June 9, 2025 • 39 mins
As the world confronts the urgent challenge of removing billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, breakthrough innovation is essential to scale solutions fast enough to meet global climate goals. On this episode of Earth911's Sustainability in Your Ear, discover the groundbreaking results of the $100 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, a four-year competition among 1,300 teams from 88 countries that represents one of the most ambitious efforts to catalyze carbon removal innovation. We're joined by Nikki Batchelor, Executive Director of XPRIZE Carbon Removal, and Michael Leitch, Senior Technical Lead for the competition, to discuss what may be one of the most consequential moments in carbon removal innovation to date. They discuss how the competition's $100 million scope and multi-year timeline attracted breakthrough solutions and outline plans for continued engagement with the winning teams as they scale their innovations.[
Kenya-based Mati Carbon claimed the $50 million grand prize with an enhanced rock weathering approach that spreads finely ground volcanic rock on farmland, simultaneously capturing atmospheric carbon while improving soil health for local farmers. Mati Carbon's victory wasn't just about technical innovation; it demonstrated a cost-effective approach that delivers multiple benefits in Kenya and India's smallholder farming communities. Three runners-up—NetZero, Vaulted Deep, and UNDO—each received $5 million for their distinct approaches, which spanned biochar production, underground carbon storage, and large-scale mineral spreading.
In 2024 alone, humans released 41.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, adding to approximately 1.5 trillion tons emitted since the Industrial Revolution. Current carbon removal projects operate at a kiloton scale and must rapidly expand to millions of tons annually. The goal isn't merely offsetting new emissions—it's achieving net-negative emissions to reverse the climate damage already done, albeit slowly. Learn more about the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition and other grand challenges at xprize.org. Watch the documentary series about the competition and winners on the XPRIZE Carbon Removal YouTube channel.
Kenya-based Mati Carbon claimed the $50 million grand prize with an enhanced rock weathering approach that spreads finely ground volcanic rock on farmland, simultaneously capturing atmospheric carbon while improving soil health for local farmers. Mati Carbon's victory wasn't just about technical innovation; it demonstrated a cost-effective approach that delivers multiple benefits in Kenya and India's smallholder farming communities. Three runners-up—NetZero, Vaulted Deep, and UNDO—each received $5 million for their distinct approaches, which spanned biochar production, underground carbon storage, and large-scale mineral spreading.
In 2024 alone, humans released 41.6 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere, adding to approximately 1.5 trillion tons emitted since the Industrial Revolution. Current carbon removal projects operate at a kiloton scale and must rapidly expand to millions of tons annually. The goal isn't merely offsetting new emissions—it's achieving net-negative emissions to reverse the climate damage already done, albeit slowly. Learn more about the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition and other grand challenges at xprize.org. Watch the documentary series about the competition and winners on the XPRIZE Carbon Removal YouTube channel.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are in this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable carbon neutral society. I'm your host Mitt Tracliffe.
Thank you for joining the conversation. Today, we're going to
wrap up a story we've been covering for several years.
(00:29):
As the world confronts the urgent challenge of removing billions
of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, breakthrough innovations
will be essential to scale solutions fast enough to meet
our global climate goals. One of the most ambitious efforts
to catalyze this innovation is the Xprize Carbon Removal Competition,
a one hundred million dollar global challenge funded by the
(00:51):
Musk Foundation. And we've been following the Carbon Removal Xprize
as that more than thirteen hundred teams from eighty eight
countries competed to deliver a scalable, verifiable carbon removal solution
from engineer technologies to nature based approaches. And today we're
joined brother, We're rejoined by Nicky Bachelor, who's executive director
(01:12):
of the X Prize Carbon removal project and Michael Leach,
senior technical lead for the competition. They've been with us before,
as I said, to share updates as the competition unfolded,
and now they're back to reflect on what may be
one of the most consequential moments in carbon removal innovation
to date. The announcement of the grand prize winner and
runners up and Matty Carbon took home fifty million dollars
(01:36):
the grand prize and three runners up, Net Zero, Vaulted
Deep and Undue received five million dollars each. Based in Kenya,
Matty Carbon stood out for its enhanced rock weathering strategy,
a natural solution which involves applying finely ground volcanic rock
to farmland to capture carbon. It draws it down into
the soil while improving soil health and supporting local farm
(02:01):
The runners up also offered diverse solutions from biochart production
to underground carbon storage and large scale mineral spreading. But
we're going to dive into what made these teams exceptional,
on how the X Prize helped elevate them, as well
as what's next for carbon removal. You can learn more
about the winning carbon projects and the X Prize programs
for other grand challenges at xprize dot org. Xprizes all
(02:24):
one word, no space, no dash, xprize dot org. We're
going to get to the conversation right after a brief
commercial break. Stay tuned, folks, it's going to be an
interesting conversation. Welcome back to the show, Nikki and Michael,
How you doing great?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Bitch, Well, you've accomplished something pretty big. You've finished the contest,
and before we get to the winners, I want to
start by going back to the beginning. How did we
get here? What was the motivation for the Carbon Xprize?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Great place to start. So it's been a long road
to get to this point. Actually, it's been exactly a
decade since x Prize started our journey working on climate
change and carbon management specifically. We started our efforts there
working on how do you take CO two emissions and
turn them into valuable products, you know, trying to focus
(03:19):
on where there might be revenue and a market for
those things. As the climate crisis really progressed, we started
thinking about what's the next big thing, which we started
looking at carbon removal and going the next step of
new technologies and solutions that could remove CO two directly
from the air and the oceans. So we launched this
new prize that was one hundred million dollars, the biggest
(03:42):
incentive prize in history, to really mobilize the world to
start thinking about this challenge. That was twenty twenty one
when we made that big splash, and it really did
mobilize people. We got over a thousand folks around the
world starting to work on the problem, some of them
you know, who had and researching it for a while,
some of them who were starting businesses for the first time.
(04:03):
And then we went through this big judging process to
winnow that feel down to a top one hundred, a
top sixty, a top twenty, and then we really worked
closely with twenty finalists for the last year to get
to this exciting moment we're at now where we have winners.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So how do you think that that process, the design
of the process, contributed to the diversity and quality of
the solutions that were ultimately selected.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
That was always very front and center for us when
we started designing the prize. We wanted it to be
about all of the different types of ways you could
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and recognizing there are
no silver bullets and climate change, we really need to
focus on a portfolio approach where all of these things
can scale collectively and get to a place where hopefully
(04:52):
we're removing gigatons of CO two in the coming decades.
So we designed the prize to be very agnostic. It
was open to all different kinds of pathways. We loosely
categorized them into four tracks. We called them air, ocean,
land rocks, and so that was kind of an organizing
principle to keep, you know, similar solutions next to each other,
(05:15):
to look at them side by side with the judges,
and to always continue to make sure we were representing
a broad group of them.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
What I was impressed by is you ultimately did land
on a natural solution with Mati. So why Mati an
African based carbon sequestration company using rock weathering as a strategy.
