Concrete is an incredibly useful and highly resilient building material. And with population growth and urbanization, we are on pace to double everything we’ve ever built in the next 40 years. At the same time, concrete production accounts for as much as 8% of global emissions. So, how can we continue to reap the benefits of concrete in a way that complies with our climate goals?
Robert Niven is the Founder and CEO of CarbonCure, a company that recycles waste carbon dioxide to make stronger and greener concrete. They are also one of the four companies chosen by Stripe for its first negative emissions purchases. Today, Rob joins Ross and Christophe to explain how concrete is traditionally produced and what CarbonCure does differently to permanently mineralize carbon in concrete, both improving its quality and reducing its carbon footprint.
Rob weighs in on embodied carbon, sharing the benefits of CarbonCure’s solution in terms of scalability and cost, and discusses the potential for his process to eventually use direct air capture as a source of CO2. Listen in as Rob introduces us to his audacious goal of reducing emissions by 500 megatons per year and learn how we can accelerate the change with procurement policy and carbon offsets.
Resources
Stripe’s Negative Emissions Commitment
Stripe’s First Negative Emissions Purchases
CarbonCure’s Cake Analogy Video
Bill Gates’ Resources on Climate & Energy
Hawaii’s Concrete Procurement Policy
CarbonCure’s Partnership with HC&D in Honolulu
Emissions Reduction Alberta’s Grand Carbon Challenge
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hey everyone, welcome to season two of Reversing Climate Change. We are doing that podcast thing now and launching a Patreon. You can find it at patreon.com slash noripodcasts. There are various tiers with different types of goodies available. Do you want to receive a special newsletter digest of what norinauts are reading that week? Be a part of a nori book club? Get special access to nori events? Go take a look at patreon.com slash noripodcasts for what we’re offering. And in that spirit of being lean in that startup kind of way that, you know, we like to do, this list of goodies is subject to change and we’d very much like your feedback.
Is there something that you’d really like to see but it isn’t listed here? Honest feedback does a lot to help us shape what we offer to you. You can send an email to podcast. nori.com or fill out our podcast survey anonymously in our newsletter which you can find at nori.com slash subscribe. And thank you so much for listening to another season of Reversing Climate Change. This is a weird little intro bumper that we’re doing because Rob Niven, guest of this episode, is so confidential, so good at keeping his business’s secrets that he did not inform me of the great news that happened like five days, four days after we recorded this, Rob.
So we had to come back on and talk about what exciting news is happening for CarbonCure.
Rob Niven: Oh, great. Yeah, it is really exciting. And now I’d be more than happy to talk about it.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, me too. I was really happy to see this. I thought it was exciting, the choices that were made. And the thing that we’re alluding to is that Stripe at long last has announced the choices that they are making in regards to their carbon removal policy. And CarbonCure is one of four groups that they are working with right now.
Rob Niven: Yeah, that’s right. So they call it the negative emissions commitment. It was to invest in carbon removal technologies. They had a million dollars to invest and they chose four companies to purchase negative emissions from. We were one of the companies. We use CO2 and mineralized within concrete. And we’re extremely excited about this, not just from the investment, but really how this is creating an entirely new market and capital or financial model that will help companies like ours be able to scale up. To meet the needs and timelines of climate change.
Ross Kenyon: Have you been getting a lot of attention since this news came out?
Rob Niven: Yeah, certainly. And I think especially within the tech community, so the internet tech industry, which is doing quite a lot right now around the space of carbon removal. There’s been a lot of high profile announcements that have been made. So I think this certainly gets some attention there. I think also the overall sector about engineered carbon removal solutions is getting some much needed attention so that more capital is coming into the space. I would also say that we’re raising money right now, so being able to share some great news like this is definitely a very welcome opportunity to speak more deeply about our company and its impact.
I think one thing that they make in their blog, and I do recommend people go and read the blog, it’s quite informative, is that this is going to take a portfolio of solutions in the carbon removal space, which does mean the biosphere and also some of these other more engineered solutions. And I think the story is much more than just the money. So a million dollars in the grand scheme of things is not a lot. However, what it does though, is it does create or catalyze this new marketplace for negative emissions purchasing.
Which already exists today in a lot of biological, like say, forestry offsets. So in some ways this is a really positive thing because it creates an entirely new model of attracting carbon offset purchasing within carbon removal for engineered solutions, which already exists today for forestry. And other biological type of emission reduction solutions. So I think in some ways this is going to be able to float all boats and be able to bring more capital into the space.
Ross Kenyon: Absolutely. We’re only focused on soil. We like to say that we’re agnostic towards the means of carbon removal and want this to be as broad and as big an industry as possible because we really do need all hands on deck. And I like that ecumenical approach. I’m glad you share it. But we wish you well. If you’re listening, hopefully you were able to glean enough context for this to make sense. If not, you can listen to the episode and come back to this and figure it out. And there’s links in the show notes for the Stripe announcement and anything else that might be relevant that came out here.
So thanks for the update, Rob.
Rob Niven: Hey, it’s my pleasure. And sorry for being so secretive the other day.
