You're listening to the reversing climate change, podcast by the team at Nori. The carbon removal Marketplace. This is a show about the innovators and entrepreneurs developing solutions to climate change. Hello and welcome to the reversing climate change podcast with Nori. I'm Ross. Kenny and I'm one of the cofounders of nori and the creative editor there and we are a carbon removal Marketplace based in Seattle. Did. I already say that? Siobhan, did I say that twice?
No, this is The first time here, alerting our listeners, that's Siobhan Montoya, lavender from thanks a ton and Nori's mean crew a shiv hey everybody. All right, apologies to our wonderful guests sample to Kenan who's calling in with us from Finland today and he is the CEO of see fix and he's going to be talking to us today about first generation and second generation, direct are capture, which is a topic.
I want to sink my teeth into because I think I might Might be stuck in first gen and I might be stuck with all the preconceived notions I have about first-gen Dak and what it means and what it's going to look like. And so I'm excited to hear about what the future is going to look like, let's be forward facing here. Before we start that Samba as I want to poke at that because you people even like that, I imagine.
If you're a quote-unquote, first gen, doc supplier, you're probably like simply pejorative, right? It's framing them as the old way. The Old Guard, they're out of touch. They're doing technology is an appropriately scaled. So, is this even a model that you like using? Or I guess if your 2nd gen you probably do you like it? Well, you know, you know, was have to have some Edge, you know, to you. People to people, you know,
about on the, on the fences. But it's not about that and obviously the whole space and the whole industry. So young and is moving so fast that people are not not like ready for second generation at the generate. If there are genuine accommodate in a leapfrog, you you're going to be shaking your head off my lawn, you know. And we haven't really, really even you know, seeing what the first chain can do so. So, you know, but you know, I guess it's just a, it's a marketing term.
But but also, you know, it It's a real term in the sense that I think second generation is often when, you know you've come across, I mean, you've solved and come, you know, kind of gotten around some of the, you know, early stage and first generation problems and and yeah, I think we have, I think we have done in a lot of areas. So so I think it's Justified, you know, it's I think our listeners are pretty familiar with the term. Direct their capture but just
Briefly summarize. What does it mean to be a direct air capture method? What does that entail? Well dark are capture means that you are removing CO2 or capturing and from ambient air which is you know, like we know it's a kind of a Dye Loop dilute solution are or mixed mixture and and typically that is seen is just the removal component.
But I think You know, in the in the kind of, you know, second generation, we're going to see that, you know, you can actually integrate storage with with the direct Heir capture component. So that's one of the things that that sets us apart from first gen because it's actually comes with integrated storage. Okay. Is that he has a necessary for it to be second generations. And mostly about co-locating removal and storage. Is that the main differentiator
between 1st and 2nd gen Wu? No, no. I kind of touched it a little early, but the do now it's time. Yeah. Well, I guess no. Well dark are capture, you know, typically it's just produces a gas of CO2, you know. And then, you know, you have to a couple of, with some sort of a storage solution like, you know, car fix or 44.0 one. Or something like that. And and well, you know, here to, you know, it's kind of coupled
with the storage solution. But basically, I don't want to go like too deep into stew to the kind of stuff that is proprietary because, you know, we haven't filed by PR yet, but I can talk in a broad level and basically, you have a, you have a, you know, a process and, you know, it's what we do is similar to, you know, Capture six, and have carbon, and a lot of companies that build on chlor-alkali, you know, process
and splitting salt effectively. But this is not a, not an open cycle process in the sense that we are not constantly taking in new salt and, you know, splitting that.
And then, you know, let's say dump the alkaline component into the ocean or, or, you know, in the desert somewhere or and then the acid, you know, has to be neutralized somehow and or disposed of So so this is basically we are, you know, basically killing two birds with one stone and and the same process, you know, that is you know, used to capture the carbon dioxide from the air is used to dissolve magnesium out of rock,
you know? That is then combined, you know, in this in this process and and the product is is a see that but it's a crystalline magnesium carbonate. And the biggest difference about this is that the reaction is
instantaneous. So it happens, you know, at the plant immediately and it's you know, very easy to verify and record and also Trace Krista material plus, you know I think the business model is a little more flexible in the sense that we're not just because the plan is actually putting out a
physical product. So for a million tonne, plant per annum say for our, for the sake of argument, you put about out two million tons of magnesium carbonate, a year, which have half of the masses is carbon dioxide. So, so, you know, you have a kind of a more diverse Diversified business model, you're not just dependent on selling CDR to the, you know, to the quite a few buyers that are actually in the game at the moment.
Like that we all know like Shopify and Microsoft, and stripe, or Frontier and So let's do this. Wait, let me interrupt. Let's do a mental like a verbal whiteboard. So if I was, if I was going to be taught like what Doc is, what its history has been and where it's going. So like the dark, the first column on the left here of our verbal whiteboard would be director capture that the machines we've all seen, right? We've all seen pictures of these turbine like machines that are
sucking in air. We know they're going through some sort of than it's just touching on a sorbent and then it's being stored. I assume temporarily at Mozilla Facilities prior to a more permanent storage which would be injection underground or perhaps, it's being utilized. What's going into materials? So am I correct in thinking? That's kind of the DAC as we all know it like the original data is saying we're going to suck it out with these turbines.