What shut them apart?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
The most important part of the competition is that it
was a demonstration competition, so teams who were successful in
the competition actually had to do carbon removal. The challenge
was removed in twelve months remove a thousand tons of CDR,
you know which is which is a kill a ton
And the premise of the competition was demonstrate CDR at
(06:04):
a kiloton model, cost at megaton, and then show that
the solution is scalable at gigaton levels. So really for
all of the teams, that was like the focus of
the challenge first and foremost demonstrate at kiloton. Many of
the finalists did this. Matty really excelled across all of
(06:27):
the operational criteria, but then they also made a very
very strong case in the other criteria megaton scale cost
and gigaton scale sustainability.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
How did they demonstrate cost effectiveness? And I think we
understand how permanent this is, it's in the soil. What
verifiable impact did they point to to confirm their success
at the kiloton's scale.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah, I mean the name of the game is you know,
like I said, you know, being a demonstration comp it's
one thing just to sort of draw it out on
a piece of paper and show off the design and
the potential of it. It's another thing to execute in
the real world. The reality of enhanced rock weathering in
particular is you have to source a lot of rock,
you have to crush it up, and you have to
(07:16):
get it out into farmers fields across a very large area,
and even at kiloton scale, that's a large operation. And
so actually going through the motions of doing all of
that over the course of a year, you need, you know,
Maddie demonstrated. Maddie in particular, demonstrated operational sophistication as well
(07:37):
as scientific sophistication in verifying that they were going through
those motions in a way that was scientifically rigorous and
you know, can give us confidence that the removals are
actually happening.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
As you look at the process that they use. Have
you also calculated the energy and carbon related carbon expended
to do the rock crushing, to do the logistics and
distribution of the material to the farm lands, and does
it pencil out as a net win?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, that's a great question, and the answer is yes.
The whole idea of removing CO two at kiloton scale
whelies on something called life cycle analysis, which is where
you measure and report all of the carbon impacts of
your system right from you know, they call it from
cradle to grave, you know, right from the point where
(08:28):
materials are being extracted and raw materials are being gathered,
all the way through to the end of life where
you know this could be ten or one hundred years
from now, you know what re emissions might occur over time.
And so again, when I talk about sort of the
complexity of operating these projects, these demonstrations, it also comes
(08:49):
down to the sophistication of the data collection and the
ability of a team to really have all of those elements,
those fine tooth details under control. And that's certainly one
of the strongest differentiators in the carbon removal space.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
That was really struck by the fact that there wasn't
a direct air capture solution amongst the winners. Is that
an indication that those technically intensive systems are not at
this point really net wins for the environment.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I wouldn't say that they are not net wins. We
did have several direct air capture companies amongst the finalists.
The challenge really came down to demonstrating that thousand tons
in the twelve months of the competition. So the competition
had a start date and end date. There was a
real deadline, and the reality of direct air capture is
(09:43):
that you need to do a lot of building and
developing before you can start removing CO two. So if
you compare that to a solution that'sw or biochar where
you can sort of grow a demonstration organically. Direct air
capture you kind of have a lot of building and
designing and construct and then you turn it on and
start running. And so frankly, the direct air capture companies
(10:05):
ran out of time. We had a lot of you know,
I would say the direct air capture companies in the
finalists are very strong. Most of them have built that
kill a ton scale system, but didn't operate it long
enough to hit the competition target of a thousand tons.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So the permitting process alone could be a blocker for
a company like that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yeah, absolutely, permitting, you know, it's but it's not just
permitting rights, it's supply chains. You know. We had teams
that had equipment that was held up at borders. We
had teams whose equipment was under construction when a hurricane hit.
You know, these are the realities of building out significant projects.
So that isn't to say that direct air capture doesn't
(10:46):
have potential, but there are barriers to getting it up
and running.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So Madi's got some additional co benefits, for instance, helping
smallholder farms and Kenya earn more revenue and it creates
greater food security in those regions because the soil is
more productive. How did that factor into the selection of
Madi is the winner.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
I think that it's important to talk about all the
co benefits and other things that solutions bring to the
communities that they go into. I would say, for the
purpose of the competition and the way the rules were structured,
we were definitely focused first and foremost on carbon removal,
trying to make sure that a solution was most effective
(11:31):
at that So that was the primary thing that we
were trying to understand and evaluate. But we did have
a whole category of evaluation criteria that we call broadly
sustainability criteria, and that includes things like the environmental footprint
of the solution, the social and human impact on communities
(11:52):
where they're going, and we wanted to make sure that
any solutions that we were supporting through the prize ultimately
awarding money to were positive on all of those factors
as well. So it definitely was, you know, a great
mark on their evaluation scorecard. You know that they were
benefiting small holder farmers and that there were you know,
(12:17):
economic incentives for farmers that they were working with, also
that their environmental footprint was low, because that would have
been a mark against them and could have you know,
changed the rankings when we were looking at them against
other people. And they're also you know, very thoughtful about
how they work with their local partners, and you know,
all of those things make it a more skillable solution
(12:39):
as we talk about going from you know, thousands of
tons of removal where we're at now into mega tons
and gigatons, which the footprint will be much much larger
to reach those skills. So it's important to think about
those factors now.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So what is the experience of the farmer they receive
a load of material and spread it. How does this work?
Can you give us a sense of the day to
day operations.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
One of the great advantages of a technique like enhanced
rock weathering is it really doesn't change the farmers' operations
all that much. In North America and in other parts
of the world, it's actually very common for farmers to
spread rock dust on their field as a means, you know,
(13:24):
as a type of fertilizer. Really, so that's not commonly
deployed in the developing world. Because farmers can't afford it.
So one of the great advantages of enhanced rock weather
and one of the great potentials of enhanced rock weathering
in places like Africa and India, is that the CDR
model can actually provide farmers with a service in fertilizing
(13:50):
their fields and improving the nutrition of the soil that
they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. In terms of
implementing it, it really is a remarkably simple process. Drive
a tractor or or you know, pull a wagon across
the field and uh, spinning paddle will fling rock dust
all over the all over the ground. You know. It's
(14:12):
it's a very very simple means of applying you know,
material to a field and and it's and it's something
that's sort of easy for farmers to do and to understand.
And then really from from there on they just do
their thing. You know, they farm their fields, they grow
their crops, they do the harvest, and the the CDR
or the you know, you could almost say the carbon
harvest sort of happens in the background. The trick then
(14:35):
becomes for Matthy to do the soil sampling and monitoring
and like get all the details you know, but but
the farmer doesn't really need to be involved in in
all of that.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah. In fact, I think that the largest implementation of
this in North America was the eruption amount of Saint Helens,
which created amazingly productive farmland in eastern Washington for decades.
