I like that you’re forward-thinking in this. I feel like I’m such a last-minute Halloween planner, so I like the cherry on top of this. Yeah, like, to pin, when, like, very pop culture or otherwise, like, memes happen throughout the year, to say, you know, this could be a fun niche Halloween costume.
Jack Andreasen: Gazpacho police Halloween costume — I think a lot of the pop cultural ones, they don’t age very well and they’re kind of forgettable. What do you think happens?
Ross Kenyon: That’s what we like about them, in that, like, maybe five percent of people get it, but the 5% who do really appreciate it — to me, that’s the real [unclear]. I do see CDR memes online, and that is the poster child for not very many people getting it, but those in the know sort of appreciate it. So that is sort of becoming a personality trait, I suppose. Really niche humor is the way to go. We’ve thought about doing broader climate tech memes and they’re not funny to us. Like, one, you do a solar panel joke, someone else is doing it. No one else is doing the hardcore CDR takes. We know our place, right?
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: [unclear] We stay in our lane. Yeah, lanes are important, and niche CDR memes are the way of the future, truly. Now I’m feeling like I need a niche CDR costume. Now that we’ve mixed costume and meme, I’m like, I should do something CDR and then no one will get it, but the five people out of 100 who see me will think I’m awesome.
Jack Andreasen: I thought about just going as, like, the Climeworks stock photo.
Ross Kenyon: It haunts us. The Climeworks stock photo — we were talking with Jason Hochman about this at the DAC Coalition, about wanting to do memes about how it’s the only image available to journalists writing about direct air capture. We were like, how meta can we make this? And how many people would get it? It sounds like you would get it if we made a joke about it. The only image available — is it just you?
Jack Andreasen: No, I think, I mean, with other people I talk to, I can see our community. It’s very much like everyone understands. And, like, I have a great admiration for Climeworks. Obviously it’s a technology company, but also cornering the stock photo market is not a business strategy that I knew existed, and just complete credit to them for really hammering that out. I mean, there were, you know, the sort of three first-gen DAC companies, with Carbon Engineering, Climeworks and Global Thermostat, and [unclear] had the opportunity to get a stock photo out there and become a living meme, and Climeworks did it first.
Ross Kenyon: If you go on Adobe’s stock footage site — is that the right name of it? Exactly. I was on there recently for a project a while ago. For sure, Climeworks [unclear]. I doubt they’re monetizing it. Someone else just did this and they’re monetizing it. Someone’s making money off of it. I spent money getting it. So all of my olivine beaches — who else is looking for olivine beach footage except for me? There’s not that many people out there, but someone is. Someone knows. Like, five years from now, ten years from now, there’s a hundred people who are listening: go start your CDR stock photo collections now.
Jack Andreasen: Yes. I’ve had this idea — and it’s not my idea, people are doing it now — but the idea is, like, being the Johnny Appleseed of Class VI and Class II wells, and just getting a bunch of permits, buying a bunch of well and reservoir access for when CDR does scale.
Ross Kenyon: That’s what Johnny Appleseed did, right? Went out and planted apples, so people, as they populated the Western US, they would then take these apples and make hard apple cider with them. And so he was, like, ahead of the population growth. And I feel like this is another example of the Johnny Appleseed business strategy, which is to buy all the rights to the stock photos of CDR technologies. And also, what, just depleted wells that can run in reverse?
Jack Andreasen: Yes. Yes. Class IIs would obviously be the volume play in terms of number of wells, just, they’re easier to get, but Class VI will just give you the volume of storage. So, you know, whatever, maybe there’s a hedge, you do a little bit of both, buy some basalt in the Pacific Northwest, and just be ready to be the corner store for all things geological storage in the United States.
