337: Fired from the Department of Energy: Carbon Removal's DOGE Night of the Soul—w/ Grant Faber, Carbon-Based Consulting

When you take a major pay cut to work in government, you don't expect unceremoniously fired by the Department of Government Efficiency with a change in administration. But it happened to friend of the show, Grant Faber.

Grant Faber was the United States Department of Energy's Direct Air Capture Hubs Program Manager until he was let go as part of the recent firing of probationary federal employees.

In today's episode, Grant explains what he was working on, what it was like being at the DoE during this turbulent time of Trump 2 & DOGE, and what it means for carbon removal, the climate, and the United States moving forward.

Resources

Become a paid subscriber of Reversing Climate Change

Listen to The CDR Policy Scoop episode with Noah Deich

Grant's Substack

Grant's recent RCC episode on coproduction and additionality

Don't make me link to the ASMR deportation video

There are a bunch of episodes I've made with thoughtful conservatives. Poke around the catalog if you'd like. I'll add some more links later if I have the heart to do it.

Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget (I mistakenly say OEM in the show):

"We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected... When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so...We want to put them in trauma."