May 5, 2022 · 52m · catalyst
Growing the Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) market
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Host Shayle Kann and Lowercarbon Capital partner Ryan Orbuch explore the rapidly growing carbon dioxide removal (CDR) sector, analyzing technical storage pathways, market integrity challenges, and the vital role of permanent removal alongside aggressive emissions reductions.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Shayle holds 41.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Shayle as informed peer 5.3 Guest teaching 4.3 Guest disagreement 1.8 Shayle pushing back 2.8
speaking balance: gold is Shayle, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 18:53 Guest rejects premise of low-durability credit validity
Guest directly dismisses the concept that cheap forestry credits are merely low durability, arguing that in reality many are entirely non-additional and do not represent real carbon removal.
Hardest push from Shayle ▶ 17:17 Host challenges absolute permanence requirementHost pushes back on prioritizing exclusively high-durability solutions, questioning whether cheaper 50-to-100-year storage options could adequately bridge the gap until global net zero is reached.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 45:10 Guest illustrates counterintuitive Clean Air Act aerosol maskingGuest educates the listener and host on how particulate reductions under the Clean Air Act caused net warming by unmasking greenhouse effects, illustrating why radiative forcing is broader than CO2 accounting.
Shayle holds their own ▶ 21:36 Host demonstrates veteran offset trading expertiseHost demonstrates deep subject-matter pedigree by citing his personal experience originating and trading voluntary and compliance offsets in 2007-2008 to contextualize additionality loopholes.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Shayle as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Shayle pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Host Monologue: The Rapidly Expanding CDR Landscape | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Host introductory monologue outlining the growing interest in carbon dioxide removal, the XPRIZE competition, and Ryan Orbuch's background. As a solo framing segment, all host and guest interaction metrics are zero. | |
| Frameworks for Categorizing CDR Technologies | 5 | 5 | 2 | 2 | Host asks for high-level CDR taxonomy buckets. Guest introduces a novel organic versus inorganic storage framework based on trapping mechanisms rather than the traditional engineered versus nature-based divide. | |
| Decarbonization Priorities: CDR in Broader Mitigation Strategy | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Host cites specific calculations from climate scientist Zeke Hausfather regarding the immense financial cost of relying on CDR instead of mitigation. Guest agrees enthusiastically, affirming CDR cannot be a substitute for rapid emissions reduction. | |
| Durability, Permanence, and Additionality Frameworks | 6 | 7 | 3 | 5 | Host pushes back on the pure durability requirement by suggesting cheap temporary removals could act as valuable bridge solutions until 2050. Guest counters that low durability in practice strongly correlates with non-additionality and phantom credits. | |
| Market Integrity, Historical Offsets, and Future Commoditization | 7 | 4 | 2 | 3 | Host brings extensive personal domain knowledge from trading carbon offsets in 2007-2008 to demonstrate persistent additionality measurement challenges. Guest expands on the Amazon avoided-deforestation leakage problem and the conflation of biodiversity co-benefits with carbon. | |
| Measurement, Reporting, and Verification (MRV) Challenges | 5 | 6 | 2 | 4 | Host challenges whether separating MRV costs would meaningfully alter the relative price stack between DAC and biological approaches. Guest explains the need to account for expensive unmodeled research like ocean alkalinity supercomputing. | |
| Sponsor Message: Bloom Energy and Engie | 7 | 3 | 2 | 4 | Following the midroll ad read, the host challenges DAC scalability on grid energy consumption and draws a sharp historical parallel to unintended land-use distortions from corn ethanol policies. Guest agrees that perverse policy incentives remain a severe risk. | |
| Radiative Forcing, Albedo Effects, and Climate Adaptation | 6 | 7 | 2 | 2 | Host prompts guest to explain the concept of radiative forcing credits over pure CO2 credits. Guest educates the host on aerosol masking from the Clean Air Act and albedo impacts from afforestation before both agree on the disconnect between CDR and adaptation. |