Ross Kenyon: You’re putting the ideas out there, man. We’re going to scoop these ideas up.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I think you’re onto something, though, because I honestly do think we talk a lot about scaling the market, but we don’t talk a lot about the downstream supply chain needs for that market, or we don’t talk about it enough, I would say. So I think any business that’s looking towards what will gigatonne-level carbon removal need, as, like, a transport service, or a crushing service, or just, like, one little piece of that whole picture, of that whole process from removal to storage — I think those are some diamonds in the rough that are going to come out.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, there’s going to be a huge ecosystem that springs up on things that you never would have expected. Going to be, what, like domain squatters online? You’re like that, but for CDR. Cool, thanks, Jack, for the horrible idea you just put out into the universe. I’m going to buy them pennies on the dollar and then resell them for a fortune. Look at all the value that [unclear]. All the Georgists are going to come after your head. Get ready for that.
Jack Andreasen: I love this. I hope — yeah, I would love nothing more than to spur, you know, an industry of fundamentally taking sh*tposting from real life into, you know, a business strategy, where you just buy up all the domains, wells, you know, whatever. The first corner — CDR merch, CDR streetwear, CDR sneakers. I mean, let’s go. Let’s go, you know, all the way throughout all the sectors. Let’s not limit ourselves.
Ross Kenyon: What about DALL-E and any of these AI-generated images? Could our jobs be replaced yet? Siobhan, CDR memes, are we safe? Jack, [unclear]. Are we in trouble?
Jack Andreasen: Well, what DALL-E won’t tell you is that myself and a number of other people in the CDR community — anytime a CDR technology is put into DALL-E, they just email me and then we all draw these. So, a peel back behind the curtain is that it’s real people coming up with these.
Ross Kenyon: [unclear] put in there, like, Donald Duck pumping CO2 into the submarine lithosphere. That’s you? You made that?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, that’s [unclear]. That’s me.
Ross Kenyon: All right, good to know, got the inside track now. Jack, what drew you to CDR? Like, some thoughts about it — like, what drew you to CDR, because you’re deeply involved in the space, you know the ins and outs, you have a very dry CDR humor that I’m enjoying. But, like, where was the impetus to get into this industry?
Jack Andreasen: So I guess I sort of studied CDR. My undergrad was in biology, but I looked at birds, and then the interaction between birds and plants, and then, like, towards graduation my work was on carbon sequestration and resource allocation in oak shrubs. And so that was the first kind of insight into, like, the carbon cycle within plants and how a plant might allocate carbon to particular things like acorn production in the species I was working on. And then I went and taught school. I had a senior year crisis and realized I didn’t want to be an ecosystem ecologist or a plant physiologist and go to grad school. So I went and did Teach for America, taught school for two years in eastern Washington State. It was awesome. Middle school science.
Nobody is more honest than a middle schooler. So I learned a lot about speaking in front of people, and no crowd I’ve ever spoken in front of will ever match the brutality of my second period class my first year. It was a bloodbath. It was horrible.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Did they appreciate your dry humor?
Jack Andreasen: No, they didn’t. I think it was a little too dry. They would just, like, crack on my clothing all the time. They would be like, that jacket doesn’t fit you. Like, well, it does fit me, and I don’t take fashion advice from an eighth grader. I mean, I didn’t wear the jacket after that, to be fair to them.
Ross Kenyon: They were with you every day. Yeah, [unclear]. This is the season of The Wire where Pryzbylewski goes and starts teaching and just everyone — is that what your experience was? Sounds like it.
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, yeah. I was basically The Wire. So, yeah, two great years. Decided to go back to grad school at Indiana University. And while I was there I had a mentor who I still talk to today. John Rupp is his name. He’s a former petroleum geologist and worked at my graduate school, and he hooked me up with a job doing research at the Indiana Geological and Water Survey, where I learned about geological sequestration. [unclear] wrote a very unimpressive report on saline aquifers and the level of salinity within saline aquifers, because there has to be a certain level of salinity before you can inject into it, because if it’s not salty enough it could be used as drinking water, and so it has to be very salty in order to inject CO2 into it.
