A bonus episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast. You can listen on Spotify (subscribe there for ad-free), Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you listen. Paid subscribers get the ad-free version right here on the page.
Paul Gambill and I recorded this on the morning the marketplace opened to the public, which after two years of building a soil carbon methodology felt considerably larger than eight minutes of tape suggests. My favourite moment is Paul saying “we’re launched” and me saying “oh, we’re launched”, which is the sound of two people who have not yet decided how to feel about it.
There is also a gesture in here that I describe to the listener without describing, because radio.
People can now buy Carbon Removal Certificates from the Nori marketplace. This is the first time this has happened and is the first step in Nori launching its full platform. Nori CEO Paul Gambill is on the show to share the news about the Nori Lightning Sale. This episode is posted on Reversing Climate Change and Carbon Removal Newsroom.
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Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to the Reversing Climate Change podcast. I'm Ross Kenyon, lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have sitting here with me Paul Gambill, who is the CEO and also a co-founder of Nori. We're so excited that today is the lightning sale of Nori. What that means, I don't know, maybe you can tell us, Paul. We're launched. Oh, we're launched. Oh, that's what it means. Can you believe that? It's been two years and we are now facing the customer saying hello, welcome. Do you agree that that's... Here's the open door. There was a gesture that you can't see, listener. So what exactly does that mean?
What are we doing right now? What is the lightning sale?
Paul Gambill: So, we have been working, you know, listeners would know that we've been working on a methodology for quantifying carbon that's drawn down into agricultural soils. So, this is farmers changing farming practices, adopting things like no-till and cover crops and crop rotations and pulling carbon out of the air while they rebuild the health of their soil. So, we've been working with a farmer named Trey Hill out of Maryland and You have probably heard him on the Reversing Climate Change podcast before. So we've been working with Trey to quantify the carbon that he has pulled down into his farm over the last couple of years. And we are making those verified carbon removal certificates available for presale to anyone today.
Ross Kenyon: So if you want to actually participate in the Nori Marketplace, if you want to buy carbon removal, this is now something that you can do pretty easily. Requires a credit card. We use Stripe. Yeah. Pretty simple e-commerce. Straightforward, secure.
Paul Gambill: So the thing I wanted to say about this, Yeah, they're proposed. We'll probably see some action there, but I think it probably will take some years to get all of that stuff going. Yeah, so if you want to take your own personal responsibility for dealing with the carbon emissions that you produce just by living every day, you have that opportunity now. [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.]
Ross Kenyon: Yes, that is very, very cool. Take responsibility for your carbon emissions. It's a nice piece of rhetoric. How much did you pay the publicist for that one?
Paul Gambill: That one I pulled out of a research study.
Ross Kenyon: Yes, that's very good. Well, maybe it's good to give listeners a sense of the broad arc of Nori's development. Is this the first stage of becoming public? What comes next? How are we thinking about various iterations and future releases of the platform?
Paul Gambill: Yeah. So let's break down our roadmap. So if you've read our white paper or just kind of been paying attention to us over the last couple of years, you know that what we're trying to get to is a fully scaled up global, highly liquid commodities market for carbon removal. So that's all that we're doing with this. [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.] Move-carbon page, you are participating in the presale for Trey's CRCs from his farm. And these are going to be recorded on the blockchain. So all the transparency that we've been talking about is going to be there.
But the payment for these is going to be with cash. Because we don't want to confuse that message of quantifying and verifying soil carbon.
Ross Kenyon: That's right. And the way that it's been working too is as time goes, you'll introduce more and more features to the marketplace. There's more functionality when there's tokens involved that will be appreciated later, but are not necessarily the best way to launch in a lean way.
Paul Gambill: Right. Remember, where we're trying to get to is incorporating carbon removal payments into every single thing that we do throughout our lives and doing it automatically and invisibly so you don't ever really think about it in the same way that you don't ever really think about who pays for the garbage. And then in real time, use the Nori Marketplace to pay for removing that exact same amount of emissions.
Ross Kenyon: It's an exciting vision. I share this vision. I hope that
Paul Gambill: is the future.
Ross Kenyon: I would like to see that. That sounds scalable. People having to think about it all the time and make a conscious decision to buy seems it faces its own sorts of problems. And it's a useful step for us to make. But in the long term, we think we can do a lot better than that.
Paul Gambill: Right. It's like, again, carbon emissions are just like garbage. And so far, we haven't had the tools to measure, verify and remove that carbon. And Nori is making that available because that's the infrastructure that we need in order to start dealing with the overall carbon in the atmosphere.
Ross Kenyon: [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.] Let me finish the URL, man. Okay.
Paul Gambill: Get it in there like seven times head on. Apply directly to the forehead. So Trey is selling his carbon removal certificates for $15 per tonne. And then Nori charges a 10% transaction fee on top of that. So the carbon price is $15 a tonne plus $1.50 for Nori's transaction fee.
Ross Kenyon: That's cool. And there's also no fees otherwise that are hidden that farmers are picking up. This is the only fee Nori takes. Trey gets paid $15 per tonne. It's all going to him.
Paul Gambill: Yeah. That's very different and new thing from existing carbon markets where I saw an interesting graphic the other day where it's sometimes as low as like 20% of the carbon price ends up getting passed on to the project developer. So we wanted to change that around. We really want the farmers to get paid the full carbon price.
Ross Kenyon: That's terrific. I'm sure Trey is happy about that. And you'll be hearing from Trey too. We're doing a series of these little lightning sale RCC bonus episodes. This one will be up on Carbon Removal Newsroom as well. But then moving forward, we have interviews with people who are participating in the lightning sale. So Trey's coming up. Some of our first buyers will be coming up and we'll be releasing those to come. Was there anything else that we left out, Paul? No. I think that's good. So thanks so much for joining us on this long journey. It's been a couple of years. We're so grateful that you've spent so much time hanging out with us.
It's weird sometimes when we meet you in person and you can quote us back to ourselves. And we've never met you. That's been a fun new experience. But thank you so much. [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.]
Paul Gambill: We tried to make it really easy to figure out how many you should buy. We just looked at, you know, what is the typical amount that people emit as an average American? Or we also make it easy to remove the emissions from any flights that you recently took. So trying to make it easy.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, there's a nice little slider up there that you can work with and figure out exactly how much you should be negating. Well, thank you, Paul. This is fun, informative, brief. Thank you.
Paul Gambill: [Nori promotion cut from the transcript. It’s still in the audio, but it no longer applies.]
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, that's many times what you've told them. I think they got it now. They'll be dreaming about it. And then if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher. Tell your friends, help us get the word out about the Lightning Sale, about Nori, about Carbon Removal Newsroom, about Reversing Climate Change. And thanks so much for all of your support.