We're going to store it and then we're going to inject it or use it. And so that deck and my mind is still just getting off the ground. Would you say that's? That's correct? Like we're seeing you know, obviously climb works. Is the OG in the industry and now we have carbon capture with our new project bison coming out. So is that all kind of the DAC as we know it? And then what would separate second generation deck?
Is it this coupling is it the the idea of storing on fight illustrate that a little bit for us.
Well yeah, all those things. I'm trying to hold them all in my head but the yeah, I guess, you know, like, I'm not going going to names or specific processes, but but let's say, when you talk about sorban, for example, in the storm in is a big, big thing of the whole equation because, you know, you know, you might have to make the sorbent, you know, synthetically, and it might take a lot of energy and might actually have a, let's say by available nitrogen in it, and if
you were to Deploy. Something like that, a ticket on the scale, then you would inevitably bleach a massive amount of nitrogen into the environment, for example, which is already a big problem because of eutrophication. And then, I mean, based or bins, for example, they are, you have to make them synthetically and they are one of the most energy intensive intensive chemicals out there today. So I I think, you know, alkaline and Earth alkali metals clearly.
Are, you know, an interesting option there, but at the same time, being what I like to call myself, a seasoned process engineer or, you know, having been involved there for a long time. I wouldn't typically want to have a process with. Let's see if I can avoid it, you know, to have too much material. Solid material handling, for example, because solid material handling is something that a is expensive requires a lot of investment takes a lot of hardware and it's prone to failure.
It's typically you know, if you look at a biomass plant, for example, then the Materials Handling is typically where you, where you At the hiccups and so so there are a lot of things you can do better. You know, I would like to say that this process that we're doing doesn't have a single moving part. I mean let alone the turbine or the propeller at the top top of the structure and and of course here, you know, you're talking about something like this.
You have two things, you have the core process and then you have the concept that you build around that metal core process and how you couple it, you know, with the environment. For example, and I think, you know, one of the challenges with first gen, they're here capture and you know, it's, you know, yeah, challenges is that it's consuming a lot of resources, it takes a lot of energy, electricity formal energy. It takes a lot of water and chemicals.
So and it doesn't is this strike against a that people always bring up those common argument against Afghans it Energy intensive and so in terms of scale, so like if that's like the kind of typical scale of energy consumption, what are you looking at for 2nd gen in terms of energy?
Come like just compare and doesn't have to be an exact you know wattage but in terms of scale, but we do some things you know, we recycle the energy internally in this process so you know like you know but but it still it does take a lot of energy. I would say takes depending on how much energy recycle internally.
Some the hydrogen that the the Electrolyzers put out, you would be looking at 14 to 22 hundred kilowatt hours per ton of CO2 removed, but that it does include the storage component. So, you know, you save a lot in the, you know, compressing and you know, pipelines and or you know ships or or cooling, you know, whatever. Whatever you do down the line or injection, you might have to inject it, you know, against the substantially high pressure, you know, much higher than the CO2
pressure itself. But what I wanted to say, you know, the other thing That sets apart and is bit. It's been kind of used as a club against our back is that it's kind of, you know, doesn't isn't really tangible or something that people can can see. And and, you know, it doesn't really offer anything to the local community. Let's say that if you build one of these massive plans and you're going to pretty much going to have them in tens of thousands of cities or Villages or the countryside.
So there should be something tangible and benefit that, you know, you know that the local population or the society gets from that I think you know that can have co-benefits and if you look at look at our process, for example, water is one thing
instead of using water. We actually condensing a lot of water because we control the relative humidity and temperature and the temperature differences between, you know, different flows and the are And so then instead of drawing up, we're actually condensing a lot of water, but the source of that water sea water, and we're vibrating some of that and then condensing it back. So there's a small River coming
out of that plant. And actually, you know again if you look at the million tonnes per annum plan, that would be about 1,600 tons or cubic meters of water every hour coming out of that plant. So it's actually it's a small stream that you can grow in a boat you know, basically It's and that would be saltwater desal and eyes. And then leaving the facility in a stream of fresh water. That could then be available for use. Yeah, yeah, it's distilled water.
That is being evaporated from seawater and then condensed in the contactor. You know, once again, this is a direct are capture plan. So it does have a contactor where you bring the store but into contact with the air, but they are that reaches. The contactor is very humid and the contactor is cooled as ice cold. So, all that humidity condenses into the in In the in the contactor and you're actually able to harvest that as as you know, for for drinking or irrigation and the other thing,
you know what I'm talking about. The concept that we're building around the actual technology is, you know, obviously solar solar is the kind of most scalable form of energy and kind of large-scale plans are based on solar or the initially, you can do it anywhere where you have low-carbon electricity and there's not a shortage of it. Like in Finland, right?
Today we have - we priced energy which is nice and it's been negatively price for a couple of days now, so very nice but even during daytime hours, it's negatively priced. Yeah, and I last few days, it has been so, which is, you know, nice because I paid a thousand, you know, per kilowatt hour or something like that per megawatt-hour, last last winter and then last spring, a year ago, it was just just crazy, you
know? So so yeah, what I was going to say is that the other thing is this magnesium Innate. So, if you're in the desert, let's say somewhere and these plans will be built in the desert. So, there's not a lot of market nearby necessarily big cities, where you want to haul this kind of cheap ball product. So, amazing carbonate is actually, you know, when you take it out is like Little Rock's and you can, you can make pellets out of it, for example, or you clink it for us.