So one of the things I was curious about is
whether or not the farmers are also benefiting financially from
the CO two draw down through carbon credit programs or otherwise.
(15:05):
Is that one of the components of the MADI program.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Yeah, it depends on how the enhanced rock weathering company
like MATI wants to set up their business.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
There are different models that they might employ.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
They might want to manage the carbon crediting process themselves,
because if that was distributed across thousands of farmers, that
would be complex too. But the idea is that the
farmers benefit directly through increased yields and then increase sales
of their you know, their agricultural products. So there is
a direct benefit to the farmers in that way, and
(15:39):
then the credits might be a whole kind of separate
financial structure that's that's managed in a different way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
So different lego parts for different So how is MATI
going to use the fifty million dollars?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh, good question. They're a pretty small but mighty team
right now.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
They've been operating really lean to get to this point
and scale as quickly as they can. So I think
first they need to hire more staff so that they
can expand their operations. They're predominantly working in India right
now as well as Africa and looking at new locations
as well, so they're planning to grow their footprint, recruit
more farmers, really just expand what they're doing. They also
(16:22):
have a really strong commitment to advancing the research and
development of the broader enhanced rock weathering space, and so
plan to commit some of their prize winnings actually to
moving the space forward and doing research with the leading
universities and scientists to make sure that there's more data
available for all the enhanced rock weathering companies. And we're
(16:42):
kind of moving forward as an industry there with increased
confidence in the crediting process and everything like that that
we know buyers need on the back end.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
There's a lot to dig into beyond this. So let's
take a quick commercial break and we'll come back and
talk about the runners up. Well, let's get back to
the conversation about the X Prize Carbon Removal winners and
runners up with Nikki Bachelor, executive director of the X
(17:12):
Prize Carbon Removal Program, and Michael Leitch, the senior technical lead.
You had to compare at the beginning thirteen hundred different projects.
What were the most challenging aspects of making a decision
across such a wide range of technical, economic, and ecological criteria.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
You really get to the heart of the competition with
that question.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
I mean, we always knew from the beginning when we
started designing that we would be comparing apples to oranges,
and what would be the best way to look at
those solutions side by side.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We mentioned earlier some of.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The criteria, but just to reiterate the way we did
the evaluation.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Well, I shouldn't say we work with judges.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Mike and I don't actually make any of the decisions
around the winners. We manage a diverse judging pool of
over a dozen judges that are from all over the world,
different universities, leading researchers in their fields across all the
different areas of carbon removal. So they're the ones doing
the reviews and making the official decisions, and we focus
(18:13):
on three different categories. The first is operational criteria, the
second is cost, and the third is sustainability. So operations
is really you have to build and demonstrate that this
thing works.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
We're not an ideas competition.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Xprize is really about validating that technologies and solutions work
at some sort of field pilot scale, and so we
required everyone to build an end to end solution that
removed the co two starting from either the air or
the ocean, all the way through to where it was
going to be stored permanently, and we went around and
(18:50):
validated all of those with third party verifiers as well,
so that was part of operations. Then when we get
into cost, we looked at the modeling of what a
solution would cost, not just now today because we know
that things are more expensive now because they're in the
very early stages of technology development, but would what it
would cost a megaton scale, which we start to get
(19:11):
into some more standardization and economies of scale. And then
ultimately the sustainability criteria is if you try and blow
this all the way up into gig aton levels, what
would it look like, what would the land water footprint be,
what would the impact on communities be, and so those
things that you can abstract for each solution to understand
(19:34):
kind of what the impact and growth trajectories would be.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Tell us about the runners up that was net zero
Vaulted Deep and Undo? What shet them apart? And was
it a really close competition? Did they just lose by
a hair How did that fall out?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
The competition was very tight. The quality of the finalists
was very impressive, really across the board. It was it
was a really for I mean, I'll just say personally,
for me, it was a really wonderful year being able
to get to know all of these teams and see
what all of them were able to accomplish over the
(20:13):
course of the finals. In the competition, like I said previously,
and Nikki just mentioned, the first and foremost teams had
to demonstrate. So what set that Zero Vaulted Deep and
Undo A part was they stepped over that bar? They
did the removals. You know, they made it look easy.
We know it wasn't easy, but the quality of their
(20:35):
operations were really were really excellent. So beyond that, you know,
it comes down to like Nikki said, you know, modeling
costs measuring sustainability. Making the case for gigatons scales CDR
is really really tough, and anytime you start, you know,
we asked for teams to demonstrate at a kill a
(20:56):
ton scale, you have to multiply that by a million
to get to gigatons scale. And anytime you start multiplying
things by a million, the numbers get really intimidating really fast.
There are unavoidable impacts, and so what set these teams apart,
all of the winning teams was for them to be
able to make that case that you know, when you
start multiplying by a million, we're not running into significant
(21:18):
problems where there's where there's like serious adverse impacts. And
you know, that comes back to the question of co
benefits and and how these solutions can help their local
communities and and not hinder their local communities. So that's
what really made the winning teams special. The decision about
the Grand prize winner and the runners up really came
(21:40):
down to that scalability question and how confident the judges
were that number one, these solutions could scale to gig
aten levels, and then number two, what are the impacts
and and really the opportunities associated with with with that
level of scale.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Well so, and for these companies, they're doing biochart subterranean
carbon storage, and another rock weathering again, and now I
understand why these approaches were the most likely to win
because of the complexity of building a DAC system. When
you look at the set of winners, do you imagine
these different approaches being combined in order to reach the
(22:21):
billions of removal that we're talking about needing to do
over the course of the next fifty years.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
You know, you mentioned the sort of inherent advantages of
these of these solutions, and you know that's certainly true,
and certainly at the scales that we're talking about, deployability
or the ease of deployment really made a material difference
in the way the competition played out. But I also
don't want to suggest that these were easy projects to execute.