Ross Kenyon: It was an appropriate amount of circumspection, I think. I know how embargoes work and loose lips sink ships, as they say. So it would be terrible if you submarined your own deal by blabbing about it on the podcast.
Rob Niven: Well, it’s also being quite respectful to a group that has done so much to advance this space. So it’s the very least that we could do.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think that’s totally the right attitude. Well, cool. Well, hope you enjoy the rest of the show. Hope this made sense. And thank you for listening. Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. Today we have with me, well, Kristoff, Kristoff Jospe, who used to co-host all the time. Now you’re a little too busy, too busy working on agriculture stuff. So I’m happy to have you back in here talking about carbon tech.
Christophe Jospe: I’m still on the roster. I was like, put me in, coach. This is a good one to be on.
Ross Kenyon: There’s just like the slimmest little glimmer of sadness in there. But yeah, I try to tap you on the shoulder when time allows. Today we have with us Rob Niven of CarbonCure, CEO and founder there. Thank you for being here, Rob.
Rob Niven: Thanks very much. It’s really a pleasure.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, we’re happy to have you. We’re pretty animated by what’s happening in concrete. We think there’s a lot of opportunity. There’s a lot of peril too. That’s a huge part of world emissions. And what you’re doing is quite interesting. So maybe give us a nice little sample of what exactly is CarbonCure and what are you working on?
Rob Niven: Great. Well, it’s not too often I hear someone say that they’re animated about concrete, at least outside of CarbonCure. So I’m happy to indulge.
Ross Kenyon: You’re in good company. This is what we do. This is who we are.
Rob Niven: Okay, great. Well, I’m amongst friends. CarbonCure is a clean tech company that uses CO2 in the production of concrete, where it’s actually used to make concrete with production cost savings and also a lower carbon footprint.
Christophe Jospe: So elegant. You got the elevator pitched down. You must be a founder and CEO or something.
Rob Niven: That’s right. I’ve done a fair amount of pitching. And in fact, we’re actually doing some of that now. If you want me to expand a bit on that, we’re based in Nova Scotia. And we are working with about 200 concrete plants. We’ve produced about 5 million cubic yards of carbon cure concrete. Most of the production is throughout the US, Canada, and we’re now expanding into Asia as well, most recently in Singapore, and see opportunities as well in Europe. So what carbon cure does is we’re really trying to solve this carbon problem of concrete.
And if you look at some of the megatrends happening right now, concrete is certainly on the rise. The megatrends I speak of are population growth and urbanization, which are colliding right now to create this unprecedented growth of cities. And you may not know this, but cities are mostly made out of concrete. It’s the most abundant building material in the world, more than all the others combined, second most used material on the planet after drinking water. So that’s a lot of concrete that’s being produced and it has quite a significant carbon footprint.
So what we’re trying to do is keep using concrete because it’s a low cost and resilient material and we’re all going to need places to sleep and to work and play. But we need to be able to break that link of carbon emissions and concrete production so that we can continue this growth of cities.
Christophe Jospe: So Rob, can you help out our listeners and kind of lay the foundations? What’s the difference between concrete and cement? Did you mean pour a foundation?
Rob Niven: Nice one. Well, sure. I’d be happy to answer. That’s commonly mixed up. There’s no such thing as a cement foundation or a cement road. It’s concrete and concrete is the building material. When cement is mixed with water it becomes an active ingredient, holds all of the aggregates and sand together to make concrete which is the foundation of our modern society.
Christophe Jospe: So you hear about different types of cement. There’s like Portland cement as an example. Can you spell it out a little bit more for us? I quite enjoyed one of your promotional videos on your website using a cake metaphor saying that cement is like the cake and concrete is an ingredient of the cake. But are there different cake varieties that we should be aware of?
Rob Niven: Yeah, there are. Yeah, so I think the analogy that you’re thinking of is that concrete is the cake and cement is the flour.
Christophe Jospe: Oh, I messed it up. There it is. That’s better.
Rob Niven: That’s fine. So Portland cement is what you’re referring to is the ubiquitous form of cement. And how you make cement is you start off by mining primarily limestone from the earth. And then heating that in a kiln, a rotary kiln at a cement plant at high temperatures. And then that cement, or I should say that limestone is broken into two halves. So one half by weight is the precursor to cement called clinker. And then the other half is actually CO2. And that’s why cement has a high carbon intensity is because of this process emission called calcination.
That is due to the large emission profile of the cement and concrete sector, which is around 5% to 8% of all global emissions. So it’s a really big emitter, but it’s also a really big industry. But the heart of the whole issue here is this calcination reaction. It’s not the thermal component to heat up that kiln, which is only about one third of the total emissions of cement. So cement is then shipped to concrete plants. They’re separate. Cement plants tend to be closer to big quarries. Concrete plants are closer to where we live because concrete only has a shelf life of about 45 minutes.
So once you add water, you start the clock. And if you get it too late, it’ll set up in the truck, which is a whole headache. So they tend to build many, many concrete plants. There’s about 5,000 in the U. S. , That are scattered around mostly metropolitan areas or wherever anything is ever built. And that then takes cement mixes with these other ingredients of aggregates and sand and some water and some chemicals to form concrete. And then concrete, if you think of it as a pie, now that we have these baking analogy, is most of the pie is something called ready mix concrete.