I heard on on LinkedIn, if you can, there are listeners can hear. Yeah, it doesn't make sure have a satisfying sound. It does have this kind of a glass-like sound or, or surround sound like a surround know. My, my laptop is all covered with the carbonate here. I don't hear anything, so you just got a dirty for no reason. Yeah. Sorry I'll follow. I'll record it for, you know, how did you post? Yeah, but I'm only assuming singing Bowl here for us.
Yeah, I'm actually, yeah, it's once it's once, it's like, really crystallized. It's it is like, you know, kind of a solid structure and And, you know, you that's when it starts to have the sound like that. It's interesting. Talk to me about building with it, not to get ahead. But so we have. We're talking about co-benefits 2nd gen DAC. We have potential of listen up Californian, where water is scarce and salt water is abundant.
We have the potential of you know, having this stream of fresh water coming out of the plant, you mentioned on your website. That this is something that you can build with. This is a material that could be used as a building additive. Yeah, you can press it into bricks. As it is and it doesn't mean a binder and it has a hardness that's comparable to Limestone.
So, on a mass scale, is 324. So it's limestone is a, you know, if you visit European cities then and most of the old cities are built out of limestone is a very good
material. I mean it's easy to carve and and cut em, you know, sighs, but this is different, you know, you have the same hardness, it's bright white, you know, so if you build something out of that in a high, you know, in the desert area, then you know, it's kind of, you know, No good firmly because it reflects a lot of solar energy back and yeah you can use it in a lot of ways you can use to build houses or roads and or coral reefs. You know, you don't just want to
dump it in the ocean. You want to make bricks out of it and then then dump a pile of bricks on which the corals can can, you know, start building up. So, but it's a question of whether there's a market or not and it's a cheap bulk product. And I have to go back a little bit because I was talking about the more diverse business model, you know? Oh, that we have and and you know instead of selling Justice, Just the cork or the CO2 removal certificate to the software companies and internet.
You know, companies And others we wouldn't. So, we're actually, it is more diverse. You can actually sell it as carbon - like I used to be in biochar at the car, both X. And you know, when we were selling biochar, typically, you would sell the cork separately from the physical product and, and then you would tell the buyer of the carbon that they cannot make any carbon negativity claims or, you know, that this is, you know, reduces using double counting. Yeah, exactly.
So but we Some clients that wanted to, you know, do kind of by the, by the carbon negative product. So that we would stay up all the certificates into the backs. You know, figuratively speaking and magnesium carbonate is similar to that sort of thing. It doesn't, you know, quite how is it? It's not as intense as yhr, you know, with free. You know, kg per kg of CO2 equivalent. I mean 1 kg biochar, had
frequent kg CO2 equivalent. So when using carbonate only has about fifty three percent CO2 but it's - and you know, we don't need to sell the cork. We can just sell it as a carbon - filler or a carbon - you know, construction material fillers are used in a lot of different Industrial Products and limestone is typically, you know, and silica and and carbon black and things like that are, you know, typically filters of.
So, the point is that, you know, companies are able to make carbon negative or carbon neutral product, you know, once they kind of Recycle as much as possible and all their energy is renewable, but they're still a little bit of carbon footprint left. The only thing you can do is you can use a carbon negative component, to kind of, you know, offset the carbon footprint and we can we can do that.
So it's not just the CDR Market, it's also the industrial product market and the kind of filler use. So it's more diver questions about Raza. Looks like you want to get one in. Mostly just want to tell you to stay in your lane if doc starts having co-benefits what's going to happen to everyone else, man? Can you just can you just back off and just tap what I was gonna say? I was gonna say, how could you make Dak Unstoppable. Give it co-benefits.
Yeah. No it has to be and for people to buy into it and you know, you know, not have the not in my backyard attitude, then it's got to have, you know, something good and and you know, this concept, you know, it's solar powered. Or so around the plant which is by the Sea on the desert. You're going to have a big array of solar panels, probably like 500 hectares of them, you know, several hundreds of Acres Thousand Acres, at least, at
least. So you're going to actually going to be able to grow, grow food, and stuff under under the panel's because it just provides a little bit of shade. These are sodium tellarite panels. So basically thin film and most of the light gets through. So instead of you know making the land, you know, useless you actually You know, make a narrable in a way and then, you know, the last thing is that, you know, you're going to build these plants carbon- from from scratch.
So once again, you know, by using carbon - materials like biochar, and if we go into the dark side you know the contactor once again, you know, when you when you moving massive amounts of are you want to have passive, you know, systems or or you know low velocities and laminar laminar flows which Is that, you
know, there's no turbulence. So, so in effect, you know, you want to have an easy breathing system or like, it's like sucking when you trying to breathe through a straw, you know, you're changing the same amount of air but you're doing a lot of work because you know, there's a small opening so you have to make all the passages big so that you know, the flow Logan, you know, Floyd had easily and and that means that they're going to be big, you know, that's the downside of it.
