For years now, we have debated the potential moral hazard of carbon removal, the fear being that we will abandon emissions reductions for the quick fix of carbon capture. But the science is clear: we simply can’t achieve our climate goals with mitigation alone. So, how do we design policy that works toward net zero using a binding emissions reduction pathway AND a strategy for scaling up carbon removal?
Christoph Beuttler is the CDR Manager at Climeworks, the global leader in direct air capture technology. He also serves as the Deputy CEO of The Risk Dialogue Foundation and Founding Member of the Board for the Negative Emissions Platform. On this episode of Reversing Climate Change, Christoph joins Ross to discuss Climeworks’ modular approach to direct air capture, describing how they use solid sorbents to capture carbon dioxide and how that CO2 is either stored permanently or used to replace fossil inputs.
Christoph shares his understanding of carbon removal regulations in Europe, explaining how EU businesses interact with policy and why companies are driving voluntary carbon removal markets. Listen in for insight around the future of the carbon removal sector as a whole and learn how you can help Climeworks realize its audacious goal to achieve gigaton scale in the next two decades!
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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.
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Resources
Will Direct Air Capture Be Centralized or Distributed? on Carbon Removal Newsroom
DOE Funding Carbon Removal Projects on Carbon Removal Newsroom
Klaus Lackner’s Moisture Swing Sorbent
California’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard
45Q Credit for Carbon Oxide Sequestration
‘Europe’s Climate Goal: Revolution’ in Politico
Climeworks’ Direct Air Capture Summit 2020
Brian von Herzen on Reversing Climate Change (Bonus)
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I’m Ross Kenyon. Today I have with me Christoph Beutler, CDR Manager at Climeworks and also with roles at the Negative Emissions Platform and Risk Dialogue Foundation. Hi, Christoph. Hi, Ross. Pleasure to be here. It is my pleasure to do an episode on Climeworks. We follow your work. You get name checked in so many episodes. Christoph, our Christoph, not you Christoph, has visited some of your facilities in Switzerland before. We’re fans of what you do.
We are very excited about what is happening in DAC. And so now is the time to talk about it. So thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks for having us. And we’re also fans of yours and yeah, happy to talk. Great. Thank you. I’m happy to hear that. Well, for listeners who may not know, maybe it is good to start with what is Climeworks and what is unique about your direct air capture approach?
Christoph Beuttler: Yep, that’s a very good question. So Climax is one of the first direct air capture companies. It’s also the largest and it’s the first that is commercial. What’s unique? So I would say the first thing that’s unique about us is that we have a modular approach and we use solid sorbent, which allows us to Use renewable energy only to run our operations. So we have a low carbon footprint, which is kind of important if you’re in the business of removing carbon from the atmosphere. And obviously the modular approach allows us to build smaller plants or different sizes relatively quickly through which we can learn quickly and then improve quicker.
So that’s why we chose this approach. You can also call it fail fast or learn fast.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, yeah, you could say that. This modular approach I find intriguing. We did a show a while back on Carbon Removal Newsroom about the degree to which carbon removal necessitates an economy of scale and large machines necessitates. Doing this work versus something that’s more distributed and smaller scale and modular, as you might say. And I like the idea of it being modular, both for the anti-fragility reasons, but I also really want to have my own direct air capture unit that plugs right into a soda stream so I can just have my own carbonated water throughput in my kitchen.
This is a dumb question to start off with, but is that ever going to happen for me?
Christoph Beuttler: It is if you’re willing to spend a lot of money on that. So obviously we are sympathetic to that kind of thinking and we can build decentralized but not as decentralized. So it needs to be a few dozen or ideally a few hundred tonnes per year at least for it to become economically viable. Well, you have no idea how much carbonated water I’m drinking. That’s true. Yeah, it could be very, very viable. Yeah. Okay. Point taken. Is my framing of your economy of scale versus modular thinking, is that the correct way to understand how you’re using modular?
I wouldn’t... Not entirely. So where we will get economies of scale is through mass production. So, you know, we won’t build... These large plants, which have economies of scale in the building process of the plant, but essentially what we have is 40-foot containers. That’s our kind of modular unit. And if we mass produce them, much like trucks or cars, that’s economies of scale.
Ross Kenyon: Understood. Thanks for complicating that story. I had a feeling whenever you have such a neat little partition between two schools of thought, it’s almost never that way, is it?
Christoph Beuttler: Nope. Sorry, yeah. No, it’s a bit more complicated, but yeah.