Statements from this episode (15)
Kann: XPRIZE Carbon Removal drew 1,000 applications and awarded 15 milestone prizes
“You may know that Elon Musk is sponsoring this big hundred million dollar X prize focused on carbon removal. So over a thousand teams submitted applications to this prize. Nearly 300 of them passed through the first filter of qualification. Already, 60 of them…”
Orbuch: Categorize CDR by trapping mechanism rather than natural versus engineered
“One thing that I found a little more useful is to kind of just think about like, what's the actual trapping mechanism for the CO two? Like where does the carbon actually end up? And there you can sort of think like, okay, well, it's leaving the air and another…”
Orbuch: Removing biomass for CDR severely depletes ecosystem nitrogen and phosphorus
“It's not like the plants are just like creating a block of carbon. Like there's nitrogen and phosphorus and iron and other stuff in there. And if you're taking that out of the cycle, you're taking the nutrients out in ratio with the carbon. Right. In contrast,…”
Orbuch: Carbon removal is fundamentally costlier than basic emissions reductions
“Carbon removal is never intended to be a substitute for emissions reduction, and, like, to that point is going to be dramatically more expensive than the vast majority of reductions, right? Like, that's just how this works. Like, not burning something is going…”
Orbuch: Carbon removal lifecycles do not pencil out without renewable energy
“Like there's going to be a lot of energy use and like no one's life cycle pencils without renewable energy use.”
Orbuch: Carbon removal must match emission permanence to achieve true net zero
“An emission is permanent, basically. Like, an emission of CO₂ stays in the atmosphere for hundreds of thousands of years, not forever, but hundreds of thousands of years. And if you want to somehow net that out with a proportional removal, like, it's not propo…”
Orbuch: Many low-durability carbon credits represent completely non-existent carbon removals
“Many of the, what we could refer to as low durability, low end credits today, whether it's something like improved forest management or otherwise, it's not that they're low durability, they actually just don't exist. Right? So, like, you have this weird thing …”
Orbuch: Avoided deforestation carbon credits have near-zero net impact due to leakage
“Avoided deforestation, for example, is like a classically cheap and conceptually compelling credit especially in, you know, say the Amazon that's I mean, basically impossible to prove the counterfactual because there's often significant amounts of leakage, and…”
Orbuch: Carbon dioxide removal must become a standardized commodity market to scale
“Eventually it needs to get there, I think. It's going to be really bumpy and sloppy on the way. Long-term fullness of time, CDR needs to become a commodity market. I don't think there's a mechanism to scale it otherwise.”
Orbuch: Direct air capture will be far easier to verify than biomass
“Some of the more expensive methods, like direct air capture, are gonna probably be easier to verify. And some of the potentially cheaper methods, especially those using biomass, are probably gonna be harder to verify.”
Orbuch: Current ocean modeling resolution is too coarse to evaluate alkalinity enhancement
“Most of the modeling of ocean gas exchanges is done at, like, large global climate model tile sizes, not at small enough scale to actually know what part of the ocean is actually potentially good or bad to add some alkalinity to.”
Orbuch: Geothermal energy could become a major power source for direct air capture
“First of all, I think geothermal could be really huge for DAC just as a side note, but that's not, like, to say that that's obviously not a alternate energy use that would go somewhere else, right?”
Kann: Scaling biomass carbon removal faces severe bottlenecks from competing land uses
“I'm actually probably less concerned about that than I am concerned about the biomass-based approaches in the long term, because if those are really going to scale, like, we can use waste biomass till the cows come home, so to speak, today but there are going …”
Orbuch: The Clean Air Act caused net warming by reducing reflective aerosols
“The Clean Air Act was pretty meaningfully net warming for Earth, right? Like, it was an objectively good thing, obviously. Like, it saved probably millions of lives. It protected, you know, millions of people, and especially vulnerable communities from really …”