Hey everyone, welcome to season 2 of reversing climate change. We are doing that podcasting. Now, in launching a patreon, you can find it at patreon.com slash Nori podcasts. There are various tiers with different types of goodies available. Do you want to receive a special newsletter digest of what Nori knots are reading that week? Be a part of a Nori book club. Get special access to Nori
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At keeping his business has 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 carbon cure a great. Yeah, it is really exciting and now I'll be more than happy to talk about it. Yeah, me too was. Be happy to see this. I thought it was exciting.
The choices that were made and the thing that were alluding to is that stripe at long last has announced the choices that they are making in regards to their carbon removal policy. And carbon cure is one of four groups that they are working with right now. 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. Have you been getting a lot of attention since this news came
out? Yeah. Certainly and I think especially within the tech community so the intranet 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. You know, I think one thing that that they make in their blog and I do recommend people go and read the blog as 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 Is
there more engineered Solutions? And I think the story is much more than just the money so 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 likes, a forestry offsets.
So, in some ways this 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 solution. 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. 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 Rod and his big industry as possible because we really do need all hands on deck. I like that ecumenical approach. I'm glad you share it. Well, 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 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. Hey, it's my pleasure and sorry for being so secretive the other day. It wasn't a Appropriate amount of circumspection. I think, I know how embargoes work and loose lips sink ships as I say. So it would be terrible. If you submarine your own deal, bye-bye blabbing about it on the podcast. 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. Yeah. I think that's that's totally the right attitude. Well cool. 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, Christophe Chris Bosh pay you 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. I'm still on the roster, there's like put me in coach. This is a good one to be on. There's this like the 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. Us Rob Niven of carbon cure CEO and founder there. Thank you for being here Rob. Thanks very much.
It's really a pleasure. Yeah, we're happy to have you, we have like, we're pretty animated by what's happening in concrete. We think there's a lot of opportunity. There's a lot of peril to, it's a huge part of world emissions. And what you're doing is, is quite interesting. So, maybe give us a nice little sample of what. Exactly is carbon cure and what are you working on? Great. Well, it's not too often. I hear someone say that they're
animated about concrete. At least outside of carbon cure. So I'm happy to do involve CH, you're in good company. This is this is what we do is who we are. Okay, great. Well, I'm amongst friends carbon cure is a clean tech company that uses CO2 and the production of concrete where it's actually used to make concrete with production cost savings and also lower carbon footprint. So I'll again, you got the elevator pitch down, you must be a founder and CEO or something I've got 38.
I've done a fair. I'm out 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 basing Nova Scotia and we are working with, about 200 concrete plants. We produced about 5 million, cubic yards of particular 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 and and Europe.
So what Carpenter Was this were really trying to solve this carbon problem of concrete. And if you look at some of the mega Trends happening right now, concrete is certainly On The Rise. The megatrends I speak of our 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 two. And most used material on on the planet, after drinking water. 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. So Rob, can you help out our listeners and kind of lay the foundations? What's the difference between concrete and cement? We did you mean pour a foundation Iceland? Well sure, I'd be happy to answer. That's commonly mixed up. There's no such thing as 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. 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've 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? Yeah, there are. Yeah. So I think the analogy that you're thinking of is Is that concrete is the cake and cement has the flower and that's it up. There It Is. Well, that's what I do. That's fine.