(22:49):
You know, the companies, even at a kiloton scale, Each
of these teams had to build an organization around them,
you know, and it was not only addressing sort of
the technical and conceptual challenges, but managing the organizational challenges
over the course of a full year. But you know,
the inherited advantages make a difference. You know, you look
at the teams like Net zero and Vaulted Deep. They
(23:12):
take biomass that was sort of created by nature, and
so they're leveraging photosynthesis, They're leveraging these natural pathways, and
then it just becomes a question of how you manage
that biomass in a way that results in long term
you know, net drawdown of CO two. You've got enhanced
rock weathering teams that are taking advantage of these natural
(23:34):
weathering pathways, and the name of the game is how
do we enhance and accelerate what is otherwise a very
slow process. So it really came down to both, you know,
having those natural advantages, but then leveraging those with a
mature and high quality operation.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, and I think where I'm actually driving toward is
the question you talked about earlier. You had to compare
apples and oranges. But what we're talking about is an
environment in which apples, oranges, pairs, or all sorts of
different fruits in this analogy are going to be grown
to create a sustainable, carbon neutral society. As you look
(24:12):
at what you've learned from the last four years of
this competition, how do you imagine humanity managing the carbon
load in the atmosphere. What's it looked like. It's obviously
so many different companies, so many different industries potentially being
tied into that. Will we ultimately be thinking about the
(24:33):
atmospheric CO two level the way that we think about
the temperature in the room and managing it.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I mean, you made a really great point in that
it's there's no silver bullets here. And when we were
looking at the finalist teams making the case for gigaton
scale CDR, you know that it's really hard and we're
just talking about getting to one gigaton per year, right,
we know we're going to need a lot more than that.
And so reality of where we are at as a planet,
(25:03):
as humanity is that we are going to need these
all of these solutions to succeed to the extent that
they can all over the world. And so one of
the things that we've been able to do with this
competition is help showcase what carbon dioxide removal looks like.
You know, it's much different when you're looking at cartoons
or schematics or you know, talking about things conceptually versus
(25:26):
actually being able to see what are we talking about here?
You know, what do the farmers have to do differently.
And you know, I'll just plug a docuseries that we've created.
You can find it on YouTube and it showcases all
the twenty teams and helps sort of bring to life
what CDR looks like in the real world. But the
(25:46):
reality is we need all of them to succeed, and
not just the winners, not just the twenty finalists, but
all thirteen hundred competitors. You know, there's a lot of
different opportunities to remove carbon from the atmosphere and what
solutions work in different regions and different economies and different
different you know, contexts. It's going to look different, and
(26:07):
diversity is good and important.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
So how X.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Prize working with government and investors to spread the word
about the viability of these approaches.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, good question.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
That really plays into a lot of our what we
call impact strategies. So we think about the prize as
a platform to really advance and build a market that
you know, we're focusing on for whatever the topic is.
And this prize in particular, it was perfectly timed, I
think with the new momentum and interest in building a
(26:45):
carbon removal industry. So alongside running this competition where teams
are entering and trying to compete with each other and
build solutions. We've also been trying to raise the profile
of carbon removal globally with policymakers, with communities, through our
marketing efforts, just trying to engage with new stakeholder groups
(27:06):
to really help people understand that this is real. The
solutions exist, they're being built around the world, and they work.
Because there are a lot of different myths out there.
People think that this is really far off, it's science fiction,
we're nowhere near where we need to be, or that
just generally solutions don't exist to the climate crisis. And
I think one of x prizes main positions and our
(27:28):
role kind of in this ecosystem is to be you know,
a bit more hopeful and optimistic, to show people that
there are solutions that can help move the needle on
a lot of the world's biggest challenges, climate being one
of the biggest problems of our time. So we're trying
to get the word out, you know, about how much
progress is being made behind the scenes by innovators entrepreneurs.
(27:51):
Mike mentioned that docuseries that's a helpful tool to just
see it running and operating. Not everybody's going to be
able to like go visit a CDR project in their backyard,
but it would be helpful for more people to understand
that it's maybe not as intimidating as it sounds like.
It's really you know, in a lot of cases visiting
farms and things that people are familiar with. It's not
(28:12):
always like a giant building with fans, but even that
is not scary once you see it and you're like, oh,
this is this is really cool and exciting that you
can do that with technology and the environmental footprints don't
always have to be so significant. So that is part
of you know, our messaging and advocacy work on the side.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
For sure, What does the X Prize Carbon Removal Organization
do next? And how do you what's the plan to
encourage continued connection and innovation.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, so we'll definitely be active in the carbon removal
community for the foreseeable future, trying to continue supporting the winners,
the finalists and all of the teams to amplify their work,
you know, get them on more stages out in front
of more audiences so people can learn about that. So
that's a big focus for us, having a leading role
(29:03):
in all the big climate convenings like Climate Weeks and
cop and things like that. We're also trying to continue
building more demand in the space. So we have a
challenge called the Global one thousand CDR Challenge, which is
really a call to action for the world's thousand largest
companies to buy a thousand tons of carbon removal this year,
(29:23):
which is not a large amount at all. It's kind
of trying to get more people to dip their toe
in and start to build this into their sustainability and
net zero strategies. So we're convening buyers and geographies around
the world to help facilitate those discussions and you know,
continuing to support relationships with investors and organize events in
that space too. So we'll be working in carbon removal,
(29:46):
but then we'll also as Xprize and our climate and
Energy practice, we're starting to look at what are the
next big challenges, what are the things that a prize
could be helpful at, and so we're going to start
entering a new cycle of designing the next phase of prizes,
and we're looking at a few areas that we've kind
of identified as hot spots that are ripe for a prize.
(30:08):
Methane removal is one of them. So looking at how
we do something similar to what we do with carbon
removal for methane, what is the other side of kind
of this Carbon markets coin is really more on the
nature based side of things, so we didn't focus as
much on that with this prize.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
But what would it be like to try.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
And improve quality and increase trust in the crediting market
around you know, forestry projects and ecosystem restoration and could
a prize be useful there? And then you know, if
those things aren't successful too, we're all going to need
to start thinking more about adaptation and resilience and what
does it look like to live in a warming world?
And how do we be more you know, preventative and
(30:50):
improve you know, our planning process and have better faster
responses to the disasters that do happen. So those are
some of the areas that are high on the list
right now for us.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Given what we know from the contest and what you
know from your experience talking about this all over the world.
Where will carbon removal be in a decade? Are we
going to be at the gigaton scale? How much momentum
do you foresee paint a picture.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
I'll just step back for a second and say, personally,
it's very nice to bring a project to a close.
You know, we've been working hard in this in this
area for a few years and it's very satisfying to
sort of see the fruits of our labor and having
awarded this X Prize. But you know, this isn't a
mission accomplished moment. We can emissions continue to go up.
(31:39):
The greenhouse gases remain humanity's grandest challenge, and so it's
really important to number one, recognize innovation and recognize high
quality performance, and that's something that we've really been focused
on doing. You know, in awarding this prize, I think
(31:59):
I think we've done a good job of that, but
we can't take our eye off the ball. We have
a long way to go in terms of deployment, and
so you know, NICKI mentioned all of the great impact
programs that we've been working on. Niki also mentioned the
areas of interest that we're looking at at X Prize
in terms of launching new challenges. It's all, you know,
(32:20):
for us, it's all about supporting innovation, supporting innovators and
development of new technologies and then supporting deployment of those technologies,
and so that's where that's that's really sort of like
at a high level, what we, you know, hope to
achieve over the next decade. You know, the proof is
going to be in the pudding. You know, are we
removing carbon at gigaton scale in ten years? Yes? Or no?