Ross Kenyon: I also want to explain a little bit more about sorbent approaches to carbon removal and direct air capture. What exactly does that mean? I imagine there are people listening. I imagine there certainly are people listening who are not biochemical engineers, not material scientists. What is a sorbent? And maybe what are some other approaches to direct air capture?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, so a sorbent is basically... It’s a filter that attracts selectively only CO2. And then this is what we are after, all the DSC companies are after to perfect. And you basically have two ways that are working now. And there’s a third potential one that could disrupt it. And the two ways are the solid sorbent, which we use. So the CO2 molecule sticks to that solid sorbent and you have to heat it to 100 degrees Celsius. So that’s the way we work in Europe.
Sorry, I don’t know the Fahrenheit numbers from the top of my head. And also, you know, the other way is to have a liquid sorbent where the CO2 reacts with a sorbent and becomes a solid. And then you have to desorb at 900 degrees Celsius. And that means you have to burn natural gas. Then requires you to co-capture the fossil CO2 molecules from the natural gas. This is the carbon engineering approach and it’s a great approach because it is or can be cheaper. But if you look at it from a full LCA perspective, then you have to obviously account for that fossil bit in your calculation.
And the third way, which the MIT is looking at another, You know, research institutes, you could potentially maybe one day do it not with chemistry, but electricity. And that could be a game changer. But currently, we can’t see that working in the foreseeable future.
Ross Kenyon: We did another carbon removal newsroom recently about the Department of Energy’s Office of Fossil Energy has issued a number of grants or other funding mechanisms for a number of carbon removal and mostly direct air capture companies. And many of them are sorbent based. And my understanding is that they will... And I’ve also seen one of the companies that want to grow. So after this sort of resin has captured CO2, you’ve changed the moisture environment in which these pellets are in, and then it releases it. But it sounds like the approach that you’re using tends to be focused on heat and temperature, and the difference between those two environments is how it is captured and the CO2 released.
Is that correct?
Christoph Beuttler: So some of this I’m not an expert in, but from what I understand, yes. And the main difference between what Klaus does and what we do is he gets a 5% CO2 stream and we get an almost pure CO2 stream and that makes it kind of easier for utilization. But I think in general, the way things are going and also if you read the IPCC reports, we will need everything in addition to full steam ahead on reduction of CO2 emissions.
Ross Kenyon: We’re definitely attitudinally aligned on this. The only thing I will say, and we talked about this a little bit prior, is that carbon removal, soil gets a lot of this, but direct air capture too has this sort of holy grail aura. I tend to default to a very large portfolio. We’re all sort of on the same team here, elevate cool ideas. I never want to overpromise anything. And it sounds like maybe you’re similarly disposed and trying to say, okay, this is exciting, promising stuff, but we still need to do boring climate fixes as well.
Is that okay by you?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think, you know, it’s not just over promising. It’s we’re literally, you know, talking about our future here and we should be really careful and realistic in how to assess this. Therefore, we tend to be on the conservative side with our, you know, communications of prices and kind of, you know, pathways where this could go. I mean, we definitely see gigaton scale happening, but this, you know, needs strong political support. Got it.
Ross Kenyon: Okay, that’s always good to hear. And just to clarify, too, with the sorbent approach, in the way that I framed it with moisture, pH, or heat, you’re saying Climeworks is focused on differences in heat to both capture the CO2 and then also to release it by changing the heat in the environment in which these sorbents exist. Is that a good layperson’s understanding of this? Yeah, it’s heat and we capture at whatever temperature is the outside temperature. And then we need around 100 degrees difference to release the CO2 from the filter.
You said 100 degrees Celsius?
Christoph Beuttler: Roughly it’s 80 to 120, but don’t go deeper with your questions because I’m not a technical guy. So I will, you will hit my limitations quite soon on that. Yeah.
Ross Kenyon: I just want to do the good point of order. I think that’s just the temperature at which water boils, right? 212 degrees. That’s a good, that’s usually what it requires. Okay, cool. I’m not a technical guy either. So we are both doing science translation for the listener right now, Christoph. It sounds like we are well-placed as peers right now. That’s very good to hear. Well, we’ve done a number of episodes about climate and specifically carbon removal policy in the United States.
There’s been some state level things, but mostly watching the federal government and seeing what happens in D.C. What is it like in Europe? I’m not sure that we’ve ever had an in-depth conversation about what climate policy and specifically carbon removal policy looks like in Europe.
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, that’s a very good question and one of my favorites. Because a lot of my time goes into that. But yeah, so I think the way I see it, it’s, you know, the US moved, as usual, quite fast on this with the 45Q and the low carbon fuel standard. And in Europe, it is kind of a bit different. So we would say we almost move from the opposite end. So I think in Europe, the first step tends to be a kind of binding process. Net zero goal, and the European Union is very close to having one, that there are some countries that already have these goals.