And then that was sort of my, like, carbon capture, direct air capture — that was, like, getting carbon capture pilled. And even more so than carbon capture, it’s really getting, like, storage pilled. And I was like, wow, this is the coolest thing on planet Earth. We can pump carbon back whence it came. It’s wild that this is a technology that is available to us. So that is the genesis, that moment of working at the Indiana Geological Survey. And yeah, from then on it’s been pretty much no holds barred.
Ross Kenyon: Siobhan, he’s using the -pilled suffix, so he’s a creature of the internet, you know.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: [unclear] He also will always win us over with self-deprecation, by telling us it was a paper of little note. Ross and I already like you more.
Jack Andreasen: I mean, it can really only be described as middling. I was handheld through the entire thing by actual geologists giving me, like, a crash course in geology over the course of the year. Yeah, Christian Medina and Kevin Ellett, shout out. Thank you so much for holding my hand through all of the truly terrible work that I did, for sh*t. [unclear] But it was, yeah, super consequential. I worked at Duke Energy for a little while, and then, yeah, moved over to Breakthrough last October and have been working on CCS, industrial decarbonization, direct air capture, CDR ever since. So it’s been a great opportunity to work through and with an organization that not only is a foundation and funds so much good work, but also, on the venture capitalist side, has literally invested in direct air capture and storage companies.
Ross Kenyon: Carbon Engineering was the first, I imagine. There’s been subsequent downstream investments, right?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah. So Carbon Engineering isn’t actually invested in through Breakthrough Energy Ventures. There’s some [unclear] who this is. Yeah, it’s another Gates organization of people. I actually don’t know if it’s through Gates Ventures or not. But Breakthrough is invested in Sustaera, Mission Zero Technologies, Verdox and Heirloom — those are the direct air capture companies. And then they also have 44.01, ultramafic mineralization.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that one’s cool. What exactly do you do there, Jack?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, so the official title is, I suppose, manager of carbon management policy. [unclear] the snarky Twitter bio: carbon middle management, views based and cringe. [unclear] Okay, yeah, I found out — my fiancée is really great about keeping up to date on TikTok and what the youth are doing, [unclear] with the youth language — and she let me know that they had been using “mid” as an insult. And so I thought it was only right, because I am certainly very mid, that I should embrace carbon middle management as, like, a job title.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, “for real for real,” they say. Yeah. [unclear] Middle management hits different.
Jack Andreasen: So at Breakthrough we fund and write grants out to a number of different organizations in sort of the carbon management space. We work with members of Congress, try to find areas of research that the CDR space might need and provide funding for that. And then we try to maintain a public presence through the comms team.
Ross Kenyon: Or memes. Or maybe, is this something that you have permission to do, or have you just gone rogue in this conversation right now?
Jack Andreasen: No, not at all. Maybe — I’ve certainly had to get permission for some. I mean, the memes about CDR. Yeah, no, I’ve had nothing but, you know, good feedback from the comms team on the memes. Like I said, I try to keep these relatively above board. Maybe I should get an alt for the real spicy memes, become like, you know, there’s so many alts out there, that maybe I should start one up. But yeah. And they’ve been nothing but super supportive.
To your point about, like, people engaging earnestly with the memes: sometimes on Twitter, like, people have responded in such [unclear], like, providing critique to the meme on, like, the factual, like, down to the percentage or something, and they’re like, “Well, you know, we can only do like anywhere from like 5 to 10% removals.” And my response is like, yes, I’m aware. Like, I do this every day of my life. And it’s always — I just always want to respond with “my brother in Christ.” Like, brother in Christ, I work in this every day, I’m very clear on the economic, ecological, physical system boundaries of all sorts of, like, CDR as it exists today, and the MRV challenges associated with [unclear]. Like, trust me, I am inundated with it 24/7. I have to be asked not to talk about it when I’m outside of work, because it’s all I do.