So these structures are going to be huge and just to put it into perspective, a one Megaton plant is going to have a diameter of 630 meters and the circumference of two kilometers. And you know the contactor, you know, kind of frontal area where the air flows into the contactor. The the dimensions are ready to Kilometers by 110 meters.
So it's a massive structure and it, you know, you're going to have plates on which your contact solution your assortment is flowing and then the air is Flowing between those plates and you're hoping that is going to react with the Goodyear sorban. So you know, these are Mega structures and it means that there's going to be about 400,000 tons of material recycled plastic and biochar needed, you know, to make those
contactor plates. But the good thing is that you're already carbon - when you start and you can probably sell Some some, you know, certificates already when you're when you're building it. So so you know once again you got it all figured out, I thought the future of director
capture was going to be modular. This is the future that somehow I had internalized at some point and the fact that there's going to be even more colossal structures built then previously is potentially unexpected to listeners, as well as to myself. Is that, is that still on the table or just the economy of scale? Work way better than the modular approach approach. I know there's intersections between these two paradigms, but I think, you know what I'm getting at. Yeah.
I think it's going to be modular, but it's still going to be huge. Yeah, there you go. You didn't lots of other words? Yeah. I mean, you know, here to I'm thinking about what is the kind of trajectory or how do we go from you know, being in a lab making a few handfuls of that product, you know, to making, you know, two million tons of it a year And, and it goes up, you
know, in steps. First, you doing something that does a kilogram an hour, then it's a ton per day and then probably looking at 2,000 tons a year and then you go to module, which might be like 10,000 tons a year and then you prove out the module and then if that module is already big enough and, you know, your your kind of reaping, some of the economies of scale with that, then you know, you can just stack them or or you know, Yeah. Stack them until Richard this
service sound? You know when you when you frame it that way kind of in this year by year process, it sounds achievable. But you know when you describe this massive facility we're going to have solar panels and crops growing under them and flow outflows of fresh water. It sounds very utopian. But what are what are the big hurdles you're already thinking? They're going to come up against is it just policy-based? Is it just acceptance and
understanding of the process? Is what are the big hurdles? Well, I try to work around all the hurdles like, you know, as far as possible. And you know, one of them getting around is like, you know, the storage component.
And, you know, or let's say that if you have a hydrochloric acid disposal problem, then what the hurdles just like, okay, well, Like you're talking about disposing, waste and waste, sounds bad to people, and that that normally gets them up on the barricades and, you know, so, it's better if you can make a product of some sort and nobody has anything about against making products, especially if they're carbon - and, you know, just cleanable and all that.
So sorry, I was lost my train of thought there. It's okay. So you're talking about building around the hurdles and making. Yeah, it's something that people do want it sounds so geographically like there's going to be a big bottle. A and what do you think would be? I mean so I used to work in major utility developments for Caltrans for PG&E and a lot of these, you know facilities we build take a lot of land and I was always out there doing the environmental component, right?
And so If you want to build a new transmission line or whatnot, you're taking up new space and on the one hand you're like, oh this is in the Southern California desert, there's nothing there. Obviously we know that not to be entirely the case that there's there's quite a bit there. And so what what would the impact be a doing this? Truly at scale? Are there are there enough sufficient sighting locations within desert?
Ecosystems that also are I assume they have to be somewhat adjacent to the actual C so that they can have not too far of transmission of salt water. Or am I incorrect in assuming that? Well, I'm probably in most cases, you do have rock salt formations and that sort of thing, salt domes, we were to. So, you could be tapping into those. But then again, if you want to do ocean alkalinity and has been done.
Yeah, if you'd have to be by the Sea, you know, one, wait a minute, you be doing DAC and you'd have apples of freshwater and you be doing ocean, alkalinity enhancement. No, I mean, sorry. I just if you ask that, you know, wouldn't wouldn't want if they used to use solve the need to proximity. Ocean. But we don't need proximity to those who because of the salt because we don't because it's a closed loop. So we're using the same salt over and over again.
We're breaking it down and then the, you know, starting all over again. But but the and yeah, if you're in the desert and your solar powered, then you need to be by the Sea because of the cooling and and the fresh water, you know, the water management or the or the water balance. But if you're in a cooler climate then, then basically what you really need is a cooling source. And you need to be able to create a large enough temperature difference in your system, so that you actually get
condensation. So, so and it doesn't always have to be a water producing system. We could be as long as it doesn't dry up, but but, you know, making one of these plants acceptable.
You know, you kind of come up got to have the local social benefits or the benefits for the local Uncle people and, and yeah, I think, you know, it sounds utopian, but I prefer utopian or dystopian and You know, I think I just see a lot of things, you know, come together and we just have to put the first one together, so I think people will be inspired and they want to replicate that at going to scale.
You know, I think it's easier. You know, in this case you only need 1,000 plants, you know that are 630 meters in diameter, plus the solar arrays, you know, around that. So it's not, you know, space or land that is is constricting the thing. I think it's more You know, when you have more project like with biochar, you would have to build a hundred thousand plants, probably to reach the Giga, ton
capacity. So how are you going to finance all the bows and the kind of time and energy that goes into those projects just developing those projects has is enormous. So I think million tons in, you know, ten years down the line is going to be your module and then then, you know, some, some places you might see, you know, several million tons in a plant. If you have a good location, And there's plenty of coastal deserts in the world and where the land is cheap.