And that then is usually a net zero 2050 goal, which means we already borrow from the future and have to go net negative thereafter to stick to the Paris goals. But from this, you can then calculate production pathway. And then you will find that you have unavoidable emissions that you somehow need to get rid of to get to zero. And that’s usually your carbon removal part. And then you can think about how much biomass do we have within our borders? Because if you’re thinking about importing, the chances are high that other countries might want to do that too.
So that’s probably not a good idea. And then from that, you can calculate how much technological solutions you will need And then you have your kind of rough picture, what you need to do to get to your climate goal in 2050. And from that, we tend in Europe, we tend to then design policies that allow the scale up on the removal side and obviously the reduction on the other side.
Ross Kenyon: Have there been many fights in Europe about the degree to which carbon removal constitutes a moral hazard? I know that’s been quite prominent in discourse here, but I think we are now recognizing that carbon removal is necessary no matter what. So it shouldn’t be an excuse not to decarbonize as fast as feasible, but we also shouldn’t neglect it. Because if we don’t, there’s already just too much CO2 in the atmosphere. We need to do carbon removal now. Has a similar process happened in Europe or has it been different?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, no, no, no, totally. I mean, the moral hazard of mitigation deterrence discussion has been going on for years now. And I find it, if I may... Let loose. Let’s hear what you have to say, Christoph. Sorry?
Ross Kenyon: I said, you can let loose. You can tell me exactly how you feel about this. It sounds like you don’t like it.
Christoph Beuttler: I find it quite annoying. That’s what I wanted to say because the science is clear, right? We can’t make it with reductions alone. It is too late. We have emitted too much. And then, you know, there are two forms of moral hazard. One is not talking about it, which is the one that’s overlooked. And obviously the one is overselling it and keeping on emitting, which is if you live in our world, you have an understanding of the price point. So that’s rarely the case.
We see it. And I also feel that there’s a very easy solution, and that is you split the net zero goal as a next step into a binding mitigation or a CO2 reduction or greenhouse gas emissions reductions pathway, rather. So that could be a minus 90 or minus 95 or minus 85, depending on how much biomass and forest you have in your country, etc. And the rest is your CDR scale-up pathway. And if that is based on robust science, you shouldn’t have a mitigation deterrence discussion anymore.
Ross Kenyon: Okay. So you’re saying that you want to split the net zero goals of various countries in Europe and they can have the vast majority can be for carbon reductions, but you want a specific pool available that is by necessity carbon removal. And this is in order to help that side of things scale much more quickly than it is now. Is that kind of what you’re saying or did I miss it?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, no, that’s what I’m saying. The only difference is that there would be a European-wide goal. So it would be likely, you know, minus 85% on the emissions reduction side. And then it would be 15% on the removal scale-up side. So 15% of current emissions we need to remove in 2050. Maybe you can also think about adding a little percentage to be on the safe side. So some overlap. So we could say minus... And then you’re pretty much there, right? You know what policies to design to get to that 15% or 10% or 18%, wherever you are.
And you know what policies to design to get to the minus 85%. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.
Ross Kenyon: Hmm. That seems to be at maybe the country or inter-country level. Is there thinking on what businesses might be required to do in Europe, at least now? And then how might that interact with carbon removal policy?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, I think what we also implicitly assume is that Article 6.2 and 6.4 of the Paris Agreement would work. So that means we assume that you could transfer removal policies Credits internationally in a kind of regulated market. I think this is necessary because of the differences in endowments with biomass or storage potential in different countries, not only in Europe, but the world. So it’s very important that we do the stuff where it’s the safest, the cheapest, and the most viable, right? So we would wish for some form of internationally transferable removal credits.
And do you see this being part of a compliance market or do you see a role for voluntary carbon markets as well? I think it will definitely start with the voluntary market. You know, if you look at the Microsofts, the Stripes, the Shopify’s, et cetera, who have started to move in this voluntary market environment, and that’s your business, right? You know that much better than to me. It will start as a voluntary market and, you know, On the regulated side, it’s the Paris Agreement that envisages this, but it hasn’t gone very well in the past years.
I mean, now with China having kind of committed to a net zero goal that it might change, but I definitely would see it starting in voluntary markets with players that understand the strategic need to scale this. Otherwise, we won’t make 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius and then it might become regulated at a later stage.
Ross Kenyon: So you’re thinking that countries and or companies want to do this now because it might be either easier or more favorable towards them than any prospective regulatory regime might or something like that.