And small minority portions are things like precast and masonry. So they’re all made up of about the same thing, but different proportions and in different production styles. But ready mix is the one to remember that accounts for the vast majority of cement and all concrete types that are used in the US. So CarbonCure focuses on all different product types, which is a unique attribute of what we do. But most importantly, is we are a carbon solution for the ready-mixed concrete space.
Christophe Jospe: Got it. You laid out a lot of really interesting topics, and I’m not entirely sure... I want to start with maybe Chemistry 101. You’re describing a process where you’re converting limestone into clinker. Limestone, that’s CaCO3. You want to turn it into CaO, which leaves you with the CO2 molecule. The majority of the emissions that have plagued the Concrete industry are when you see that CO2 be lost into the atmosphere from the heating the limestone process up, right? And turning it into lime.
Rob Niven: That’s exactly right. So are the cement industry’s primary role is to crack CO3 into two halves of equivalent weight, which is CO2 and CAO. So calcium oxide, so clinker, and CO2. CO2 goes up a stack. And is released into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. That’s the problem that we’re trying to fix. But CAO is a very productive material. It’s highly resilient and forms cement, which then allows us to build everything around us.
Christophe Jospe: And so you’re literally curing the carbon back into that CAO.
Rob Niven: We’re actually reforming CaCO3, which is the thermodynamically stable Form of calcium oxide. It doesn’t want to be calcium oxide. You had to put all this energy into it and all this work to crack it. What we do is that once cement is mixed in back into concrete is we introduce some CO2 that reacts with that calcium oxide to form a different type of limestone. It’s a nanomaterial that we’re creating. And it’s a really important form because that allows concrete to have higher strength by adding this nanomaterial early in the hydration reaction.
Maybe getting a bit technical here, but that’s a really important stage for how our technology works is we create value from CO2 by reforming calcium carbonate in the form of a nano limestone, which then gives concrete higher strength. Which then gives concrete producers the ability to alter how they make concrete so that they need less cement. Remember, cement is carbon intensive. So then that lowers the overall carbon footprint of concrete by both using less cement and also by permanently mineralizing CO2 back in the original product. And all this is done in a way that we can provide this better, lower carbon concrete at the same price as what’s made today.
Ross Kenyon: Rob, we’re going to go into greater detail and resolution here. I do want us to zoom out a tiny bit because I imagine most people listening are like me and don’t know much about concrete. I’m playing a little bit dumb, but I’m starting pretty close to scratch about how exactly this thing that we all take for granted that is around us at all times, don’t really know that much about it. In fact, when I think of concrete, I Think back to like Roman roads and stuff like that, which I don’t know, is that concrete?
But also, how much of it has actually changed over the time that concrete’s been in use? It just seems ubiquitous and sort of with us since humanity. I know that’s not the case, but how much has it changed over time?
Rob Niven: It actually hasn’t changed that much. And I think that’s really a testament to how good of a material it is. And certainly the formulation of Portland cement that we have today is about 150 years old. But forms of cement and hydraulic cements have been around for a very long time. And a lot of structures are still standing today, like the Pantheon, that were made with early forms of concrete. So this speaks to its ability to be highly durable and resilient, which today takes a different meaning as we think about the effects of climate change.
We’re going to need to build more resiliently to the effects of water and fire and wind and so on. So we do need those resilient materials that have stood up to the test of time. And that’s also cheap and local. And that’s why there’s just so much of it everywhere. You know, I agree with you. In some ways, it’s been around and it’s all around us. But most of the time, people never think about it because they just take it for granted. But it is literally below our feet right now and wrapped all around us.
And there wouldn’t be civilization today if it wasn’t for concrete. But its role in the future is really in question because of this carbon footprint. So how do we continue to get all that good stuff, but do it in a way that’s actually compatible with climate goals and like a two degree or 1. 5 degrees Celsius target? Right now, it’s not compatible. So we need to fix that. And that’s really where CarbonCure comes in.
Ross Kenyon: If we didn’t do something like CarbonCure and we didn’t make concrete better, what would we be left with? What’s the alternative to concrete for building?
Rob Niven: That is such a great question because there isn’t anything. Like if you think about the other big climate discussions like energy, mobility, if you think about those things, there’s better options, right? There’s low carbon options. If you don’t like coal, well, put a solar panel on your roof. That’s just not the case with concrete. There’s nothing that we can use at the scale that we need to use things and the density that we need to build that is comparable. So that’s the real... Rob here is we don’t have a choice.
We don’t have a plan B to concrete, but at the same time, we can’t achieve all this growth of cities. We’ll be doubling everything we’ve ever built in 40 years, the next 40 years. Just think about how much more construction that is. That’s about 2. 5 trillion square feet. And for us to be able to build that much is just going to blow away our climate targets. So we have to figure out a way of doing this. So where we get back to our analogy with cakes is we get to have our cake and eat it too.