So they're Portland, cement is what you're referring to is, 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 on a cement plant at high temperatures and then Mint or I should say that limestone is broken into two halves. So 1/2 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, a mission called calcination that is is due to the large emission profile of the cement and concrete sector, which is around five to eight percent 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 count, which is only about one-third of the
total emissions of cement. So, cement is then shipped to concrete plants, their separate cement plants. Tend to be closer to Big Cory's concrete plants are closer to where we live because concrete only has a shelf life of about Minutes. So once you add water, the you start the clock and if you get it to later, I'll set up and 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 and in the US So carbon care 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 mcstays, got it. You laid out a lot of really interesting topics and I'm not entirely sure where to go, but I want to start with maybe chemistry 101. So you're describing a process where you're converting Limestone into clinker. And Limestone that CaCO3, right? So you want to turn it into CA 0 which leaves you with the CO2 molecule and so 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 so it's exactly right. So are the cement Industries? Primary role is to crack c03. E into two halfs of equivalent weight which is CO2 + C a0 so calcium. Oxide clinker and CO2, CO2 goes up the stack and is released into the atmosphere and contributes to global warming. That's the problem that we're
trying to fix. But C a0 is a very productive material is highly resilient and uniform cement and which then allows us to build everything around us. And so you're literally curing the carbon back into that CA 0 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 worked crack it. What we do is that once cement is is mixed in back into concrete as we introduce some CO2 that reacts. 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, may be getting a bit technical here, but that's a really important stage for our how our technology works is.
We we create value from CO2 by reforming calcium carbonate And 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. 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 a since Humanity. I know that's not the case, but how much has it changed over time? It actually hasn't changed that much.
And that's I think that's really a testament to how good of a material it is. And, you know, certainly, the formulation of Portland cement that we have today is about 150 years old. But forms of cement and sand 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 resilient lie to the effects of water and fire and wind and, and so on. So, 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. It's in some ways. It's, 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 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 carving care comes in. If we didn't do something like carving care and we didn't make concrete better, what would we
be left with? What's the the alternative to concrete for building? It 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 Cole, well, put a solar panel on your roof, that's just not the case with concrete is. 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 like so that's that's the real rub. 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 we can achieve all this growth of cities like will be doubling everything we've ever built and 40 years the next 40 years. Just think about how much more construction that is that spoke 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 had to figure out a way of
doing this. Are we get back to our analogy with cakes as we get to have our cake and eat it too? I like cake cake to either. They've been listening to this podcast for a while because, you know, we like to torture these metaphors analogies, go ahead and stuff.
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 that you and maybe you can weave them into a response in In the built environment, we often hear this term called embodied carbon. I'm curious how that plays into your process or sorry, you're Canadian. So 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. Great question I'm so Glad you brought up embodied carbon. And I'm not surprised because you guys are based in Seattle, but that has been were a lot of the best thinking has happened. The University of Washington, the carbon leadership Forum, Kate's eminent, 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 and decarbonization most people think about eating event Elation 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's eminent 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 Emissions that are still attributed to the built. Environment photo 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 in the materials production accounts for about half of the entire emissions of a building over its entire life cycle. So 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 for thinking about tying value of carbon, we're thinking about near term climate targets. We've got really ten years to work with.
We've got a really get on top of this and bodied thing and it's a bit alarming that we're at. This is only coming to light how so there's a lot of urgency and there's actually some some great work that's been done by Bill Gates, Other local business and climate celebrity and the Seattle area, who's really jumped onto this topic and has created some material to educate people on it as well. As I said the carbon leadership forum and tools that they develop like DC-3.
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 buildings. The answer is not to use less concrete because we know we need to do it. 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.
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 a cat that we've called M3. And the more cement usually the higher strength or other attributes but also means a higher carbon footprint. So a way to look at that as there might be 300 kgs on the M3 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 Urban of concrete or of buildings. And what we do is we as I said mineralize CO2. 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, you know, somewhere in the order of around 15 to 20 kgs, but we have Technologies now that we're rolling out to 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 actual 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 in 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. 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? Well like all Technologies to take a bit of time and we're certainly on a roll. Now the last three quarters is we've smashed are our sales records and over continue to
grow really quickly. But this anecdote, Tsar 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 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, you 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 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, how is business going? Rob you guys on a tear right now or I'm in, this is the covid time. I wonder is building still continuing a pace or people more conservative, how are things looking over at Carbon cure?