There's very little people. If there are people, then they are kind of stricken by drought and climate change and they need, you know, a break basically have. So, so this, you know, plan could offer one. It seems like we've talked about this in previous show, but it seems like the Arabian Peninsula. Probably a prime candidate for something like this. There's water, they're going to lose out on oil and gas pretty
soon or at some point they will. This might be one of those replacement industries that could could be quite beneficial maybe turn someone who might otherwise dig their heels into an ally of the future of carbon removal. Yeah. There's like you know, in South America that's Atacama and then you have been immediately, maybe me being Coastal desert, you have, you know, all the Algeria
and Morocco, ziz, really dry. And the Mediterranean is really dry all over and Australia, India and Arabian. Peninsula - color is, you know, Norma solar potential, and you've seen some, we've seen some really cheap solar power come from that region. You know, it's like, Like some of the contracts are point nine cents per kilowatt hour and 44 news, new large-scale solar. Have you been following the news
about Fusion? That's come out in the last month or so I've been keeping an active while infusion for for 20 years and I'm trying all the time though. Well, yeah, you know, I'd love it, you know, just bring it and, you know, we'll put it to use and I doubt it's going to be cheap initially, you know, but But yeah, I welcome it. You know I love to see fusion and I would do Fusion are being
infusion myself. If I, you know, wasn't doing this how would Fusion change the location of attack 2.0 or what it impacted at all? Well, it just means that you don't, you're not kind of tied to a high solar potential areas so you could basically build it anywhere in the cooler or darker climate like you know, in the nordics. and, Print, just curiously. I'm somebody who hasn't been following the fusion discussion. What's the footprint?
Fusion, power plants? Yeah, I think they're comparable to deficient plants at this point. I mean, the but yeah, I have, I know, of a few different, you know, new Fusion processes, but but you know, I'm not going to be able to comment on on, you know what. But yeah, I think one of the Arguments for nuclear is that, you know, it's takes it has a small footprint.
We're going to do a shot on this at some point it should have there's just too much stuff happening and I seen the I'm already seeing the gears turning both inside at nor and I seen it all swear to of linking up. You know, high energy intensity carbon removal that is currently not LCA worthy. But if it's abundant and cheap clean energy like the fusion and maybe that changes the equation on some of these things, may be a learning curve it and we just use it all.
All up doing silly things. That's also possible. Yeah, no. I've been playing with those thoughts, for a long time, than what if we had, you know, abundant cheap clean energy, you know, that, you wouldn't have to feel bad about using. And you could just, you know, it wouldn't be a limitation, you know, that he'll I think someone who's at the top of their field like this, having them on. And then ask them the equivalent of like being Stoned on your freshman dorm couch. Be like what?
If abundant energy Costner Thing, we could save the world. Like I love that guy. /. Hate it. But it's apparently, what I did she wanna know is there's nothing wrong with, you know, speculating and playing playing with thoughts, you know, sometimes, you know, you know, you might see things. No, I agree.
I think it's good to kind of have your brain into a rubber band that goes out into that expansive potential reality as long as you know coming back at like okay well now that I that I Played with that idea, what's the reality of it, you know? But I do think that, you know, in general in climate Solutions and carbon mobile, specifically, I like the idea of playing with
what's possible. I think, you know, Tito Jankowski of are minors, talks about that a lot about, like, just imagine what could be possible and I think that is a positive exercise. Just just playing in general, I
think it'd be kind of help. Maybe I'm this is self-aggrandizing cuz we like play a lot of annoying me lab and we play, we bring Murmuring. We bring kind of some Delight into the into the industry and so maybe it's the self-aggrandizing, but I do think there's a role for bringing in kind of this imagining what it could be and and poking fun at ourselves. So they can we poke fun at ourselves, we can sometimes find the true holes and in our ideas.
You know, I think Engineers typically they are kind of shy, you know, when it comes to being very creative or, you know, imagining things, they don't, you know, typically then, The, you know, imagination. You know, people, they, you know, hard math and art physics and, you know, that sort of stuff. And I, you know, personally, I think of myself more as a, well, kind of an artist.
I do play the guitar but but, you know, not so much an engineer because I really need to be inspired and I need to be in the right kind of mood and and mode, you know, to be able to do something and give my give my best. And I have a lot of engineering friends that, you know, they just crunch, you know, crunch away. And, you know, there's Like, they can go from one task to the next one. And would, you know, one minute orientation period in between, and I'm like, you know, well
it's like, could you be farther? My disposition? Probably not. I think we've talked about this on the podcast. There was I often like going into brainstorming meetings or pitch meetings but the worst idea possible and being the person to throw out the crappiest idea because then that loosens up other people to throw out the like half-baked idea or quarter baked idea and oftentimes the best stuff comes out at someone who's like Like this is terrible, but what about this?
And you're like that. Plus this boom, we just made something that was great out of nothing because people felt comfortable sharing an idea that was not really that polished. So, yeah, I think creativity can do a lot but then again, I'm also biased because I want job security but it's true, I think. Absolutely. And you know, I mean, there's that there's a risk of, you know, getting you know, label as the village, not her, you know, more or less.