Christophe Jospe: I like cake.
Unknown speaker: I like cake too.
Ross Kenyon: I’ve been listening to this podcast for a while because you know we like to torture these metaphors and analogies. Go ahead, Christophe.
Christophe Jospe: Yeah. We also like getting really wonky on carbon footprints and you said those words. So let’s go into it and maybe I’ll just throw some terms at you and maybe you can weave them into a response. In the built environment, we often hear this term. I’m curious how that plays into your process or sorry, your Canadian soap process. And I’m also curious, just, you know, upstream, downstream, all the emissions, sort of how do you calculate the carbon footprint of what concrete is doing today and then what the carbon care process does to reduce that carbon footprint?
Rob Niven: Mm hmm. Great question. I’m so, so glad you brought up embodied carbon. And I’m not surprised because you guys are based in Seattle, but that has been where a lot of the best thinking has happened at the University of Washington, the Carbon Leadership Forum, Kate Simonin, who’s their executive director. And if I could just sort of riff on that point, just for a moment, just because it’s so important for people to understand, is when you’re thinking about the built environment and decarbonization, Most people think about heating and ventilation, lighting, better windows and insulation, and all of those things reduce what’s called operating emissions.
And those emissions, as you would expect, are emitted as energy is consumed over the lifetime of the building. What people like Kate Simen have discovered is that we have entirely missed the boat and we’ve had a great blind spot around this embodied carbon component. And embodied carbon is all of the emissions that are still attributed to the built environment, but are released during the production of materials and the construction phase of those same buildings. And if you do the accounting, What they discovered is that the embodied CO2 emissions of buildings, so the construction phase and the materials production, accounts for about half of the entire emissions of a building over its entire life cycle.
So a building may be around for 50, 60, 70 years, but half of its emissions are released before that first tenant ever steps through the front door. So if we’re thinking about time value of carbon, we’re thinking about Near-term climate targets, we’ve got really 10 years to work with. We’ve got to really get on top of this embodied thing. And it’s a bit alarming that this is only coming to light now. So there’s a lot of urgency. And there’s actually some great work that’s been done by Bill Gates, another local business and climate celebrity in the Seattle area, who’s really jumped on to this topic and has created some material to educate people on it, as well as, as I said, the Carbon Leadership Forum and tools that they’ve developed like EC3.
So really, really important topic. So if you look at the accounting a little bit further and what you realize is that concrete is the number one contributor to embodied CO2 of buildings. Now, the answer is not to use less concrete because we know we need to do it and we want to do it, but it’s to do it in a way that’s lower carbon. Now, concrete can be made of really limitless different ratios, what’s called mixed designs that have different carbon footprints. And the thing that you need to really know is whatever the cement content is of that concrete will have a big impact on the carbon emissions of that cubic yard of concrete.
Or in Canada, we call it cubic meter. And the more cement, usually the higher strength or other attributes, but also means the higher carbon footprint. So a way to look at that is there might be 300 kgs in a cubic meter of concrete. Now, the goal is to try to get that number down because that’s the single largest thing you can do to reduce a body carbon of concrete or of buildings. And what we do is we, as I said, mineralize CO2 in the concrete, but as well as reduce the amount of cement in the concrete without reducing the quality of the product.
So today we do somewhere in the order of around 15 to 20 kgs. We have technologies now that we’re rolling out that get us to 100. And we can do that in a way that has minimal to no CapEx for the plant and also doesn’t impose any cost increases for the eventual end user of that concrete. I think that’s something really key to think about is whatever climate solutions are brought to market, they need to be scalable. And that means a lot of different things. And one of them, of course, it has to be a good technology, but ideally, it’s also affordable and scalable across the entire industry.
And those are all just as important. You need to get them all right for you to be able to actually make a difference on climate.
Christophe Jospe: If I could read back what I’m hearing you say is your technology presents a better product, uses less input, and saves people money. And irrespective of if you believe in climate change or not is just the logical way forward. Why isn’t everyone doing it?
Rob Niven: Well, like all technologies, they take a bit of time. And we’re certainly on a roll now. The last three quarters is we’ve smashed our sales records and we’re continuing to grow really quickly. But as anecdotes are, is everyone’s from Missouri, the show me state. So it does take a bit of time to get through that phase, but that period is getting shorter and shorter as their peers from across the country are realizing is that this is just a better way. And you don’t have to be a granola to use a technology like this, because whether you believe in climate or not, and certainly I think we all agree that it’s a major issue, but most of our sales discussions never use the word climate.
We’re talking about just making a better product that arguably is also in high demand by your customers. But this is a business decision that allows you to differentiate yourself because the guy down the road who might be making concrete is just making some more warm gray stuff. And there’s nothing innovative or green about it. And this is an opportunity for you to be able to get that leg up. And those are the kind of discussions that we want to have with producers and also their customers. So those could be data centers or offices or airports.
And we’ve done all different types of projects ourselves.
Ross Kenyon: How is business going, Rob? Are you guys on a tear right now? Or I mean, this is the COVID time. I wonder, is building still continuing a pace? Are people more conservative? How are things looking over at CarbonCure?