But I do respect responding earnestly to a meme. That takes a level of either delusion or confidence that I don’t know if I have, and I love that. Yeah, go ahead, Siobhan.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: No, I think that was well said. I think we can just plus-one that we oftentimes don’t really know how to respond when people critique our memes. And, you know, we’ve talked about this before, like, sometimes it’s just people are just missing the joke, and we’re like, “ha ha,” with sarcasm, but you can’t say that, because then you’re just explaining your own joke — you’re an idiot. We walk down that path, and that’s why I think you just summarized it well.
I want to ask you, so you’ve been in the field for a little bit, and you started, I think you started, you know, in the same way that a lot of us discovered CDR, and we’re like, holy sh*t, this is amazing, this is so exciting, this technology is going to change the world, this is so powerful. I think a lot of us started there. I certainly started from that perspective, and I still hold on to that, I think, in most of what I do. But was there a point when you started to get a little jaded? Because I think there’s a point at which all of us start to get a little jaded. Has there been, like, a jaded story to go along with your CDR discovery story?
Jack Andreasen: I mean, other than just constantly being tired of having to qualify all of the things that, if you work in the CDR space, like, you eventually have to qualify in conversations. To the extent, like, yes, we need to reduce emissions, you know, anywhere from 90 to 95%, and removals will be used, you know, to clean up sort of residual emissions or very hard to abate emissions. And, like, going through this laundry list, this, like, checklist. Like, okay, these are all the things that people should know publicly about CDR. It’s not a silver bullet. It should not be used just as an excuse to burn more fossil fuels. All of these things.
I feel like 90% of the time I’m having these conversations with people not in the CDR space, because we all know this, but outside of the CDR space. And I’m like, all you needed to do was read like one article or one piece that, like, [unclear] has put out, and you would, like — you’ve done zero research and you’re [unclear] down this conversation with the least interesting questions. Like, there are really fun places in CDR where there’s a lot of unanswered questions. And I think that’s my jaded moment, of just constantly having to defend my favorite — part of it is being accused of being, like, an oil and gas shill, because I also talk about CCS, and mainly in this year’s [unclear] I talk about direct air capture. And being accused of being an oil and gas shill is actually one of my favorite things. I think it’s hilarious.
That people — if I was truly big oil, gosh, I would not be posting bad memes on Twitter. I would be enjoying a mansion somewhere, like, living the life. I don’t know what they do, but I would certainly not be middling memes on Twitter, for sure.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Middling, come on. There’s a Good Will Hunting one I saw the other day that was pretty funny. You know, every once in a while there’s a stroke — [unclear]. Your point really is on point, that I think we do spend a lot of time in this industry, because it’s a new industry and it’s really unknown to a lot of people. And so a lot of people, what they know about CDR, or what they know, is maybe only since — yes. Or maybe they know about CDR, but maybe they only know about — how have we not talked about the John Oliver piece that came out last week? I feel like that’s a lot of fodder for discussion, and I think a lot of mainstream audiences are seeing pieces like that.
And I think, to his credit, you know, I don’t think there was, like — [unclear] that piece. When I watched that piece I kind of thought, okay, this is making me question other pieces he does, because once you really know an industry and someone’s doing, like, a deep dive in the industry — the way I read it was like, okay, this is true and it’s incredibly selective, right? Like, he’s doing a really selective deep dive and making it seem like it’s a deep dive of an entire industry. And so I think that that is often what we’re up against in CDR, and as people trying to communicate in the space, is up against a lot of misinformation.
And we’re just up [unclear] people just, as you pointed out, like, there’s just people that will come at you with something, and it’s like, wow, if you just read like one little thing. Or it’s like, you know, on OpenAir, every time they have one for CDR they start with, like, the disclaimers, you know, like, CDR is not a replacement for, like, decarbonization, et cetera, et cetera. We kind of all have to live doing that, like, walk around with these, like, living disclaimers of our industry. And I wonder — I mean, I assume that will change over time as the industry grows. [unclear]
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, I mean, it will change, I think, necessarily over time, as people become more familiar with the technologies and the sort of risks, challenges and opportunities associated with each one. But yeah, it’s just a constant [unclear] of trying to suss through an incredible amount of uncertainty in a nascent industry, with also it being very clear that we need it. And so my usual response to all of it is like, okay, compared to what? Like, there’s all these challenges or risks associated with CDR technologies, with, you know, this piece, with supply chains, with all these things. It’s like, yes, okay, and we need to solve them.