But I, you know I don't shown that. at, you know, I'm always, you know, if there's a, you know, I like to play with thoughts, you know, and it's, you know, easy to measure yourself and your friends, you know, go down these imaginary imaginary paths, you have anything like that, right now, something that is really not ready for prime time, but it's something that you're thinking a lot about Carbon removal related or you know, only need to put that parameter on it.
Well, you just so what do you? What do you want to share you clearly have something ready. My bees did really well. Last winter and the honey honey Harvest is looking for a good, and I'm going to get my cows back in a little bit. They've been away for the winter because I was in California for months, and so it's been, you know, a few months away from them now and I love Of them dearly. So it's going to be nice to get them back here and you're a farmer to on you, do all these things.
And then you also Farm. Well, farming is a source of creativity and kind of recreation and, you know, so it's a kind of a, you know, you got to have a Physical exercise and you got to have, you know you know I think I do shooting to I'm not a gun enthusiast, but I do it for a reason because I get kind of a feeling of success and achievement, you know, because in my line of work, sometimes you have to work with 10 to 20 years before you actually get anywhere.
And you know, look at me, carbon will is the thing now but it wasn't a thing 20 years ago. And so you know sometimes you know, when you when you heat a steel Target here a nice clean back and my brain is kind of wire. No, because I used to play, you know, I was in the 80s and within a lot of video games, so it caused my brain to be wired so that I need that, you know, fairly rapid feedback. And that gives me I figured out why does this feel so good.
And you know, because it's like playing playing a game instant feedback and isn't predication. So farming to, you know, you get you get to see things and you kind of connect to the rhythm of the nature and and you know, it's nice and then you get feelings of success and you kind of connected, and it's also good for kind of, you know, Quieting down cooling off a little bit, sometimes too. Is that how you got into bio charted? The farming go to bio charted biochar. Lead you to farming.
Tell us a little bit about your backstory and how you went from somewhere, there's farming in there but then there was the success with Carlo effects and then why you chose to quit biochar basically and pivot into death A lot of questions I was in, wasn't the first time I got involved with charcoal was in 1996 or even a few years before. That's when I built. We were the lot one of the largest producers of charcoal in Finland that year when I was in high school in 1990. 1996.
Yeah, I'm 1998. I joined a join the Army so I was out of that for for some time, but then I came back and I started working on gasification well from from, you know, better part of 2000 from 2001 until 2004. Yeah. Even on from 99 to 2009 more or less, and then I got into pyrolysis, and we came up with the idea of Bio coal which is kind of an established terms a day, but it was our trademark. Back then.
And you know, the idea was that, you know, you take biomass and you convert it into kind of a drop-in fuel for coal-fired power plants and, you know, that way, you know, allow to reduce emissions but that was too windy and there was the financial
crisis. And, you know, it was heavily kind of involved with all these energy schemes which, you know, you don't really want to be, you want to be an arm's length from, you know, if you want to, you know, build something and so We already knew how to build make biochar then and we had the same machine. We used a carp effects, we build in 2009 and we ever since the fall process, like what are we going to do with biochar? So that we could make money or
have a business around? It was the business model going to look like And in 2015 2016 we you know I had some ideas that were refined and I saw a few openings like growing media, you know, we're going to go we're going to go after pearlite. And so then we took the old machine and and you know, break it up again and it kind of you know refurbished it a little bit and then we started carbon facts and that was 2016 and we did
pretty good. You know, we got the we did the, you know, first mythology for biochar with Buddha and We brought in a lot of, you know, biochar companies to put on time and, you know, we, we also the market leaders in Sweden. Pretty much in Europe in biochar and for a long time we let the the CDR a great job or LED or kind of you know we're in the in the top three or top five still four thousand times you know delivered CDR. You know today you do got sick
of success there. Well no actually if you know It's a tragic story. I didn't leave voluntarily. I will my founding partner of threw me out because we had he now owned like half of the company. I was down to 27 or something like that, and it's a long
story. I was going to bring in a couple of climate investors, you know, in of 21 but but there was, you know, a late-night ideal and Ultimately those guys were out and if you had to go to other guys were in, and by months, six months down the line, I'm, they're asking me why I'm not stealing any machines. I'm like, you know, why are you asking me why we're not selling machines?
We're not supposed to sell the machines where we're developing CDR projects and, you know, that is the way to scale, but I Char and pyrolysis and CDR in particular, and but they had not bought into that plan. You know, that we had, you know,
created with with the investors that I wanted to have. and I'm basically, you know, it just went downhill from there, you know, there was all kinds of and and in the end in the end of last summer, we had a terrible trouble meeting, you know, probably the, you know, we didn't really, you know, these guys were, you know, I didn't really get to know them, it came through the, the other guy, but the in the end, you know, they wanted to go all into Hardware business, they fought the now is
the time to sell hardware and they thought that since we had this, you know, Russian offensive into your Crane and the energy crisis, you know, it was, it was really like, you know, big, you know, last last summer. So they thought the nobody's gonna be interesting to see the, ER, because we've got describes the novel like, well, you know, I don't think so, you know, and and then they wanted to go
all-in into a huge project. You know, that was the, we've been trying to make happen for, for 23 years, and but we didn't really find a way to make it work for everybody and the risk would have been on us. And it would have been kind of open book Cost Plus 10% and all the risk on us. I saw what my role would have been, you know, for the next 2-3 years, you know, and, and I couldn't go down that road.