Rob Niven: Well, every industry is being hit. And fortunately, the concrete or the construction industry has in many states and other parts of the world maybe been affected a bit less just because it has been considered an essential service and concrete is still being poured. There’s a strong digital element to our products. So we actually have an AI and telemetry component where we have insights into production all around countries, certainly in some parts of the world. So we get a really close real-time sense on how business is going. So that gives us some hope that this industry is going to fare relatively well.
We have adapted how we’re doing business. Before, we used to send engineers on planes to set up plants. We were really good at it. It only took us about a day to actually retrofit an entire plant. But now, because of COVID, and because we can’t put people on planes, is we’ve had to adapt the product. But also how we do things. So now we’re continuing to grow. We’re continuing to even put up plants. We just put up our first plant in Florida two weeks ago without ever setting an engineer foot on the ground.
So doing everything remotely now. And to us, this could be revealing as a better way of doing business.
Ross Kenyon: It’s basically Minecraft, right? Minecraft.
Rob Niven: Yeah, maybe. But I think there’s a bigger story here, right? I think people are really waking up to... The effects of climate change. And people see this as a business opportunity, possibly as a moral imperative. And there’s a lot of momentum here that COVID is not going to slow down. And I think clean tech companies like ours are going to continue to be very successful. And we’ve had some great momentum. In January, we were just named the American Clean Tech Company of the Year. We’re out raising money right now and always looking for new partners in industry, construction sector, but more and more in government who are actually passing policies now because they realize this is just better concrete and this is a totally overlooked climate solution that they can use to help meet their targets, whether it’s corporate or public climate targets.
Ross Kenyon: Is that why CarbonCure got started? Did you have that sort of vision in mind?
Rob Niven: Well, this was my thesis, this technology. So this is really personal, right? And it’s even become even more personal than I ever could have imagined since having our first child. Because now this really matters. It’s much more than an academic exercise or even the climate space. It’s family. It’s really personal. And I think when this thing got started, the vision has certainly evolved. And as we brought on a bigger and great, talented team, We really learn from each other and are inspired by each other, as well as bringing on some new investors.
And we were just delighted to include Breakthrough Energy Ventures on our last round, is that this has raised our ambition and our vision where we want to reduce 500 megatons of CO2 emissions each year. We believe there’s a very clear path for us to do that, and we think it’s entirely achievable. What keeps me up at night, though, is how can I do this in a timescale that actually matters? How can I do this in 10 years? I shouldn’t say I, I said we. We as a team or we evolve our sort of broader stakeholders.
And so we need a lot more people under the tent. But what’s great, it’s not a question of, is this possible? It’s just how fast can we get this thing done? And we need a lot more partners from industry and government and Media and so on to be able to do that because everybody has a role. And sometimes I think that clean tech companies have too much pressure on them because they’re expected to solve all these huge societal issues while the same time making a buck for their shareholders. But it’s something that we all have to be part of.
And a big part of that is around procurement of clean tech products and solutions because that changes market dynamics. I think carbon offsets have an important role to play. I’ve seen a lot of the tech industries sort of move into that by playing a bigger role to accelerate and catalyze change. So government policies, especially procurement policies, there are a lot to do. So lots and lots of different ways people can get involved.
Christophe Jospe: Man, you learned so much good stuff there, but you said a very audacious number, so I want to walk back from that, which is that with this type of technology, the world can reduce half a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Can you help us out with some math and talking about the order of magnitude? So that’s the macro scale, then zooming in on a plant, how much CO2 reduction can one plant see? And early on, you mentioned words sort of CapEx, OpEx, the capital expenditures and operational expenses. Just kind of do some math for us of what is it going to take to see this technology scale to reach that half a billion tonnes of climate mitigation per year?
Rob Niven: Well, the good thing going for this is it’s a huge industry. We talked earlier on about how this is the most widely used material after water and there’s about 100,000 plants worldwide. If you just focused on China alone, that’s 50% of all production. I remember back in 2014 reading a quote as well by Bill Gates and said that China has used more concrete and Three years than the U. S. has in its history. Lots of impact happening, especially in emerging markets. So what I’m trying to say is that the size of the industry actually means that it has a big carbon footprint, but also a big carbon opportunity.
And because we have a business model that is not only affordable, but actually creates value and cost efficiencies, then there’s an economic driver that we have behind us that doesn’t rely on regulatory standards. To be able to drive change, but regulatory might accelerate change. So I’m trying to think, how do I get there? It comes down to two things, more plants. So we need to expand into especially emerging markets faster. But we also have to layer on additional technologies. So what we call our mixer technology today gets us about a third of the way there.
And then we have what we call our wash water technology that just came out last year. And that gets us about half the way. And then we have other technologies which are inter-innovation pipeline that close up the remainder. And by incorporating a stack of technologies and CarbonCure as a portfolio solutions, not just one, that all use CO2 in a productive manner, then that allows us to be able to plant by plant, dollar by dollar, get us to the CO2 emission targets that we can achieve.