Christoph Beuttler: I think they can just move faster, you know, with these voluntary pledges. And I think, you know, I don’t know how you see it, but from our perspective, we think we see that, you know, the big The Microsoft, et cetera, that I just mentioned, they understand that if they don’t drive this, the world might very likely not make the climate goals of the Paris Agreement. That means a less stable economy or society, and that means also less business cases for these companies. So, yeah, I think that’s what drives this.
Ross Kenyon: There certainly is a lot of leadership being shown and taking risks on, I mean, most if not all carbon removal companies are startups or very nearly startups or just early in the growth of their companies. There’s not many that are... That old. So for brands, my understanding is that it’s for the expression I always use for this is the reason why you see, I forget where I got this. This isn’t something I originally thought and sorry for all the caveats, but okay, here’s the thought is that if you work at a movie studio, you’re never going to get fired for saying yes to Spider-Man seven because the IP has already been proven to be very valuable.
And if you take a shot at it and the new Spider-Man movie turns out to be bad, people will just say, oh yeah, well, we have a track record of really good Spider-Man movies and it performing well. So that’s okay. That was a totally reasonable risk to take. But if you take a risk on even a much cheaper movie by independent, a sort of like high art cinema, maybe win some Oscars, but isn’t a commercial success movie. Your job is much more at risk in that way.
And so this is a way of illustrating, I think, there is some inherent conservatism at big companies because the risk of saying yes to something that later proves to be an embarrassment is much greater than just continuing on as you always have. But I think a lot of companies are breaking out of that. And maybe it is just, hey, we’re in a position to lead here. And if we don’t do it, no one else is going to. Or hey, this is going to help our employees and shareholders like us more, trust us more, want to stay with us.
Or maybe they just genuinely like, we have to do this now because we’re really in great danger as a planet if we don’t. I’m not sure which it is. I think if you want to be really self-interested about it, I’m sure some of it is saying, Whatever the government proposes, it’s probably going to be more expensive to comply with. We’ll have less flexibility. We’ll have less choice. We should do it on our end because maybe we’ll set an example for future policy. And maybe if we do it voluntarily, there actually may not be policy in that direct oversight kind of way that I imagine many companies want to avoid.
Sorry, I just gave you 15 different things to respond to, Kristoff. So your choice.
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll start with, you know, if you look at Microsoft and a likely regulated environment in the US, it’s not that likely that they will be forced to remove their historic emissions anytime soon, right? Also given the current administration. So I think they genuinely understand that they have a social responsibility to drive this. And also, as I said, you know, you don’t have a business case anymore. I read a quite Quite an interesting policy paper, I don’t know, 18 months back, which started an attempt of calculating how much of the world population would be still alive in 2060, I think.
And obviously that’s a nearly impossible task to do, but they kind of looked at how the military would calculate compounding risks that would happen to appear and concluded that one third of us might not be alive in 40 years. And that kind of I know that number is not necessarily robust, but that kind of gives you an idea of why these companies, and I’m sure they understand this, think this way. Because yes, it’s kind of a moral thing, but it’s also purely from a business perspective. If you shift your view from the next quarter to, I don’t know, the next three decades, What becomes profitable changes a lot.
And then all of a sudden, obviously, this becomes profitable. And that’s what scientists have been saying for decades. And I think the exciting thing that is happening now is that all of a sudden, the technologies appear. And yes, they are new, but they have to be new because the need wasn’t there in past decades because we could have still made it without removing. But the technologies are... There to still make it. And that is kind of a very hopeful prospect and also probably the last hopeful prospect that we have to still turn this around.
I’m sorry, this was kind of obviously an equally philosophic answer to your why question. Yeah, these are my thoughts.
Ross Kenyon: You can match me on that. That’s totally fine. Yeah, that’s a lot. Well, fair enough. I’m curious to see how it goes. Obviously, the big risk and I think why people distrust a lot of voluntary action is that the tendency to greenwash is a big risk. Many environmental projects are... It’s hard to evaluate, especially for the average consumer or shareholder to look into what the company is doing and saying like, yeah... I think this type of credit is actually doing something good or this policy doesn’t just sound good, but actually is getting the goods in some important way.
So I think there is a I don’t know that’s another risk of voluntary action that I think people justifiably are concerned about. And one of the reasons why Maybe we do see some sort of compliance mechanism coming into the future. But that carries its own risks too. People tend to over-idealize regulatory action as inherently good and always good. And as someone who studies this, I think you must agree that is not the case, right?
