Stacey Kauk argues carbon removal pilot failures should be viewed as progress
Stacey Kauk · The challenges of building a carbon removal portfolio · Feb 29, 2024 · at 43:23
Stacey Kauk, Head of Sustainability at Shopify, reflects on how the carbon removal ecosystem should respond to inevitable pilot failures.
0:00 / 0:18exact quote · 18.7s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“We're going to see things that don't work out in the next little while, and there's going to be stories about carbon removal projects that failed, and I don't think that these should be held up as a reason not to do carbon removal. They should be held up as progress and viewed as a successful discovery of something that did not work”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Stacey Kauk
Stacey Kauk says carbon removal is waste management, not venture capital
“The reality is that carbon removal's in the VC world right now because there's no funding from elsewhere. And I don't see this being a long-term financing solution, because carbon removal is waste management. Like, it's just cleaning the air, like, we clean ou…”
Stacey Kauk predicts carbon removal takes 30 years to become a commodity
“In order to function properly, we need to end up in a place where a ton is a ton is a ton, and there's two reasons for that. One, it, Provides that level playing field on the side of the suppliers, but it also provides a level requirement across companies or w…”
Stacey Kauk says some carbon removal startups sell credits below cost
“One, they're gonna charge the cost. Their price is equal to the cost. And then there are other companies that their price Is less than the cost, and they're taking a loss because they want to come out, and they are having, they have a different business strate…”
Stacey Kauk predicts carbon removal will become a government-funded public mandate
“So in the longer term, I think this is going to be more of a public requirement Then it is going to be something that's got to achieve gigaton scale and make, you know, the ROI that the VC funds are looking for.”
Stacey Kauk says early-stage carbon removal startups take three years to deliver
“That's what we're seeing play out is, you know, it is about three years before you can get those deliveries, because when we're making those purchase decisions, often we don't have full visibility, and neither does the company.”
Shopify relies on internal standards rather than existing registry protocols
“So when we started, we began, it was, we didn't trust a credit that came out against an established protocol on a existing registry.
We reviewed everything and went through it and set ourselves a new internal standard for what we would buy.
so no, we do that …”