Ross Kenyon: What are some of the ways that policy can support what you’re doing, Rob?
Rob Niven: A really interesting model was created in Hawaii last year that I really don’t think got enough attention. So we work with a group in Hawaii called the Elemental Accelerator. Maybe you’ve heard of them. Just a phenomenal cleantech community that they’ve created that collects cleantech CEOs and founders from around the world and creates this place-based learning type of ecosystem to drive cleantech deployment. In a number of different areas like water, circular economy, climate, energy, mobility, and so on. But they have deep, deep roots in Hawaii, which is a pretty courageous sort of policy environment.
And both the state and city created some policies around procurement, where in its most basic form stated that they would use concrete made with mineralized CO2 if it was available at the same cost and same quality for government projects. This is important that we state government projects because that’s something that government can control. And so it’s a lot less contentious as saying everybody in the private sector needs to make concrete a certain way or use concrete, made it a certain way. And this is something that aligns their climate goals with their procurement.
And they also take all the downside risk out around economics and quality. Quality is really important when you’re building a bridge or a school. It’s not too different than, say, some of the trends we’re seeing with buy clean legislation coming out of places like California that are rapidly spanning across the country. But this was really focused on concrete and it had an immediate effect in the market where private sector saw what was happening in public sector and saw that this was a success. Government was helping meet their climate targets and that led to change.
And then Honolulu hosted the U. S. Conference of Mayors, which I think represents about 1300 cities across the U. S. , They saw what was happening in Hawaii, then passed a resolution to the same effect that then spans the entire country. And then a number of DOTs and other cities have then taken that resolution and implemented it. And one that I think is worth paying attention to is a bill that was just introduced in New York State, AB 8617. Which takes this type of an LCA green procurement approach to concrete because they recognize its impact on embodied CO2 in the built environment.
They’ve done a lot on operational and then realized they need to play catch up on embodied. And this is how they target it. And what’s been really cool about seeing that bill evolve is it’s received support from industry, from NGOs, the construction sector, political, and I hope that one’s successful. Of course, for the current COVID environment, that’s not doing anyone any favors, but I think it’s probably one of the most refined approaches.
Ross Kenyon: I think creating a guaranteed buyer in that way is pretty innovative and pretty interesting way to do policy from that procurement level.
Rob Niven: If I said this, but government is the single largest buyer of concrete.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, well, there you have it.
Rob Niven: And a big influence in the marketplace. And if I dream out loud, as I just wonder, is when COVID stimulus funding hits for infrastructure, why not apply a climate lens to that? At least get people prioritizing green infrastructure solutions if it’s the same price and quality. Why wouldn’t you do that? Because then you kind of get a twofer, right? You get all the stimulus and you get all the infrastructure and then you also get all the climate benefit and it doesn’t cost you anything. Why not do it?
Ross Kenyon: I know there’s someone who’s crankily grimacing right now listening to this being like, it isn’t as much of a free lunch as you are saying, Rob, but it does sound pretty compelling to me. I need to learn more about how procurement policy works and wrap my head around it, but that’s very cool. So one of the things, and I’ll pass it to Christophe to work out with you, is I oftentimes tap Christophe on the shoulder to be the LCA watchdog and just trying to make sure that what is happening or claimed to be happening is actually happening.
The bold environmental claims of various types of producers or companies are being checked. So Christophe, why don’t you dive into the wild world of LCAs for us?
Christophe Jospe: The life cycle assessment, huh? It comes back to this, is what we’re talking about reducing the flow of carbon to the atmosphere or can it fall into the carbon removal camp? That’s a question for you, Rob.
Rob Niven: Okay. So what is carbon removal? And the way that I would define it is it’s a coin with two sides. So we need to capture and we need to use the CO2 once it’s captured. Sometimes I scratch my head when I hear, you know, capture being referenced as a climate solution where it isn’t without having the other side of the coin and just as utilization needs CO2 to be a complete climate solution. So CarbonCure is agnostic on its CO2 supply. We prioritize our, I should say we as in our concrete producer partners where, you know, these 200 plants and growing are prioritizing the lowest cost and most reliable, especially, source of CO2.
And that CO2 today is supplied from the emissions of industries like ammonia, ethanol, refineries. And companies are in the business of capturing that CO2 from those flue stacks and distributing it to different industries now, including concrete. If things like DAC were to become widely available, Then there’s nothing stopping us from swapping one bottle to another, which is something that we would like to see. But we’re not going to wait around and also create more complexity for our business and for our customers to use DAC when there’s a lot of other waste CO2 that’s available today.
And it’s widely available and easy to get. So I entirely believe that CarbonCure is a carbon removal solution, but we focus on the second half of the coin. The utilization side or storage side. In our case, it’s utilization because we create value from the CO2 rather than just putting it underground. Another element I think that’s important in all this discussion is to think about permanence. How do we differentiate between carbon removal solutions that create a product that is consumed in, say, 30 days and then re-released back into the environment? That needs to be part of the discussion here.
And naturally, of course, scale does as well.