[unclear] constant criticism and saying how CDR will never work. So, you’re never going to scale CDR, CDR is never going to make it, like, we don’t know XYZ. It’s like, these are all fair criticisms, but it should be a criticism then levied with a possible solution or sort of a way forward, whereas it tends to just be like, you know, we don’t ever think this will work. And a lot of the arguments — the same arguments that were trotted out against solar and wind and technologies early on in the ’70s and ’80s when these were kicking off. Like, it’s the same: it’ll never scale, costs are too high, uses too much power, too inefficient, capacity factors too low. I mean, you go down the list, and we’ve seen all these [unclear].
Ross Kenyon: So it’s fun, though. I like it. I like the slightly agitated nature that especially people get online with them. I think many of those objections are fair too, like, will it actually follow the same cost curve as solar? I don’t know. It sure would be nice, I sure hope so, but also I’m not ideologically bought in or pre-committed to that. But I feel like the dictates of online arguing demand you commit yourself to some camp, like, this, where I’m like, I am a booster of it and I hope it figures itself out and we have some time to figure it out, and I’m going to give it a little bit of leeway given that so many smart people are working on this, that I think it will. I think that’s true across the space too, but that’s not true for everyone. I feel like there’s a lot of hostility from various directions. I’m being quite oblique here, but I don’t mean to be.
Jack Andreasen: Yeah. Yeah, no, and I saw a tweet, was it last week, from Alex Grant? And I like Alex a lot, he’s big lithium on Twitter if you’re looking for him. He said something to the tune of, like, when 98% of CDR companies, maybe DAC particularly, fail, I’m so glad [unclear] those companies, because they’ll be trained in, like, mineral extraction or something. [unclear] will help that, and I think that’s great. Yeah, like, a lot of these skills are transferable. And yeah, this is the story of every industry: a lot of the companies are going to fail, and that’s okay. We’re going to learn a lot of things along the way, we’re going to get people into climate with, like, the excitement of the space, we’re going to grow the amount of capital available for climate investing. Like, these are all good things, and knowing that some companies are going to fail is fine. Of course they will. This is the way it works.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: And acknowledging our own flaws — I think we use memes a lot for that, actually. And, like, humor in general is, like, poking fun at our own, like, lack of knowledge around MRV, or lack of knowledge around, you know, supply chains, whatever it is, whatever the thing that we don’t know is. I think that’s always good meme fodder, if it’s something that, like, I don’t really know what the solution is, how we’re going to figure that out. I like to always poke fun at that.
Ross Kenyon: If we had all those answers, this would be a terribly boring place to work. I would move on to something else. Why would you work in something where it was easy and predictable? But part of the fun here is that it is a little bit of a wild west. Yeah, I did want to ask you, Jack, given that we’re in this little, like, jaded territory thing, that Siobhan and I put up a meme today — here, I’ll even show it to you again. I’m going to get your gazpacho Jack take on it. [unclear]
Jack Andreasen: Okay, well, this one. Yeah, so it’s — what is this from again?
Ross Kenyon: [unclear] Tangled. It’s a Rapunzel one, you’re saying? It’s fun. It works for adults too. And the question at the top — so there’s swords all around this gentleman’s head, and the caption’s in [unclear], for those of you that know. Yes, thanks for that. What CDR opinion would put you in a situation like this, with so many swords pointed at your head? I can even broaden this out beyond CDR. You want, just environmentally speaking? But what do you got, Jack? Siobhan?