Well, every, every industry is being hit and fortunately, the concrete, or the construction industry has and many states. And in 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 country, certainly in
some parts of the world. So we get a really close Those real-time Sense on how business is going. So that gives us some some hope that this this industry is going to fare relatively. Well, we have adapted, how we're doing business before we used to send Engineers some planes to and set up plants. We were really good at it.
Only took us about a date, actually retrofit entire plant, but now because of covid, and because we can put people on planes as we've had to adapt the product but also how we do things. So now we're continuing to grow. Tending 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.
It's basically Minecraft, right? We're my craft. Yeah, baby. But I think is a bigger story here, right? Like, I think, I think people are really waking up to the effects of climate change and people see this as a business opportunity. T possibly as a moral imperative. And and there's a lot of momentum here that covid snot going to slow down. And I think, clean tech companies, like ours are going to continue to be very successful and we got some great momentum.
In January. We were just named the American clean tech company the year for out raising money right now and always looking for new partners and Industry construction sector but more and more. Two 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 its corporate public climate targets, is that why
carbon care got started? Did you have that sort of vision in mind? Well, this was my thesis this technology. So, this is really personal, right? And it's even become, even more personal I ever could have imagined since having our first
child. And because now this like really matters, you know, like it's much more than an academic exercise or even the climate space is its family, it's really personal and I think when this thing got started like the vision of certainly evolved and as we brought on a bigger and you know, 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're 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 five hundred megatons of CO2 emissions in here, 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 time scale that actually matters. How can I do this in 10 years? I should say I nice.
We we as a team or we have all Barb sort of broader stakeholders and so we need a lot more people. Under the Tent. But what's great? That's not a 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 from industry and
government media. And so, on to be able to do that because everybody has a role and sometimes I think that clean tech companies up too much pressure on them because, you know, they're expected to solve all these huge societal issues while the same time making a buck for their shareholders. But, you know, it's something that we all have to be part.
And a big part of that is around procurement of clicking 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 or move into that by playing a bigger role to accelerate and catalyze change. So government policies, especially procurement policies or want to do. So, lots and lots of different ways. People can get involved manual
and so much good stuff there. But you said a very audacious numbers. So I want to walk back from that, which is that with this type of Technology, the world can reduce half a billion tons 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.
Op X, the capital expenditures and operational expenses. Just kind of do some math for Of what is it going to take to see this technology scale to reach that half a billion, tons of climate mitigation per year. Well, the good thing going for 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 a hundred thousand plants worldwide. You know, if you just focused on China alone, that's 50% of all production.
I remember back in 2014, reading a quota as well by Bill Gates.
And said that China has used more concrete and three years, then the US 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, 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, but actually creates value and cost efficiencies, then there's an economic driver that we Behind
us, that doesn't rely on regulatory, to be able to drive change, but regulatory might accelerate change. So I'm trying to think, how do I get there? Is that 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, are what we call our mixer. Technology today gets us about a third of the way there, and then we have what we call our watch.
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 the remainder and by incorporating a stack of Technologies and carbon cures 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. What are some of the ways that
policy can support? What you're doing? Rob that's really interesting model was created in Hawaii last year. That I really don't think got enough attention. So we work with a group and in Hawaii called the elemental accelerator, maybe you've heard of them just a phenomenal clean Tech Community. They've created that collects clean, tech CEOs and Founders from around the world and creates this place-based
learning type. Of ecosystem to drive clean tech deployment in a number of different areas, like water or 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 at 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 or Car Projects, this is important that we state government projects because that's something that government can control. And so ends a lot less contentious, as saying everybody in the private sector needs to make concrete. Certain way are used concrete of made in a certain way. And this is something the lines, their climate goals with their procurement. And they also take all the downside risk of it around
economics. And 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 by Clean legislation coming out of places like California that are rapidly expanding across the country but this was a really focused on concrete and it had an immediate effect in the market where private sector saw what was happening and public sector and saw that this was a success and government was helping meet their climate targets and that led to change and then Honolulu host of the US Conference of Mayors, which I
think represents about thirteen hundred cities across the u.s. they saw what was happening in Hawaii, then passed a resolution to the same effect that then spends the entire country and then a number of devotees and other cities have 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 to New York State 86 17, ab86 17, which takes this type of an LLC, a green procurement approach to Group because they recognize its impact on embodied. CO2 in the built environment, they've done a lot on operational and then realize they need to play catch-up on the body. And this is how they targeted. And what's been really cool about seeing that build of all
his. It's received support from industry from ngos, construction, sector political, and I hope, I hope that one successful. Of course, with current covid environment. That's not doing anyone any favors, but I think it's probably one of the The most refined approaches and creating a guaranteed buyer in that way. It's pretty Innovative. And pretty interesting way to do policy from that procurement level. I'm not, like I said, there's what government is the single largest buyer concrete.