Christoph Beuttler: I would agree. I think the intentions are always very well. And as someone who works in the policy field... I’m always impressed. I mean, I know from the outside, it’s not going that fast, but from the inside, there’s so much to consider and look at and think about it. So I’m super impressed with how fast, and especially in recent years, they changed regulation in Europe. But yeah, obviously no system is perfect and no regulation is perfect. And the same applies obviously for the voluntary market and greenwashing.
And I’m not saying there’s no greenwashing. Of course there is. But ultimately, I think, A lot of this starts as well intended and a lot of it survives as a good thing. So the European emissions trading system, which is currently globally the largest regulated emissions trading market, it is not a perfect system, but it is really, really good, especially if we compare it to You know, the other things that are there globally and someone just needs to start. And if that starts voluntarily, so be it.
And, you know, also on a smaller level, you know, we offer voluntary carbon removals on our website for individuals. And, you know, the price point is super high, you know, because we’re selling small tranches of subscriptions. So our cost is, you know, somewhere around 600. And then with all the overhead, we have to charge over $1,000 per tonne. And people are buying this because they want to drive. It’s a bit like Tesla, right? They want to buy the Model S so they can one day be a Model 3 that kind of makes this happen for most of us.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I like that. And we will certainly discuss more what Climeworks is doing in a consumer facing, but also B2B fashion that’s a little bit less clear maybe to regular consumers. So we will get there. And if you’re listening and you like what Climeworks is doing and want to support them, there will be links in the show notes for you to do so. Well, one of the questions we teased earlier, Kristoff, that I really wanted to ask you is, what is the relationship between all of these different carbon removal methodologies?
And what we keep coming back to, at least my Kristoff and I have talked about, is ecological succession as a model for the development of the carbon removal industry. And which are the pioneer species that are first out the gate that are making carbon removal possible? And maybe holding some ground and preventing crises. And then what are the sort of late blooming but massive scale permanent or more permanent storage methods that are actually going to get us to a carbon removal world where we are removing more than we are putting out every year?
Which happens first and which comes next?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, I think that’s a genius question because there’s also another mechanism within this. So, obviously, first out the gate that has already happened a long time ago is affoestation, which has started live competing in a market that is not a removal market, even though they are removal. But they competed in a compensation market against avoided emissions certificates. So you do a project, you save a bit of emissions against a reference project, and you can then pack that as a certificate because you have saved something and sell it on.
But no carbon has been removed. And I think that the first real species out of the gate Are you guys in the carbon removal markets? Because that is key, because at the net zero point, there are no avoided emission certificates anymore, which is the majority of what’s traded today, right? And there’s only removal. And then I think it’s quite simple, you know, there’s only so much sustainable biomass and we should use all of that, whether it’s for, you know, our first station, Bex or Biochar. And then, you know, after that comes direct air capture and maybe enhanced weathering and hopefully so many more that I don’t yet know of.
And all of that together hopefully will get us to, you know, a climate positive world. But we need to, we have 30 years and I recently read A very good article in Politico, which looked at this topic and the societal transformation that is needed to achieve this. And it was aptly titled, The Goal is Revolution, because it’s not enough to drive a Tesla and shower a little shorter. Globally, 80%, if I’m not mistaken, or around that is still fossil energy that we use. And we need to replace all of that With renewable or CCS it or remove it from the air.
And also, you know, the products like jet fuel that you can’t replace. And we can make fuels from thin air with CO2 from the atmosphere and, you know, green hydrogen. You can make methane and then you can start building your hydrocarbon chains. And all of that system needs to be developed in the next 30 years because otherwise we literally won’t make it. And I think this is Incredibly exciting, but it’s also a daunting task. I’m kind of losing track, but I just want to convey what we’re dealing with here.
Ross Kenyon: No, it’s good. This comes up once in a while. And what I usually say is that it’s like when you’re watching a movie and someone says, like, don’t look down. And the other character says, why? What’s down? And they look down. And of course, they freak out because it’s a giant cliff or whatever that they’re about to fall off of. And we tend to be optimistic, conservative yet optimistic. Looking down once in a while really has a tendency to focus the mind, I think.
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, and when I look down, I’m with Greta, right? We shouldn’t freak out because we definitely need to move. And I think what you guys are doing, you know, building the marketplace for this is incredibly important work.
Ross Kenyon: Well, thanks. It’s certainly not the easiest task, but actually now that I think about it, it doesn’t seem like any of these methodologies or approaches are particularly easy.
Christoph Beuttler: No, no, you’re right. We often joke and say when we ask, why are you doing this? Are you doing this to make money or to save the planet? And then one response is, there are easier ways to earn your money. So, yeah.