Jack Andreasen: Siobhan, I’m pretty sure you responded to this with a really good one, that CCS — what is it — is, will be necessary. Like, CCS is needed and should be funded. That’s a courageous one. Like, yeah. Yeah, I would definitely take that. I would suggest it is such a pivotal technology for a number of different harder-to-decarbonize sectors, and in fact I think it’s historically gotten too little funding relative to the amount of emissions reductions that it could incur. So you look at the emissions from steel, from cement, from pulp and paper, you know, go down the list of all these industrial applications, and then, like, you have all the industrial emissions that could potentially be reduced.
And then you go into things like Allam cycle natural gas facilities. Like, you have a NET Power facility in Texas that’s injected onto the ERCOT grid and is claimed, I think, 99% capture of emissions and injection. And so, relative to their potential to reduce emissions, I think they’re pretty drastically underfunded, and that’s what you need. I mean, there’s a lot of public admonishment around CCS, especially on the coal sector, coal power sector CCS facilities, like Petra Nova.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, and understandably.
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, exactly, understandable criticism. But it’s just, there’s this — I think for me, what is difficult for people, and I totally understand why this is difficult, is that these facilities are generally very expensive and they’re also learning facilities. These are, right, these are like test cases for CCS, these are demonstration projects and pilots, to a point. And so it’s like, you know, a pilot for, like, a new solar facility is going to be magnitudes cheaper than a pilot for a CCS one, yet they both lead to emissions reductions. And so there’s this mismatch on the cost of pilots and demonstrations, and then the fact that CCS is tied to oil and gas, has led to an understandable public frustration with the technology.
But given the need for it, and where the alternatives are for some of these, where they’re at in their technological readiness level, for things like, you know, completely green, net-zero, maybe net-negative cement. That’s why I posted the other day that we produce 11 million tonnes of cement a day globally, and we’re just, like, we’re not even in the ballpark of that scale. And so we’re like, we’re going to need CCS at least in the short to medium term, and it needs project financing to be able to get there. Anyway, that’s the gazpacho Jack take.
Ross Kenyon: [unclear] Come on, man.
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, okay. I just stole Siobhan’s, that’s easy. I’ve got one for you. I think that for all of the CDR technologies that maybe use electricity, I think that current concerns about the fossil fuel intensity of grids in the United States are sort of overblown for the use of electricity to power these CDR facilities, namely because grids are getting greener every year. You can look at interconnection queues across the different ISOs and RTOs in the US and they’re just chock full of batteries, wind and solar. And second, I think that a lot of these facilities in the future will be using behind-the-meter power rather than drawing from the grid itself. So I think that specific criticism of power usage is just overblown. Alongside that, the new technologies, the new companies that are coming out, are just greatly reducing power. So I just don’t see that as an issue in 20 to 25 years.
Ross Kenyon: I see that criticism mostly with regard to, I’m quoting, rich people buying Teslas, being like, ha ha, your grid is coal-powered and you’re dumb. That’s sort of a [unclear] to think that way.
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, no idea. But, you know, people, understandably, look at the sort of, like, first generation, specifically direct air capture companies, and they go, well, they use like a ton of power. And it’s like, well, yeah, and all of the next generation can see that and know that they can drive cost out of this, and they’re doing it right now. And grids are getting greener. And with the power usage that they would need, I think it will very much make sense to put these behind-the-meter power resources for these. So I just don’t think it’s going to be as big of an issue as some people would like the public to believe.
Ross Kenyon: One other one I have to have. I’ve talked about them on the podcast. You’ve heard me crap on about this before, Siobhan, but I think solar and wind are super ugly. Aesthetically hideous. Hideous. When I drive across places that have them, I am gobsmacked by the ugliness. And I like this idea that there’s, like, a brainwashing element to where I’m, like, supposed to ideologically think it’s beautiful because it’s pretty magical and pretty good. But also, you can’t, like, override your sense of beauty by some ideological concern for this.