Christophe Jospe: Hmm. Well, I mean, just to lay out a couple things is we can look at where the sources of the carbon that we might mobilize. And limestone is one of those sources when we make the lime. And when Nori looks at what are we trying to incentivize, it’s the taking carbon back out of the atmosphere, where if you’re mobilizing carbon, but then Stopping it, then that can’t be carbon removal. Although when you’re sequestering the carbon, that certainly is a very important asset. And it kind of gets to this, can we even think of these things as fungible?
Can we think of a ton of CO2 avoided because you sequestered it the same as a ton of CO2 removed? In which cases might they be similar? And perhaps you can convince us that there may be some cases where that is similar, but it’s almost as if carbon removal is a cleanup crew after the fact. It’s kind of like, and it’s funny because you have carbon cure in your name, but an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You know, if you can stop carbon from getting into the atmosphere before you need to pull it back, that’s going to save you a lot of money and time in the back end.
But I just don’t see how someone can say, let me turn on a carbon cure plant and this is going to start pulling carbon back out of the atmosphere. Are you willing to accept Nori’s narrow definition in that sense to say you’re a wonderful form of carbon sequestration, but it’s not carbon removal?
Rob Niven: Well, I hadn’t looked at that way before, Christophe, so I’d like to think about that. You’re saying that the fact that we’re actually using cement in the first place, which is mobilizing CO2 from limestone, it just precludes anything in that value chain from being carbon removal.
Christophe Jospe: Well, it comes from what carbon removal can say to an emitter is I am going to pull one additional ton of carbon back out of the atmosphere. What a carbon offset can say is because of my existence, you’re either going to stop a ton going to the atmosphere or I’m going to remove a ton from the atmosphere. So... When looking at the things to incentivize reducing the flow of carbon to the atmosphere with your technology, it’s a wonderful carbon offset. And the question is, is it a carbon removal? Can it be?
Because in that calcination process, you’re releasing the CO2 because that actually is your original source.
Rob Niven: Hmm. Super interesting point. I suppose I’ve always looked at carbon removal more from a technical perspective or technology-based perspective, thinking more of the atoms and then the mechanical component of thinking, can we physically remove CO2 from the air or from a stack and then be able to permanently draw that down into products? And that was sort of the definition that I was going with on carbon removal. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that we had to look at this from whether concrete, the fact that the CO2 is being released from cement in the first place to create concrete, and then you’re applying that technology that then negates that carbon removal definition.
In my mind, it goes back to the point that we need concrete for modern society to grow, and it is the product that would be essential. I think I’d like to give this some more thought, Christophe. I think it’s a really interesting point to think more about. So thanks for helping expand my mind, but I don’t think I’m really ready to close the book on this one yet.
Ross Kenyon: Sorry, I let slip the hounds of hell upon you. Sorry about that, Rob. The famous Jaspéan ambush.
Christophe Jospe: There’s no ambush here because we want to make it loud and clear. We love what CarbonCure is doing and think it’s a very important technology to have in the suite of tools that humanity needs to avoid climate change, period paragraph. The question is, can a field that by definition is about taking carbon out of the atmosphere include something that also on the front end is still releasing it? And even if we recognize we’re going to be using concrete and what you’re doing is better than a baseline, that is absolutely producing something which can be financialized in a carbon offset.
And the question for Nori in a narrow definition of carbon removal, that this is an avoidance of CO2 to the atmosphere that is really important, but isn’t carbon removal because it hasn’t gone to take it back out. So yeah.
Rob Niven: Yeah, just one point there is like there is both a sequestration, like a mineralization, however we want to call it, element and an avoided element. So there are two fisms applying here. I think that’s worthwhile noting. But, you know, outside of biological systems, like trees, what’s left? Like what is an engineered solution for carbon removal? If we’re using that definition, like it’s not fuels, that’s for sure. And I can’t think of any other sort of commodity products that we can be using CO2 in where that works. But I’d really like to continue the conversation.
I think this is a really interesting way of looking at LCAs. And in our world, we think about things like environmental product declarations and that sort of traditional LCA accounting. And I really, really appreciate that.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think it’s a very interesting conversation. I’m sure there’s more to say about it too. I’ll leave it to you guys to continue that another time. But Rob, one question I have about this is depending on how you’re sourcing the CO2 that you’re using, I’m assuming it’s coming out of like a flu stack or you’re capturing it at a power plant or some manufacturing facility and feeding it back in. I sort of think about this in the way where when various states tax cigarettes, you wonder like, does the state actually want people to stop smoking?
Because they’re taxing it and they’re probably having revenue come in from it. So what is the relationship with if you’re sort of dependent upon emitters? Does this sort of business have an inherent type of shelf life? Or do you think at some point you would just switch to sourcing from direct air capture? How are you thinking about that?
Rob Niven: Yeah, so our point is being agnostic. And in fact, we don’t even buy the CO2 ourselves. And that’s the responsibility of our producer partners that adopt the technology and source CO2. And as I said before, like CO2 today is available from other large emitters from stacks and that CO2 is then supplied to the concrete production site to be consumed. Ideally sooner than later, then the CO2 from these emission sources begins to dissipate and potentially with different forms of energy-based emissions first. But as long as there will be concrete, there will always be cement and cement can never decarbonize that calcination reaction on during process changes.