Ross Kenyon: Oh, I’m sure. Well, what? I think you’re in the Zurich area. Couldn’t you just work in finance and go get a job at UBS and you’d be just fine, right?
Christoph Beuttler: I don’t know. I mean, I had an offer at, I think, including bonus... More than twice the salary I have now. And I’m fine because this is incredibly exciting and a lot, I’m sure, I mean, there are interesting jobs in finance too, but yeah, I like what I’m doing. And I think that’s also something that most climate or all climakers I know of share, you know, we like doing what we’re doing and obviously, If you think it through with a long lens, it is also incredibly profitable and it will become a large industry, at least if the world will make or will try and make the Paris gold.
So it’s both kind of things, right? It is profitable, but it’s also hard getting it off the ground.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I think that is the hope. I want to talk a bit about permanence because this has come up on both shows recently. And maybe the best way to do so is to talk about what happens with the CO2 that Climeworks captures. Are you monetizing it in some way? Is it reentering various value streams or is it being mineralized? What’s happening to your captured CO2?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, that’s a good question. So what we do is sink and cycle. So part of our CO2 goes into the ground where we have developed a way with our partners in Iceland to mineralize the CO2 underground. So it’s gone, gone and stored forever, even if we have an earthquake or volcano erupts. And that’s the kind of the removal part, which is needed. To achieve the Paris goals. And the other way that we need to think about to achieve the Paris goals is we need to replace fossil CO2 inputs into the system with atmospheric inputs.
Because otherwise, in a net zero world, you would have to take the CO2 back out again. And it’s almost always cheaper to Use the CO2 to replace the product. I give an example. So if you were to say, okay, let’s, you know, aviation, we don’t have, we don’t have, or at least currently we can’t see too many options other than having a liquid fuel. So you have two ways, right? You keep on burning fossil kerosene and then you remove the emissions from that fossil kerosene.
For example, with direct air capture. Now, if you look at it a bit closer, the climate impact of flying is three times roughly the amount of its CO2 emissions. So you would have to remove three times the amount of CO2 that comes from, you know, you have other emissions like NOx, which are a bit More aggressive than CO2. And then you also have the particles where you have other climate impacts. But anyway, what you can then do is you can simply take CO2 from the air, combine it with green hydrogen.
Then you get methane. It’s an exothermic reaction. You get some energy back. You fish a top shit and you have a drop in fuel that you can tank into current aircraft. And because you have removed the CO2 from the air first, when you burn... The fuel, it burns a lot cleaner because it doesn’t have any byproducts because you have built it synthetically. And it returns the CO2 to the atmosphere, so you’re closing the carbon cycle. And this is possible for almost all hydrocarbon chain products that we currently make from fossil sources.
And I think this is the other kind of super exciting prospect here. That we are looking into and that’s, you know, we have demonstrated that this is possible and so has carbon engineering and we’re currently working on scaling this up. So the fuel market in kind of unavoidable or hard to directly electrify sectors is definitely another interesting and exciting case.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I love those approaches, the idea of capturing fuel from the air. I know it’s a little bit more complicated than that. That’s amazing. I always get excited when I hear about that. And I think having a less emitting source of hydrocarbon fuels that are not going to be easily replaceable, like jet fuel and other things like that, that’s going to play a pretty big role, I think. Okay. The first example you gave though of Iceland, I always forget the name. What’s the facility called again?
Christoph Beuttler: It’s a geothermal power plant, which is called Hedlisheide. I can’t pronounce it in the Icelandic way. I’m sorry. I don’t feel nearly as bad now. That’s good. Listening. And there we have a small demonstrator, which we switched on in late 2017. And we’re now building a plant there that’s bigger than all of our 16 other plants. For capturing CO2, you’re building one in Iceland? Yeah, yeah, second one, yeah. And that is, so it captures and removes CO2 and stores it underground.
In the same location, it’s located where- Same location. Wow. Yeah. It’s called Orca, so follow our communication on that. It’s recently started and it will take, in corona times, it’s always a bit hard to estimate, but we will think in nine months or so, it’s running.
Ross Kenyon: I love it. Okay. The permanence question I wanted to get to with regard to this is one that we’ve been talking about lately because the assumption with carbon removal through direct air capture and mineralization, it’s sort of taken for granted that these are more permanent than more biological or ecological methods. And granted, ecological methods have not had a good run of things in this last month, plus with wildfires, et cetera. But one of my colleagues, Alden Donnelly, she keeps bringing up the idea that there are orphaned oil wells all around the United States where oil producing companies go out of business.