(32:45):
And I hope I hope the answer is yes. I
also hope that we are going to see emissions come
down to the point where where the you know, the
atmosphere and humanity is left in a healthier place.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Absolutely, I hope that that happens as well. What can
people who are listening right now do to drive adoption
or awareness of carbon removal? We all want this to happen.
How can we help you do it?
Speaker 3 (33:12):
I mean, for me, learn more about carbon removal, learn
more about not just carbon removal, but about emissions reduction
in general. There's a whole ecosystem of brand new companies
that are looking for talent. You know, deploying carbon removal
is going to take a global workforce. And you know,
(33:33):
it's been really cool actually to see new graduates come
into the carbon removal field and getting their first jobs
at a carbon removal company. It's not just for kids either,
you know, they need experience, we need we need you know,
we need engineers, we need tradesmen, we need business people,
we need marketing people. So I mean, really, if you're
looking to contribute to the carbon management or greenhouse gas
(33:56):
management industry, like consider taking a job in greenhouse gas management.
There's a lot of really great opportunities and scaling CDR,
scaling greenos gas management, scaling methane removal you know, is
really about bringing people to the cause and deploying that
time and effort towards the area. So that's the number
(34:16):
one for me.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, those are all great calls to action.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I think, you know, if you're not ready to take
a job in this space, maybe really just like go
learn if there's a project in your community, understand it,
support it at the most fundamental level. We know that
new things don't happen in society without public support. So
we need to get to a place where normal people
and communities are comfortable with this intervention and we understand
(34:44):
that it's necessary and people just kind of have more
of an acceptance level with it.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
That will help move the needle.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
With policymakers who are making decisions about, you know, moving
new regulations forward in any jurisdiction around the world.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
It is a human grand challenge that we face. But
congratulations on completing this important step.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Thanks so thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Itch, you've been listening to a conversation about the X
Prize Carbon Removal winning team Macky Carbon and the runners
up Net Zero, Vaulted Deep and Undoe with Nicky Batchelor
and Michael Leach who led the program. You can learn
(35:26):
more about the X Prize Carbon Removal and other grand
challenges at xprize dot org. Xprize is all one word,
no space, no dash, xprize dot org, and do check
out the article that accompanies this podcast to find a
link to the X Prize Carbon Removal channel on YouTube,
where the docuseries they described about the project and the
winners is available. There's a lot of fascinating viewing there, folks.
(35:48):
If you don't know much about carbon removal, I do
urge you to visit the channel because, as we heard,
there are many ways to draw down atmospheric carbon from
natural solutions like enhanced rock weathering and biocha enhancement of
agricultural soil to direct air capture and underground carbon sequestration.
We're going to need all those techniques deployed globally and
(36:09):
more to meet the challenge of reversing climate change. But
jump starting an industry isn't easy. Grand challenge programs like
the nonprofit X Prize can de risk the initial steps
in launching novel sectors like this, but those early investments
need follow through in the form of private capital, government support,
and favorable regulations, as well as the commitment of peoples
(36:31):
around the world to learn about and work in the
carbon capture and sequestration industries. The kiloton scale projects today
have to scale up to the millions of tons sequestered rapidly,
if only to keep up with our continually rising emissions.
Despite predictions that it was going to stop and reverse,
emissions levels have continued to rise. Last year, in twenty
(36:54):
twenty four, humans sent another forty one point six billion
tons of planet warming CO two into the appmosphere, and
that's on top of the approximately one point five trillion
tons emitted since the dawn of the industrial revolution. We've
dug ourselves into a climate hole, and we must begin
a coordinated response to avoid bequeathing future generations and environment
(37:16):
too warm for human life. Stopping new emissions by reducing
or eliminating the carbon footprint of manufacturing, transportation, and the
built environment are important complementary steps to the carbon capture industry.
Carbon capture cannot simply serve as an offset for new emissions.
We've already set the thermostat too high to sustain our
(37:37):
way of life and need to commit to draw down
two to ten times more emissions annually than society produces.
The combination of lowered emissions and carbon sequestration will put
us on a slow path to environmental recovery. The fast
track to co two levels that we evolved in, which
were about two hundred and seventy parts per million compared
to today's four hundred and twenty seven parts per million,
(38:01):
could be spurred by this X prize if all of
us follow through. So take the time to learn about
and follow the development of the carbon capture industry and
practice carbon reduction in your daily life. The first step
is awareness about the emissions inherent in the products that
we use in our way of living. So get involved
and get active, And of course we're going to continue
(38:23):
to track the carbon removal movement here on the show
stay tuned, and would you do me a favor, Please
share this or another of the more than five hundred
episodes of Sustainability in Your Ear with a friend right now,
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neighbors find us. You, folks, are the amplifiers that can
(38:43):
spread more ideas to create less waste. So please tell
your friends, family, and coworkers that they can find us
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of
podcast goodness they prefer. Thank you for your support. I'm Mitracliffe.
This Sustainability in Your Ear and we will be back
with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take
(39:05):
care of yourself, take care of one another, and let's
all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have
a green day.
Hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, wherever you
are in this beautiful planet of ours. Welcome to Sustainability
in Your Ear, the podcast conversation about accelerating the transition
to a sustainable carbon neutral society. I'm your host Mitt Tracliffe.
Thank you for joining the conversation. Today, we're going to
wrap up a story we've been covering for several years.
(00:29):
As the world confronts the urgent challenge of removing billions
of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, breakthrough innovations
will be essential to scale solutions fast enough to meet
our global climate goals. One of the most ambitious efforts
to catalyze this innovation is the Xprize Carbon Removal Competition,
a one hundred million dollar global challenge funded by the
(00:51):
Musk Foundation. And we've been following the Carbon Removal Xprize
as that more than thirteen hundred teams from eighty eight
countries competed to deliver a scalable, verifiable carbon removal solution
from engineer technologies to nature based approaches. And today we're
joined brother, We're rejoined by Nicky Bachelor, who's executive director
(01:12):
of the X Prize Carbon removal project and Michael Leach,
senior technical lead for the competition. They've been with us before,
as I said, to share updates as the competition unfolded,
and now they're back to reflect on what may be
one of the most consequential moments in carbon removal innovation
to date. The announcement of the grand prize winner and
runners up and Matty Carbon took home fifty million dollars
(01:36):
the grand prize and three runners up, Net Zero, Vaulted
Deep and Undue received five million dollars each. Based in Kenya,
Matty Carbon stood out for its enhanced rock weathering strategy,
a natural solution which involves applying finely ground volcanic rock
to farmland to capture carbon. It draws it down into
the soil while improving soil health and supporting local farm
(02:01):
The runners up also offered diverse solutions from biochart production
to underground carbon storage and large scale mineral spreading. But
we're going to dive into what made these teams exceptional,
on how the X Prize helped elevate them, as well
as what's next for carbon removal. You can learn more
about the winning carbon projects and the X Prize programs
for other grand challenges at xprize dot org. Xprizes all
(02:24):
one word, no space, no dash, xprize dot org. We're
going to get to the conversation right after a brief
commercial break. Stay tuned, folks, it's going to be an
interesting conversation. Welcome back to the show, Nikki and Michael,
How you doing great?