So in the end, you know, they they fired me and that was in the end of beginning of August. So it's 10 months almost no. And they really, you know, didn't think that we were going anywhere and they didn't think that, you know, that is what we should have been doing. And I've seen a lot of Of you know, equipment business. And I've seen a lot of projects and I've still kind of very, very adamant that the right way to go is to develop a few projects of your own, you know.
Maybe then 34 years down the line, even to free, you could, you could sell them to third parties to, but it's good to have a couple of, you know, plans of her own and solid reference base before, you know, you possibly run into a difficult client or difficult project.
And the assails projects are often difficult because the clients often you know they don't use the feedstock that they tell you that they're going to use and then when it doesn't work they're going to blame you on and then you don't get the money and then, you know, end up, you know, going back and forth and trying to fix something. The problem that is not yours. And, you know, kind of, you know, burn myself out, you know, in that kind of business, a long
time ago. So so my body tells me, you know, don't go don't go, there isn't, is it a big bottle necks for biochar, still there? Is not a large-scale manufacturer of Kilns or other devices, right? I've heard people say this. I don't know to what degree, it's true. But that is a bottleneck right at the moment. Yeah, yeah. Some of the equipment suppliers are are, you know, in short supply. I mean they can make enough with those machines and there's a long lonely time.
Probably could be two years with some, some companies me, whatever though, if you weren't enjoying your work or the relationships want, right? Or she's not. Vertical, you're interested in serving their, I think you're probably better off. Just moving on, at finding something that you are passionate about and whenever whenever you sell what you're working on now and become
fabulously wealthy. And then you move on diffusion and then you solve that and then what's next for you, sampo seems like the world is your oyster right now. Got our. We just we just building him. We've never been so complimentary show ever. I also just appreciate I appreciate your candor because I feel like I've been. I feel like with any, you know,
here we are. On a podcast, I appreciate your candor because I think within CDR and climate in general, we don't talk enough enough about the conflicts that can arise within the startup ecosystem. And I think it is a very supportive sector like much more than other startups. That our Founders, there's a lot of support, but at the same time, you know, I'm part of a various different groups.
Are we meet weekly to talk Founders and and the struggles in the conflicts that arise and the people want to go in different directions and I just think we don't acknowledge that enough. Their community. And so it's great to just hear you speak frankly about your challenges and how you're recovering from them. Yeah, I've had to take a little breather after that because obviously, you know, it was a, it was a huge.
I put everything, you know, pretty much on the line and six years and a lot of my kids grew up in that time. And also, you know, you know, it took Financial sacrifices to, you know, initially. So so, you know, but but yeah, you know, it's an old rule of thumb, you know, you gotta, you know, do what you, you know, like and you know, What would,
you know what you're good at? And you know, if you know, people don't appreciate your talent, then you take your towel elsewhere and, you know, sell it to sell to somebody else or, you know, make her own fortune. And, well, that's what I'm pretty much been doing. I've been an entrepreneur, all my life and, you know, I have to work early to tend to your bees and your cows. I feel like that would be the calming, the calming outlet for her high stress, climate Tech
work. I'm also, you know, devoted Yogi and I do meditate too. Hours a day and I'm a vegan. You can have been on a vegetarian diet diet since 1998 and I'm gonna call you out then for your kill two birds with one stone comment because I learned from my I'm a lifelong vegetarian and my mother would always say no no Siobhan. You can't, you feed two birds with one stone which was to be the cheesiest most deplorable turn of phrase, you know,
defying animal cruelty. But But I remember it to this day so when everyone, someone says that I had my head, I think the two birds with one stone. Yeah, I normally don't use violent metaphors or, you know, things like that but it's, you know. Just yeah. What I had, you know, at the moment it up. Oh God, I'm sorry. No, no. I was just, I was just, I was just trying to figure out if it was from the King James Bible, or from Shakespeare, that's
always the game. When there's a weird old idiom, I'm like, which of these two is it from? It's one of the two. Yeah, Shakespeare is pretty much, you know, everywhere. And I was surprised myself. Once again, if you, if you read the King James, like the gospels, and you read a hamlet, you're like, cool. This is like 75 of the most commonly used idioms that are still in use. Yes. All Danced. He had to, you know, he was good with the word and good with the with the pain.
No doubt, okay. An honor, this is, this is outside of the, the meaning of this podcast, but I'm doing it now. Yeah. And you know, I'm kind of collector of phrases, you know, my friends were, you know, coming up after me sometime some point because I was just, you know, using a metaphor, you know, after a metaphor or a phrase after a phrase and it gets irritating after after a little while, you know because Your Justina every time you open your mouth. There's this. Speaking a metaphor?
Yeah, yeah. Well, do you? I'm not while he's looking for this. How do you fit two hours a day of meditation?