Jack Andreasen: I’d buy that on solar. I do find wind farms incredibly aesthetically pleasing. I’m from the beautiful but flyover state of Nebraska, and driving through Nebraska and Iowa, looking across what otherwise would be corn fields as far as the eye can see, which are in their own way beautiful, there is something nice to see. You know, these states are flat. And so you only see the tops of corn, depending on what year it is, or barren fields until they’re planted. But to have this sort of new vertical that you can now observe, this is, like, you know, truly broadening the horizons of all peoples above the Great Plains states.
Ross Kenyon: What if there’s some future where this could be made — because if I feel this way, and I broadly buy the renewables case as being important and necessary, then I can’t imagine someone who is even a little bit skeptical. And I’m like, wow, how many viewsheds are going to get disrupted by this? Well, all of them, unless you have a little nuclear power, basically. So I’m wondering what can be done about that. We tried to make a meme, didn’t we? We were like, for the people that hate the visual aesthetic of solar and wind, wait till you get direct air capture, something like that, where we replaced the wind turbines with giant direct air capture machines. Also arguably ugly or beautiful, depending.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I like the nuance in this conversation here, because, like, here we have, I’d say, I’m pretty much in the middle here. I don’t find them aesthetically pleasing, nor do I find them ugly. I feel pretty neutral. And it’s just interesting that you guys would have such deviating perspectives on the visual of wind farms.
Ross Kenyon: It’s not that anything interrupting natural space, whatever that means, is inherently bad by my lights. But I was driving to eastern Washington recently from Seattle — just like, I’ve also done that drive on the 10 many times between Arizona and California, when you get to the Indio, Palm Desert, Morongo pass, just like flatness. But do you like the hilly ones?
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Like, I used to work on the Vasco Winds, NextEra Energy’s project, and it’s on Vasco Winds, it’s coming from the 5 to the 580, and it’s, like, really, really hilly, and then it’s dotted with wind turbines. And I do think there’s something a little prettier about hills with wind turbines as opposed to flat land. Is there anything to that? I don’t know.
Ross Kenyon: The pass in California is pretty hilly and even mountainous at points. It’s like the original landscape — I’m going to offend someone probably, it’s not that beautiful. [unclear] This is the swords question, remember. Like, the Mojave Desert is pretty barren relative to the Sonoran Desert or even the Chihuahuan Desert. I feel like, here we’re going on, like, Mojave is pretty bleak. But even still, I find, I like the — although the alternative, though, is it’s basically all cookie cutter homes, besides that.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: So, like, what actually is getting taken down there besides an open pit mine? Like, you know, we’re going to compare it to the alternative, right, as Jack was pointing out. Like, let’s base this criticism off of, like, what is the current status quo, or what is the alternative. I’m like, what are your takes on open-pit mines, for example?
Ross Kenyon: I flew over — is it Butte, Montana, that has the real enormous one? I flew over whatever it is in eastern Montana, I flew over it once, I was able to look right into it, and I was like, some Mordor kind of sh*t. Frankly terrifying.
Jack Andreasen: But yeah, that’s [unclear] the Berkeley Pit in Butte.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, is that what it is?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, it’s like the biggest Superfund site in the country. I don’t know if it is. In eastern Washington you’ve got the Hanford facility, which is a great [unclear] thing.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, somewhere. That was a big nuclear, early nuclear, right? Yeah. I’m sorry, I feel like a broken record on this one, and I kind of ham it up a little bit just to be a contrarian.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Well, yeah, I mean, it also allies you and puts you next to the Kennedys in the Hamptons, hating wind and the way it looks. So, like, I feel like that really gives you that sort of East Coast elite read. Yachting. Yeah, when you find yourself listening to James Taylor on a sailboat, you can park up next to somebody else, explain to them that you also hate the way wind turbines look, and they might invite you to, you know, the Paisley party or white party they’re having later. [unclear]
Ross Kenyon: Did you guys watch Succession?