Speaker 2 (02:43):
Thanks for having us.
Speaker 3 (02:44):
Yeah, thanks for having us.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
Bitch, Well, you've accomplished something pretty big. You've finished the contest,
and before we get to the winners, I want to
start by going back to the beginning. How did we
get here? What was the motivation for the Carbon Xprize?
Speaker 4 (02:57):
Great place to start. So it's been a long road
to get to this point. Actually, it's been exactly a
decade since x Prize started our journey working on climate
change and carbon management specifically. We started our efforts there
working on how do you take CO two emissions and
turn them into valuable products, you know, trying to focus
(03:19):
on where there might be revenue and a market for
those things. As the climate crisis really progressed, we started
thinking about what's the next big thing, which we started
looking at carbon removal and going the next step of
new technologies and solutions that could remove CO two directly
from the air and the oceans. So we launched this
new prize that was one hundred million dollars, the biggest
(03:42):
incentive prize in history, to really mobilize the world to
start thinking about this challenge. That was twenty twenty one
when we made that big splash, and it really did
mobilize people. We got over a thousand folks around the
world starting to work on the problem, some of them
you know, who had and researching it for a while,
some of them who were starting businesses for the first time.
(04:03):
And then we went through this big judging process to
winnow that feel down to a top one hundred, a
top sixty, a top twenty, and then we really worked
closely with twenty finalists for the last year to get
to this exciting moment we're at now where we have winners.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So how do you think that that process, the design
of the process, contributed to the diversity and quality of
the solutions that were ultimately selected.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
That was always very front and center for us when
we started designing the prize. We wanted it to be
about all of the different types of ways you could
remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and recognizing there are
no silver bullets and climate change, we really need to
focus on a portfolio approach where all of these things
can scale collectively and get to a place where hopefully
(04:52):
we're removing gigatons of CO two in the coming decades.
So we designed the prize to be very agnostic. It
was open to all different kinds of pathways. We loosely
categorized them into four tracks. We called them air, ocean,
land rocks, and so that was kind of an organizing
principle to keep, you know, similar solutions next to each other,
(05:15):
to look at them side by side with the judges,
and to always continue to make sure we were representing
a broad group of them.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
What I was impressed by is you ultimately did land
on a natural solution with Mati. So why Mati an
African based carbon sequestration company using rock weathering as a strategy.
What shut them apart?
Speaker 3 (05:40):
The most important part of the competition is that it
was a demonstration competition, so teams who were successful in
the competition actually had to do carbon removal. The challenge
was removed in twelve months remove a thousand tons of CDR,
you know which is which is a kill a ton
And the premise of the competition was demonstrate CDR at
(06:04):
a kiloton model, cost at megaton, and then show that
the solution is scalable at gigaton levels. So really for
all of the teams, that was like the focus of
the challenge first and foremost demonstrate at kiloton. Many of
the finalists did this. Matty really excelled across all of
(06:27):
the operational criteria, but then they also made a very
very strong case in the other criteria megaton scale cost
and gigaton scale sustainability.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
How did they demonstrate cost effectiveness? And I think we
understand how permanent this is, it's in the soil. What
verifiable impact did they point to to confirm their success
at the kiloton's scale.
Speaker 3 (06:55):
Yeah, I mean the name of the game is you know,
like I said, you know, being a demonstration comp it's
one thing just to sort of draw it out on
a piece of paper and show off the design and
the potential of it. It's another thing to execute in
the real world. The reality of enhanced rock weathering in
particular is you have to source a lot of rock,
you have to crush it up, and you have to
(07:16):
get it out into farmers fields across a very large area,
and even at kiloton scale, that's a large operation. And
so actually going through the motions of doing all of
that over the course of a year, you need, you know,
Maddie demonstrated. Maddie in particular, demonstrated operational sophistication as well
(07:37):
as scientific sophistication in verifying that they were going through
those motions in a way that was scientifically rigorous and
you know, can give us confidence that the removals are
actually happening.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
As you look at the process that they use. Have
you also calculated the energy and carbon related carbon expended
to do the rock crushing, to do the logistics and
distribution of the material to the farm lands, and does
it pencil out as a net win?
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, that's a great question, and the answer is yes.
The whole idea of removing CO two at kiloton scale
whelies on something called life cycle analysis, which is where
you measure and report all of the carbon impacts of
your system right from you know, they call it from
cradle to grave, you know, right from the point where
(08:28):
materials are being extracted and raw materials are being gathered,
all the way through to the end of life where
you know this could be ten or one hundred years
from now, you know what re emissions might occur over time.
And so again, when I talk about sort of the
complexity of operating these projects, these demonstrations, it also comes
(08:49):
down to the sophistication of the data collection and the
ability of a team to really have all of those elements,
those fine tooth details under control. And that's certainly one
of the strongest differentiators in the carbon removal space.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
That was really struck by the fact that there wasn't
a direct air capture solution amongst the winners. Is that
an indication that those technically intensive systems are not at
this point really net wins for the environment.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
I wouldn't say that they are not net wins. We
did have several direct air capture companies amongst the finalists.
The challenge really came down to demonstrating that thousand tons
in the twelve months of the competition. So the competition
had a start date and end date. There was a
real deadline, and the reality of direct air capture is
(09:43):
that you need to do a lot of building and
developing before you can start removing CO two. So if
you compare that to a solution that'sw or biochar where
you can sort of grow a demonstration organically. Direct air
capture you kind of have a lot of building and
designing and construct and then you turn it on and
start running. And so frankly, the direct air capture companies
(10:05):
ran out of time. We had a lot of you know,
I would say the direct air capture companies in the
finalists are very strong. Most of them have built that
kill a ton scale system, but didn't operate it long
enough to hit the competition target of a thousand tons.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
So the permitting process alone could be a blocker for
a company like that.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Yeah, absolutely, permitting, you know, it's but it's not just
permitting rights, it's supply chains. You know. We had teams
that had equipment that was held up at borders. We
had teams whose equipment was under construction when a hurricane hit.
You know, these are the realities of building out significant projects.