So well, there you have it and a big influence in the marketplace. And, you know, if I Dream Out Loud, as I just wonder is when covid stimulus funding hits for infrastructure. Why not play a climate lens to that. Please give people prioritizing green infrastructure Solutions if it's the same price and quality like why wouldn't you do that?
Because then you kind of get a twofer right is you get all the stimulus and you get all the infrastructure and then and then you also get on the climate benefit and it doesn't cost anything. Why not do it? I know there's someone who's crankily grimacing right now. Listen this paying like, it isn't as a much of a free lunches, 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. One of the things and all pass it to Christophe to to work out with you is oftentimes tap Christoph on the shoulder to be the LCA Watchdog and just trying to make sure that what is happening or claim to be happening is actually happening the Bold environmental claims of various types of producers or companies are being checked. So Christoph, won't you dive into the wild world of lcas for us 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. Okay. So what what is carbon removal? And the way that I would Define it as 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 as a climate solution where it isn't without having the other side of the coin and just as utilisation needs CO2 to be a complete climate solution, So carbon cure is agnostic, on its CO2 Supply, what do you prioritize?
Our I should say, we as in our concrete producer Partners, we're at the, you know, these 200 plants and growing are prioritizing lowest cost and most reliable, especially source of CO2 and not CO2. Today is supplied from the emissions of Industries, like ammonia ethanol refineries And companies are in the business of capturing that CO2 from this BlueStacks 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 way, CO2, That's available today and it's widely available and easy
to get. So I entirely believe that carbon cure is a carbon rule solution but we focus on the second half of the of the coin. The utilization side, our storage side and our case its utilization because we create value from the CO2 or 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 Product that is consumed and say 30 days.
Then then re released back into the environment that needs to be part of the discussion here and naturally, of course, scale does as well. 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 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 as the cleanup crew. After the fact it's kind of like an it's funny because you have carbon care 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 part carbon cure client, and this is going to start pulling carbon back out of the atmosphere. Are you? Going to accept Nori's narrow definition in that sense to say here, a wonderful form of carbon sequestration but it's not
carbon removal. Well I hmm I hadn't looked at it that way before Kristoff. So I'd like to think about that as you're, you know, 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 it. Anything in that value chain from being carbon removal. 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 at on 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, Gee. It's a Wonderful carbon offset and the question is, is it a carbon removal?
Can it be because you know, in that calcination process, you're releasing the CO2 because that actually is your original Source. Super interesting point.
I suppose I've always looked at Carbon removal more, from a technical perspective, our Technology based perspective thinking more of the, you know, the atoms and the mechanical component of thinking, you know, can we physically remove CO2 from the air or from a stock and then be able to permanently draw that down into products and that would sort of the definition that I was going with on Urban removal.
I hadn't really thought about the fact that, you know, we had to look at this from weather concrete. The fact that the CO2 is being released from cement in the first place to create concrete and then and then you're applying that technology at that, then negates that Carbon removal definition in my mind, it goes back to the point that we need concrete to, for modern society to grow. And and it is the it is the product that would be essential.