Jack Andreasen: No, but I started.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, cover your ears, Siobhan. Okay. Actually, I call her Shiv mostly because of Succession, so, hey, there’s a story. Do you know that, like, the rich, like, NPR family that they almost bought? [unclear] I love that. There’s this open question of whether or not they are actually better, and to what degree.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: I feel like that’s the kind of family that would complain basically about wind farms, yet acting quite progressive at the same time, like patting themselves on the back. Because that’s kind of what this is supposed to be, [unclear] taking from that.
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, I know, it’s definitely like the, you know, we are all for clean energy, it’s just this location is adjacent to a game preserve, or something. I mean, you can just, like, run down the list of reasons why people oppose wind development. And I think, yeah, I think that they would make that play, and then they might, you know, fund like a solar farm to be put elsewhere in the country to make up for it. I can see that.
Ross Kenyon: Do you want to come back on some time, Jack, and just maybe, like, make some memes live with us and goof around?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, absolutely, that sounds like a worthwhile endeavor to increase the important communications of CDR technologies.
God, I sure hope so. I’m constantly amazed that I lucked into this as a paying work environment. So, like, I’m constantly hunting for validation that this is something I should get paid for. Like, this now, this helps, right? Yeah. The only thing that I find now, it’s not a regret, but it is something that I’ve encountered many times, is I’ll run into people in real life and they’ll go, oh, you’re the CDR DAC meme guy from Twitter. And I think, I’m a serious professional with career aspirations, I’m so much more than the DAC meme guy. And so I have to leverage, like, how many memes versus serious posts, to let people know that I do know more than Good Will Hunting memes.
Ross Kenyon: I don’t know, man. I think if I had someone come up to me and say, you’re the DAC meme person, I’d be pretty flattered. Your content is oftentimes highbrow and sophisticated, and you show that you have to have a fair amount of chops to make something that is funny to an audience that is knowledgeable about the subject area of the memes. That’s a pretty hard thing to fake. That’s what I was getting at with the DALL-E. Like, how could you possibly program that?
Jack Andreasen: Some of them come, like, in a moment. Like the Good Will Hunting one, I woke up in the middle of the night and made that meme. It just, like, hit me and I was like, I have to get this out. And then other ones, I’ll work them with a buddy, my coworker James Hewitt, who has been putting out some pretty solid power sector memes, and we were workshopping with one another.
Ross Kenyon: Well, Jack Andreasen, not of Breakthrough Institute but Breakthrough Energy Ventures. Breakthrough Energy.
Jack Andreasen: I would, yeah. So Ventures, the venture capital team, is a separate entity than the foundation. So although we know the folks over there, yeah, we are importantly different.
Ross Kenyon: And if you have something mean to say about ecomodernism, you can text Jack or tweet, right? [unclear]
Jack Andreasen: Yeah. You can shoot me a text. [unclear] So yeah, I’ll take all the smoke on ecomodernism.
Ross Kenyon: By being in CDR you’re, like, almost necessarily becoming one, [unclear]. So you hit me with it?
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, I’d say that’s a pretty fair assumption.
Ross Kenyon: Thanks for hanging out, Jack. Links to all of your stuff is on — well, all your stuff, your Twitter. You do other stuff, I’m told.
Jack Andreasen: Yeah, every once in a while I’ll be on LinkedIn. I have a Substack, haven’t written on it in a while. But yeah, Twitter’s where you can find me.
Ross Kenyon: Jack’s stuff is great too, we often retweet it. Yeah, follow Jack, and let’s do this again some time.
Siobhan Montoya Lavender: Yeah, you’ve committed to coming back on. You’re committed now. We’re bringing you on again.
Jack Andreasen: [unclear] And I am a man of my word, so I’ll do it.
Ross Kenyon: Cool. So thanks so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this fun meme writers’ room carbon removal happy hour banter fest, just bantering. It’s fun to do this as opposed to thinking a little bit more serious. You get enough serious content. Hopefully this is refreshing for you. If not, you’re probably not listening at this point anyways. But thanks so much for listening. Tell a friend, give us a great rating and review on iTunes, now Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and have a lovely day.
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