So that isn't to say that direct air capture doesn't
(10:46):
have potential, but there are barriers to getting it up
and running.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
So Madi's got some additional co benefits, for instance, helping
smallholder farms and Kenya earn more revenue and it creates
greater food security in those regions because the soil is
more productive. How did that factor into the selection of
Madi is the winner.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Yeah, it's a great question.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
I think that it's important to talk about all the
co benefits and other things that solutions bring to the
communities that they go into. I would say, for the
purpose of the competition and the way the rules were structured,
we were definitely focused first and foremost on carbon removal,
trying to make sure that a solution was most effective
(11:31):
at that So that was the primary thing that we
were trying to understand and evaluate. But we did have
a whole category of evaluation criteria that we call broadly
sustainability criteria, and that includes things like the environmental footprint
of the solution, the social and human impact on communities
(11:52):
where they're going, and we wanted to make sure that
any solutions that we were supporting through the prize ultimately
awarding money to were positive on all of those factors
as well. So it definitely was, you know, a great
mark on their evaluation scorecard. You know that they were
benefiting small holder farmers and that there were you know,
(12:17):
economic incentives for farmers that they were working with, also
that their environmental footprint was low, because that would have
been a mark against them and could have you know,
changed the rankings when we were looking at them against
other people. And they're also you know, very thoughtful about
how they work with their local partners, and you know,
all of those things make it a more skillable solution
(12:39):
as we talk about going from you know, thousands of
tons of removal where we're at now into mega tons
and gigatons, which the footprint will be much much larger
to reach those skills. So it's important to think about
those factors now.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
So what is the experience of the farmer they receive
a load of material and spread it. How does this work?
Can you give us a sense of the day to
day operations.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
One of the great advantages of a technique like enhanced
rock weathering is it really doesn't change the farmers' operations
all that much. In North America and in other parts
of the world, it's actually very common for farmers to
spread rock dust on their field as a means, you know,
(13:24):
as a type of fertilizer. Really, so that's not commonly
deployed in the developing world. Because farmers can't afford it.
So one of the great advantages of enhanced rock weather
and one of the great potentials of enhanced rock weathering
in places like Africa and India, is that the CDR
model can actually provide farmers with a service in fertilizing
(13:50):
their fields and improving the nutrition of the soil that
they wouldn't otherwise be able to afford. In terms of
implementing it, it really is a remarkably simple process. Drive
a tractor or or you know, pull a wagon across
the field and uh, spinning paddle will fling rock dust
all over the all over the ground. You know. It's
(14:12):
it's a very very simple means of applying you know,
material to a field and and it's and it's something
that's sort of easy for farmers to do and to understand.
And then really from from there on they just do
their thing. You know, they farm their fields, they grow
their crops, they do the harvest, and the the CDR
or the you know, you could almost say the carbon
harvest sort of happens in the background. The trick then
(14:35):
becomes for Matthy to do the soil sampling and monitoring
and like get all the details you know, but but
the farmer doesn't really need to be involved in in
all of that.
Speaker 1 (14:44):
Yeah. In fact, I think that the largest implementation of
this in North America was the eruption amount of Saint Helens,
which created amazingly productive farmland in eastern Washington for decades.
So one of the things I was curious about is
whether or not the farmers are also benefiting financially from
the CO two draw down through carbon credit programs or otherwise.
(15:05):
Is that one of the components of the MADI program.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Yeah, it depends on how the enhanced rock weathering company
like MATI wants to set up their business.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
There are different models that they might employ.
Speaker 4 (15:18):
They might want to manage the carbon crediting process themselves,
because if that was distributed across thousands of farmers, that
would be complex too. But the idea is that the
farmers benefit directly through increased yields and then increase sales
of their you know, their agricultural products. So there is
a direct benefit to the farmers in that way, and
(15:39):
then the credits might be a whole kind of separate
financial structure that's that's managed in a different way.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
So different lego parts for different So how is MATI
going to use the fifty million dollars?
Speaker 2 (15:53):
Oh, good question. They're a pretty small but mighty team
right now.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
They've been operating really lean to get to this point
and scale as quickly as they can. So I think
first they need to hire more staff so that they
can expand their operations. They're predominantly working in India right
now as well as Africa and looking at new locations
as well, so they're planning to grow their footprint, recruit
more farmers, really just expand what they're doing. They also
(16:22):
have a really strong commitment to advancing the research and
development of the broader enhanced rock weathering space, and so
plan to commit some of their prize winnings actually to
moving the space forward and doing research with the leading
universities and scientists to make sure that there's more data
available for all the enhanced rock weathering companies. And we're
(16:42):
kind of moving forward as an industry there with increased
confidence in the crediting process and everything like that that
we know buyers need on the back end.
Speaker 1 (16:52):
There's a lot to dig into beyond this. So let's
take a quick commercial break and we'll come back and
talk about the runners up. Well, let's get back to
the conversation about the X Prize Carbon Removal winners and
runners up with Nikki Bachelor, executive director of the X
(17:12):
Prize Carbon Removal Program, and Michael Leitch, the senior technical lead.
You had to compare at the beginning thirteen hundred different projects.
What were the most challenging aspects of making a decision
across such a wide range of technical, economic, and ecological criteria.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
You really get to the heart of the competition with
that question.
Speaker 4 (17:34):
I mean, we always knew from the beginning when we
started designing that we would be comparing apples to oranges,
and what would be the best way to look at
those solutions side by side.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
We mentioned earlier some of.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
The criteria, but just to reiterate the way we did
the evaluation.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Well, I shouldn't say we work with judges.
Speaker 4 (17:53):
Mike and I don't actually make any of the decisions
around the winners. We manage a diverse judging pool of
over a dozen judges that are from all over the world,
different universities, leading researchers in their fields across all the
different areas of carbon removal. So they're the ones doing
the reviews and making the official decisions, and we focus
(18:13):
on three different categories. The first is operational criteria, the
second is cost, and the third is sustainability. So operations
is really you have to build and demonstrate that this
thing works.
Speaker 2 (18:27):
We're not an ideas competition.
Speaker 4 (18:28):
Xprize is really about validating that technologies and solutions work
at some sort of field pilot scale, and so we
required everyone to build an end to end solution that
removed the co two starting from either the air or
the ocean, all the way through to where it was
going to be stored permanently, and we went around and
(18:50):
validated all of those with third party verifiers as well,
so that was part of operations. Then when we get
into cost, we looked at the modeling of what a
solution would cost, not just now today because we know
that things are more expensive now because they're in the
very early stages of technology development, but would what it
would cost a megaton scale, which we start to get
(19:11):
into some more standardization and economies of scale. And then
ultimately the sustainability criteria is if you try and blow
this all the way up into gig aton levels, what
would it look like, what would the land water footprint be,
what would the impact on communities be, and so those
things that you can abstract for each solution to understand
(19:34):
kind of what the impact and growth trajectories would be.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
Tell us about the runners up that was net zero
Vaulted Deep and Undo? What shet them apart? And was
it a really close competition? Did they just lose by
a hair How did that fall out?