And then these wells, there’s no one there to take care of them. There’s not financial mechanisms in place to care for these wells. And they end up leaking in some way or not being taken care of and becoming a hazard. And that this process could also happen with direct air capture. I don’t know that I don’t understand the science well enough to say I am cautious that because the rhetoric around permanence and industrial methods does feel in that sort of euphoric, optimistic state. And I want to pump the brakes a little bit if necessary.
I don’t know. What’s the latest thinking on permanence with what you’re doing there? And sorry, I hope that isn’t too pointed for you, Kristoff, but I really need a good answer for this.
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, no, that’s fine. So I’m not a geologist, but It’s my job to know about this a bit. And as far as I know, what your friend is talking about is what we call sequestration. So you inject the CO2 in a liquid form and it stays down there in a kind of liquid form. CO2 is heavier than air, so it doesn’t come up as a gas. So if the conditions are right, it should stay down there. This has been done by the oil industry for decades and there are very few accidents known.
But obviously what we do is different, right? What we do is we mineralize the CO2 underground. So what it is, it’s a specific combination of heat, other minerals in the porous rock about 1.5 miles down in Iceland. It’s basalt, right? Is that the mineral? Yeah, it’s basalt. Yeah, that’s exactly right. And that kind of forces the sea to mineralize, for lack of better words, within two years. And then you can abandon it because it has turned into stone. It won’t come up in no circumstance.
And this is kind of the way we are following and also, I think, Globally, there’s already 1,200 gigatons of storage identified that could be used in that way. So that’s more than we likely need to remove from the atmosphere. So that’s not the bottleneck.
Ross Kenyon: Hmm. Wow. I see the attraction, of course. Yeah. Force burned down. And then the idea that you could mineralize CO2 and you could, what did you say? You could walk away from it and it would be sort of stable in that capacity. That, if it’s that good and the price point is competitive, that’s a massive deal. I think it’s fair to say. And that’s probably why you’re building your career around direct air capture. Am I right?
Christoph Beuttler: That’s correct. Yep. Yeah. No, no, I mean, it is, in terms of permanence, there’s nothing more permanent than a rock, right? In that sense.
Ross Kenyon: Nothing more permanent than a rock. Yeah, that’s true. I can’t think of anything more permanent than a rock right now. Well, fair enough. I need to dig more into that and learn more. I know Carbon 180 has done some good research recently. I think a lot of it leaned on the stuff coming out of Livermore National Laboratory about the permanence and it not being... A threat for earthquakes, really, that it’s quite stable. So yeah, I don’t mean to inject doubt into something that shouldn’t, but I do have questions.
I’d like to see how this would play out. But obviously, for the good of the planet, yeah, I hope because in our theory of ecological succession, maybe that means direct air capture will really get some serious legs here in the future.
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah, but Biomasse is still needed because a lot of it is at a lower price point. It’s just not scalable to the extent that direct air capture is. So again, there are no silver bullets. We need everything and fast.
Ross Kenyon: Definitely. That’s certainly true. Well, since we’ve teased this one a little bit too, where do you think Climeworks will be in the next five years, 10 years? What are you expecting, projecting, able to say, et cetera?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah. On the one hand, our vision is to inspire 1 billion people to remove CO2 from the atmosphere in order to become what we call climate relevant, so get to gigaton scale. And we have developed A roadmap that we have recently made public at our Direct Air Capture Summit that we held on, what was it, the 8th of September. You can Google it. It’s available, the whole recording. And there, you know, the idea is basically to Every two years, we build a plant that is going up by the order of one magnitude.
So, you know, in 2023, it’s 100,000 tonnes. In 2025, it’s a million tonnes. And then 10. And so we will reach gigaton scale, hopefully somewhere in, you know, depending, again, we’re assuming strong societal and political will in the 2030s, 2040s. Wow. So you’ve heard of exponential growth, but have you heard of logarithmic growth? Yeah, that would be ideal. Yeah, that’s, yeah, that would be cool, but that’s, A very hard challenge to master in a decade or two.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, you don’t say. Well, I hope you’re wildly successful. That would be amazing. What does that mean then? And then two years after the, what, you had a million tonnes per year, then a billion, so a gigaton, and then what? Yeah, 10 gigaton.
Christoph Beuttler: I think then if we follow that path, we would relatively soon... Outstrip the mass of the earth or something with our DAC plants. So I’m not foreseeing this happening.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m thinking of that classic parable. I think it’s Indian of the grains of rice on the chessboard. Do you know the one I’m talking about? Yeah. That would be the entire... You’re just going to consume the universe. Don’t do that, please. All right. Take a... No, no. That will be kind of counterproductive to what we try and achieve. Okay. Slightly. Slightly. Slightly, yeah. Well, good to have some extreme goals in that way. We definitely need big thinking.