And I ask that, is that CD are adjacent because should we all be doing two hours of meditation as we build our city, our Solutions, well, my girl tells me that businessmen should do for you hours of meditation a day because you know, the mind is racing and you should do a one hour and at midday or, you know, early afternoon as well just to, you know, keep your kid to, you know, keep the reins But you do it early in the morning
and do it late in the evening. And you know, the boot has said that you know the best time to practice your mind is between 4 and 7 in the morning. So you know ideally do it then or then around 12:00 midnight is also good unless if you need to be in bed, you can do it earlier. No, I'm not kidding. When I said I was like proud when I got up to 15 minutes so you're really putting me to
shame here. No, I'm not shaving anybody, you know the thing is that I was I had a hard time you sitting five minutes initially and I might was breaking sweat, you know, just as soon as the thought of sitting down or doing, you know, as asanas or anything like that, you know, it just, you know, immediately I started sweating and it, I don't know how it created that kind of reaction in my in my body but you know, first you do five minutes, you do 10 minutes and You little by
little you grow into it and after 20 years, you can't eat or sleep if you don't do meditation. So quite often you know if I'm getting the morning it's because I made it hate it too long. So you know it's it's just hard to part to let go. Sometimes I was mostly just going to ask are you with all of your other ridiculous experiences here and achievements? Are you also see male hyah Well, I want the best shot shooter in
my regiment. I still have a like a golden golden medal but that's that's nothing. I mean finish are typically pretty good, pretty handy with rifles and most of the males have, you know, gone to the military when served serve some time and everybody knows how to handle a little guys. But I actually, I'm competitive shooter. I do cowboy action shooting. So it's kind of a I've got a are so many layers. I feel like we're peeling back the mineralized carbon layers
and finding out more. You can put on Rose person. Siobhan, but he's like the most celebrated sniper of all time but in the winter war against the Soviets, during World War Two, it was like I'm just looking at Wikipedia is like 500. Yeah. That was a commercial firm count but, you know, the unconfirmed God could be double, you know. Yeah. And yeah, here. Always said that. Well, I just did the job today at that was given to me as good
as I could. And, you know, You know, it's I mean, matter of fact, Nordic nature. I have to show you this. I've got a little dent in my finger, because I did so much shotgunning last Sunday and we
shooting at a barrel. And the, the task was to kind of flip it over, you know, with the shotgun so that you shoot it once, it kind of go a little bit and then you have to shoot it again quickly, so that it would talk over and I had to do a lot of times, but then he was a kind of kind of a stage You know, me and them of action. I'm Kai but cowboy action right there. Yeah, yeah. And I have two cows and I can actually call myself a cowboy, a true Cowboy, but I don't have my 10-gallon.
Cowboy hat, you know, just, you know, within reach house and I was too bad like friends with Julio Friedman, the Wrangler. Yeah. He's got a stage Charisma, he knows what talking about to have to respect that. He's only person I know who has like a dedicated carbon removal Persona in that kind of way I love you, too. I am the carbon Wrangler and that's that is who I am. And what, what is this? You're showing, you see you going down. Oh, it's being Wrangler.
Speak. Yeah, that's what I'm on the phone. That's what you can see. This is, you know, sadly it is not from Shakespeare or King James or the King James. That's, that's always my gristick don't have to guess. I'm just, like - just as pretty good, you know, take the bull by the horn and that's the You'll
never be a bull. I guess I was trying to make, make it sound Shakespearean. All I came up with hostile, wrangled nine carbon, but I was like just waiting for the next car movable mean and you know, see we got some good ones. Have to make one for will have to make one for this show. I had some ideas that led in my brain during this, so I'll make some and tag, you ready? One on like, the co-benefits of DAC. Back and make fun of that.
Yeah, me get, you know, paddling my canoe down the proverbial stream coming out of my dad planned, and, you know, going down to the to the Village, you know, to the farm. Good budgets, do you think we're working with over here? How do you think we do? We take a crappy image. That's already been used and we stick them sick text on it. Well, that's that works. Keep doing it. I love it. Yeah, I laugh out loud. Sometimes, you know, when I see the car removal means something
like every. And I am glad because sometimes you get noticed too that are little people will say like well these are really quite Niche to carbon removal me. They're like, well yeah, there's plenty of more, generic environmental memes Pages out there. They don't need more of those, but carbon removal as a
community, we need those. Well, I need those and, you know, it's just like sometimes, you know, I think, you know, I really like when you when you live and breathe, you know that that you know trade then, you know, a lot of those things are. So so real to you and and you know sometimes it just really hits hits. You know this choir and like I said, I laugh out loud sometimes and I applaud you.
Thank you and keep you in mind. You're like are your Lids like a customer Discovery call all the second and now we need the sudden here figure out, okay, this effect, I'm glad to be able to be complementary, you know, Thank you happy with me and it's making you laugh. I think that's an important thing to do. Well yeah rap, yeah we good. That's wrap it up. I think we're good. I think we went all the way from Daft to farming to cowboy shooting. So Julio makes an appearance.
That's always fun. Yeah, yeah, I'll take note, I'll challenge Julio you know to a couple of shooting match anytime I think that's beyond the remit of his Persona, I don't know that there's a lot of target shooting. Obscure target shooting competitions in his daily but no, but that's how we dress that's how we dress when we go to the, you know, cowboy action, you know, I should hope so I should hope. So thank you so much for
listening. If you could please subscribe and give us a great rating and review on Apple podcast or a rating on Spotify that be much appreciated. It helps us get our content out to more people. You can sign up for our newsletter at nor e.com. Follow us on social media. We will catch you next time.