I think I'd like to give us some more thought Christoph. I think I think is a really interesting point to take more about and sort of. So thanks for helping, expand my mind, but I don't think I'm really ready to close the book on this one yet. Sorry. I let slip the house. Of Hell upon you, sorry about that famous just pay an ambush. There's no Ambush here because we want to make it loud and clear.
We love what carbon care 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? 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. Out.
So good point. I was like, there is both a sequestration like, a mineralization, however, we want to call it element and an avoided element. So there are two a zooms applying here. I think that's worthwhile noting but, you know, outside of biological systems trees. What slaps like, what is an engineered solution for Carpenter Google? If we're using that, that definition, like it's, it's not
fueled, that's for sure. And like I can't think of any other A commodity products that we can be using CO2 and we're that that works, but I'd really like to continue the conversation, okay? I think this is a really interesting way of looking at at lcas and our world. We think about things like environmental product declarations and sort of traditional CA counting. And I'm really, really appreciate that. Yeah, I think it's very interesting conversation.
I'm sure there's more to say about it too. I'll leave it to you guys, too. Tin you that another time. But Rob one question I have about this is depending on how your sourcing, the CO2 that you're using, assuming it's coming out of like a flu stack or you're capturing 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 it? What is the Ship 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 are capture? Are you thinking about that?
Yeah. So our point is being agnostic. 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 stocks and that CO2 is then supplied. Applied 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 decarbonise that calcination reaction on three process changes. It does it but it is conducive to see you to capture. So there will always be that. Mmm And 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 I clearly has a lot of benefits when it becomes available online. And when that happens, I think that, you know, we could be in a different supply and demand type of a situation where maybe a lot of the other sources of CO2. We are starting to diminish and Supply going down. Is that the demand from
Solutions? Like carbon care will continue to rise and maybe the price of CO2 from large emitters will exceed director Contra Supply. And at that point, I think that that would be an ideal time for our concrete producers to be able to Source CO2 from DC. Yeah. What a role 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 Feel like you have a competitors and you're in good company.
Are you just out there on the frontier, in the fringes here? Making this happen on your lonesome, what's it like? Well, you should pay attention to things like carbon X prize. There's also a competition that just wrapped up called the CRA emission reduction, Alberta Grand carbon challenge. So these are multi-year. Multi-million dollar prize competitions, where they accelerate the best and brightest in 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. The same time, I would say that carbon cure is by far the most advanced and 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. Like 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, that's great. And if someone wanted to keep in touch with you, and what carbon care is doing, what's a good way for them to do so, Rob? 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 into 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 our policies or construction or even using the technology itself as 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 and links to all of those things are in the show notes. If you're out there listening and want to stay in touch Kristoff, anything burning inside of you, you want to say before we sign off, No, this is a really fun episode. I want to maybe give you a final question that I've been want 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? Now, let's just assume that your technology is now reducing half a billion. Tons of CO2 per year. What are the elements that has come true? Because that's a real. Reality. Okay, I love the question. 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 happen? Correct. I'll start off by saying, I don't think we're going to get there from a time frame.
That's relevant by just organic growth alone. So just the type of sales growth albeit relatively fast. As I don't, I don't think is adequate. I think some of the two key things that need to happen. 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 and accelerating this change.
And that's where I believe that the sort of carbon Finance our 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 past, 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 time scale that matters that's a great answer and it has the right notes of optimism and realism 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 there all the episodes now. So you guys need to start making more of them faster so that people like me and continue to be inspired by these these great
insights that you bring. 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, I was pretty well, it sounds like, yeah, I love it. Thank you very much. Yeah, thanks for being here, Rob. If you'd like to Please rate and review us on iTunes or a podcast Stitcher. I think pod Bean if you listen on. There is also doing reviews. Thank you so much for listening and thank you so much for
listening. If you like the show, please rate and review it in apple podcast 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 certainly appreciate your rating and review. You can keep up with Nori at nor e.com, where there is a newsletter that Is Nori .com/srobiyt. There's podcast there's a whole bunch else or you can send us an
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