It does, but it is conducive to CO2 capture. So there will always be that emission source from an industrial emitter. And then there’s likely to be other industrial emission sources as well. I should say that direct air capture is an entirely good option. It’s not an option that we have available to us today. And that clearly has a lot of benefits when it becomes available online. And when that happens, I think that we could be in a different supply and demand type of a situation where Maybe a lot of the other sources of CO2 are starting to diminish and supply going down is that the demand from solutions like CarbonCure will continue to rise.
And maybe the price of CO2 from large emitters will exceed direct air capture supply. And at that point, I think that would be an ideal time for our concrete producers to be able to source CO2 from DAC.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, what a world that would be. What’s going on in the industry as a whole? Maybe we should start wrapping it up and zooming out a little bit, Rob, but do you feel like you have competitors and you’re in good company? Are you just out there on the frontier and the fringes here making this happen all on your lonesome? What’s it like?
Rob Niven: Well, you should pay attention to things like the Carbon X Prize. There’s also a competition that just wrapped up called the ERA Emission Reduction Alberta Grand Carbon Challenge. So these are multi-year, multi-million dollar prize competitions where they accelerate the best and brightest in CO2 utilization solutions. Many of them are based in concrete and cement. So there’s quite a few really great companies in the area. They all have their different flavor. Some are changing the chemistry of cement and some are looking at other components of concrete like aggregates or segments like masonry.
So there’s a lot going on. There’s a lot of investment. And then, of course, there’s all of our cousins who are turning CO2 into different kinds of products like plastics and fuels and Chemicals and so on. So I would say it’s very vibrant. There’s a lot of growth and investment going into this space. At the same time, I would say that CarbonCure is by far the most advanced commercially and are continuing to build out with new innovations. So I don’t believe that there’s anyone else in the space that has nearly the amount of deployment, as I mentioned, over 200 plants.
But that doesn’t mean there’s not room for a lot of other solutions here. This is a very, very big problem. And we want to see a lot more solutions coming into the space because most of them are very compatible with one another.
Ross Kenyon: That’s great. And if someone wanted to keep in touch with you and what CarbonCure is doing, what’s a good way for them to do so, Rob?
Rob Niven: Well, come visit us in Halifax, Nova Scotia. But barring that, there’s lots of ways to interact with us online. And, you know, certainly our website gives you a portal in two different ways that would be also follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter or some other good channels. So please stay in touch. And if you are interested in what are policies or construction or even using the technology itself is we absolutely want to hear from you and please reach out because. We need to expand our partnerships to be able to reach that, as you mentioned, audacious climate goal, but it’s entirely doable if we work together.
Ross Kenyon: And links to all of those things are in the show notes if you’re out there listening and want to stay in touch. Christophe, anything burning inside of you want to say before we sign off?
Christophe Jospe: No, this is a really fun episode. I want to maybe give you a final question that I’ve been wont to ask on this podcast, which is, Rob, you have a magic wand in your hand and you wave it. What has come true so that your vision is a reality? What could come true? No, let’s just assume that your technology is now reducing half a billion tonnes of CO2 per year. What are the elements that has come true because that’s a reality?
Rob Niven: Okay. I love the question, but I want to make sure I get it right. So you’re saying for us to achieve that goal, what would have had to have happened?
Christophe Jospe: Correct.
Rob Niven: I’ll start off by saying, I don’t think we’re going to get there from a timeframe that’s relevant by just organic growth alone. So just the type of sales growth, albeit relatively fast, is that I don’t think is adequate. I think some of the two key things that need to happen are One is procurement policies to be able to drive faster market shift. Second thing is I believe that there are other financial instruments which can play a role, at least temporarily, in accelerating this change. And that’s where I believe that the sort of carbon finance or offset space can play an enormous role in accelerating the change with another type of a market mechanism.
And that can be one as well that can be applied globally, where perhaps the type of policies that we would be looking for are not passed. But I just don’t believe that having just economics and good technology are necessarily going to be enough to get us there in the timescale that matters.
Christophe Jospe: That’s a great answer. And it has the right notes of optimism and realism.
Rob Niven: Well, it can be done. I know it. And thank you guys so much for this podcast. I listen to it whenever I take out the dog for a walk. And I’ve got through all the episodes now. So you guys need to start making more of them faster so that people like me continue to be inspired by these great insights that you bring.
Ross Kenyon: Wow, I didn’t realize you’d listen to that much. That’s just dozens, maybe 100 hours of us doing this. So you know us pretty well, it sounds like.
Rob Niven: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Thank you very much.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah. Thanks for being here, Rob. And if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes or Apple Podcasts, Stitcher. I think Podbean, if you listen on there, is also doing reviews. Thank you so much for listening. Well, thank you so much for listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in Apple Podcasts and or Stitcher. It really helps us a lot to get this content to a wider audience. If you think what we’re doing is useful, interesting, fun, hopefully all three, we’d certainly appreciate your rating and review.
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