What do you think about the carbon removal sector as a whole? Where do you think that’s going to go in the next couple of years?
Christoph Beuttler: That’s a good question. Obviously, currently, it’s going well, right? Corona hasn’t dampened it that much. New initiatives and marketplaces and technologies are springing up So I’m hoping for it to continue that way. And I think it can and it should, obviously, and it will. So yeah, I’m conservatively optimistic if that rings a bell.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I’m curious too. It seems like there’s a lot of basic research being sponsored by various government entities. There are companies that are getting funded and research institutions are being funded to figure out a lot of these new technologies. Quite a lot of attention is going into direct air capture, but it seems like soil science is advancing quite quickly these days too, at least from where I sit. We just did a bonus episode, which should be out by the time we air this one that we’re doing with Brian Von Hurst.
And we were talking about marine permaculture and what’s happening with oceans. Oceans right now, I think, get the least amount of attention of any of the big spheres of carbon removal. I hope their heyday comes in the next couple of years, too. And that takes off. I don’t know. Maybe it’s different in Europe. Do you see much about oceans over there?
Christoph Beuttler: Not really. Maybe. I mean, yeah, there’s some work. Being done on marine cloud brightening, obviously, mainly not only in Europe, but in Australia. I think in general, the kind of natural solutions get a bit more attention in Europe because that’s seen as more inherently positive as compared to the US. And, you know, in terms of ocean-based solutions, obviously, some people have started to talk about direct ocean capture, which... To be honest, and this is the only thing I have looked at in a bit more detail, we can’t really see it because, you know, to do direct air capture, you have to move a lot of air.
And to do direct ocean capture, you have to move a lot of water. And that is a considerably higher density and mass. So on that side, we can’t really see it. Obviously, you know, for a lot of the other methodologies, I’m not a scientist. So I can’t comment on that. But yeah, there should be more, obviously.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, I won’t force you to comment further on that. Direct Ocean Capture, I haven’t heard of that yet. I’m not surprised it exists. And I will have to look into that a bit more. If someone wants to support your work, keep in touch with either you personally, but also if they want to support Climeworks, what’s a good way for them to do so?
Christoph Beuttler: Yeah. So, yeah, if you are an organization based in Europe, one good way is to contact a negative emissions platform. And you can be an NGO or a CDR developer or a CDR supporter on the demand side and engage with us and may become a member. That would be great. If you are an individual and you want your emissions removed or a company from the atmosphere, you can either obviously engage with you guys or with us through our webshop if you are inclined towards direct air capture.
Yeah, and in general, this topic needs more societal dialogue and discussion. So anything... You can do to educate yourself on where we are with climate. We can’t call it climate change anymore, right? How can we call it climate warming? Yeah, do it. Wait, you don’t call it climate change anymore? I don’t think we can. I would say people in California would now go back to calling it climate crisis or global crisis. Heating, I don’t know, you know, it’s not, I feel we need a new word.
Maybe an old word. Maybe it is global warming again.
Ross Kenyon: Ragnarok. I don’t, yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know about any of these things. Hopefully I don’t change it though. I already have the name of this show.
Christoph Beuttler: Okay, sorry, sorry. I didn’t want to compromise the name of your show. First of all, how dare you come on my show, try to get me to change the name of the show, Kristoff. I’m sorry, Ross. I’ll make it up to you one day.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, insulting way to end the show. No, just kidding. Yeah, fair enough. I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any of those nomenclature discussions. I’d be curious to know whatever becomes of it if it’s not climate change. Links to all of those things in the show notes if you want. If you want to buy carbon dioxide that has been captured by Climeworks, that link is in the show notes. If you want to follow Christoph’s work on policy, keep up with him, Climeworks' policy work, etc.
Or also the Negative Emissions Platform and Risk Dialogue Foundation. Well, thank you again for being on the show, Christoph. Thank you, Ross, for having me and for having Climeworks. Yeah, it’s my pleasure. Auf Wiedersehen. Yeah, auf Wiedersehen. And yeah, I’m sure our paths will cross again. I sure hope so. And hey, if you’re listening, would you do me a small favor and write us a review on Apple Podcasts if you’re an iPhone user? It really helps a lot. It only takes 30 seconds or so.
If you boot up the podcast app that comes on your iPhone, go to this show, give us five stars, write us a nice review, assuming you genuinely think that it deserves it. And thanks for your support. Tell a friend and 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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