Speaker 3 (19:51):
The competition was very tight. The quality of the finalists
was very impressive, really across the board. It was it
was a really for I mean, I'll just say personally,
for me, it was a really wonderful year being able
to get to know all of these teams and see
what all of them were able to accomplish over the
(20:13):
course of the finals. In the competition, like I said previously,
and Nikki just mentioned, the first and foremost teams had
to demonstrate. So what set that Zero Vaulted Deep and
Undo A part was they stepped over that bar? They
did the removals. You know, they made it look easy.
We know it wasn't easy, but the quality of their
(20:35):
operations were really were really excellent. So beyond that, you know,
it comes down to like Nikki said, you know, modeling
costs measuring sustainability. Making the case for gigatons scales CDR
is really really tough, and anytime you start, you know,
we asked for teams to demonstrate at a kill a
(20:56):
ton scale, you have to multiply that by a million
to get to gigatons scale. And anytime you start multiplying
things by a million, the numbers get really intimidating really fast.
There are unavoidable impacts, and so what set these teams apart,
all of the winning teams was for them to be
able to make that case that you know, when you
start multiplying by a million, we're not running into significant
(21:18):
problems where there's where there's like serious adverse impacts. And
you know, that comes back to the question of co
benefits and and how these solutions can help their local
communities and and not hinder their local communities. So that's
what really made the winning teams special. The decision about
the Grand prize winner and the runners up really came
(21:40):
down to that scalability question and how confident the judges
were that number one, these solutions could scale to gig
aten levels, and then number two, what are the impacts
and and really the opportunities associated with with with that
level of scale.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
Well so, and for these companies, they're doing biochart subterranean
carbon storage, and another rock weathering again, and now I
understand why these approaches were the most likely to win
because of the complexity of building a DAC system. When
you look at the set of winners, do you imagine
these different approaches being combined in order to reach the
(22:21):
billions of removal that we're talking about needing to do
over the course of the next fifty years.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
You know, you mentioned the sort of inherent advantages of
these of these solutions, and you know that's certainly true,
and certainly at the scales that we're talking about, deployability
or the ease of deployment really made a material difference
in the way the competition played out. But I also
don't want to suggest that these were easy projects to execute.
(22:49):
You know, the companies, even at a kiloton scale, Each
of these teams had to build an organization around them,
you know, and it was not only addressing sort of
the technical and conceptual challenges, but managing the organizational challenges
over the course of a full year. But you know,
the inherited advantages make a difference. You know, you look
at the teams like Net zero and Vaulted Deep. They
(23:12):
take biomass that was sort of created by nature, and
so they're leveraging photosynthesis, They're leveraging these natural pathways, and
then it just becomes a question of how you manage
that biomass in a way that results in long term
you know, net drawdown of CO two. You've got enhanced
rock weathering teams that are taking advantage of these natural
(23:34):
weathering pathways, and the name of the game is how
do we enhance and accelerate what is otherwise a very
slow process. So it really came down to both, you know,
having those natural advantages, but then leveraging those with a
mature and high quality operation.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, and I think where I'm actually driving toward is
the question you talked about earlier. You had to compare
apples and oranges. But what we're talking about is an
environment in which apples, oranges, pairs, or all sorts of
different fruits in this analogy are going to be grown
to create a sustainable, carbon neutral society. As you look
(24:12):
at what you've learned from the last four years of
this competition, how do you imagine humanity managing the carbon
load in the atmosphere. What's it looked like. It's obviously
so many different companies, so many different industries potentially being
tied into that. Will we ultimately be thinking about the
(24:33):
atmospheric CO two level the way that we think about
the temperature in the room and managing it.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
I mean, you made a really great point in that
it's there's no silver bullets here. And when we were
looking at the finalist teams making the case for gigaton
scale CDR, you know that it's really hard and we're
just talking about getting to one gigaton per year, right,
we know we're going to need a lot more than that.
And so reality of where we are at as a planet,
(25:03):
as humanity is that we are going to need these
all of these solutions to succeed to the extent that
they can all over the world. And so one of
the things that we've been able to do with this
competition is help showcase what carbon dioxide removal looks like.
You know, it's much different when you're looking at cartoons
or schematics or you know, talking about things conceptually versus
(25:26):
actually being able to see what are we talking about here?
You know, what do the farmers have to do differently.
And you know, I'll just plug a docuseries that we've created.
You can find it on YouTube and it showcases all
the twenty teams and helps sort of bring to life
what CDR looks like in the real world. But the
(25:46):
reality is we need all of them to succeed, and
not just the winners, not just the twenty finalists, but
all thirteen hundred competitors. You know, there's a lot of
different opportunities to remove carbon from the atmosphere and what
solutions work in different regions and different economies and different
different you know, contexts. It's going to look different, and
(26:07):
diversity is good and important.
Speaker 4 (26:10):
So how X.
Speaker 1 (26:11):
Prize working with government and investors to spread the word
about the viability of these approaches.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Yeah, good question.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
That really plays into a lot of our what we
call impact strategies. So we think about the prize as
a platform to really advance and build a market that
you know, we're focusing on for whatever the topic is.
And this prize in particular, it was perfectly timed, I
think with the new momentum and interest in building a
(26:45):
carbon removal industry. So alongside running this competition where teams
are entering and trying to compete with each other and
build solutions. We've also been trying to raise the profile
of carbon removal globally with policymakers, with communities, through our
marketing efforts, just trying to engage with new stakeholder groups
(27:06):
to really help people understand that this is real. The
solutions exist, they're being built around the world, and they work.
Because there are a lot of different myths out there.
People think that this is really far off, it's science fiction,
we're nowhere near where we need to be, or that
just generally solutions don't exist to the climate crisis. And
I think one of x prizes main positions and our
(27:28):
role kind of in this ecosystem is to be you know,
a bit more hopeful and optimistic, to show people that
there are solutions that can help move the needle on
a lot of the world's biggest challenges, climate being one
of the biggest problems of our time. So we're trying
to get the word out, you know, about how much
progress is being made behind the scenes by innovators entrepreneurs.
(27:51):
Mike mentioned that docuseries that's a helpful tool to just
see it running and operating. Not everybody's going to be
able to like go visit a CDR project in their backyard,
but it would be helpful for more people to understand
that it's maybe not as intimidating as it sounds like.
It's really you know, in a lot of cases visiting
farms and things that people are familiar with. It's not
(28:12):
always like a giant building with fans, but even that
is not scary once you see it and you're like, oh,
this is this is really cool and exciting that you
can do that with technology and the environmental footprints don't
always have to be so significant. So that is part
of you know, our messaging and advocacy work on the side.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
For sure, What does the X Prize Carbon Removal Organization
do next? And how do you what's the plan to
encourage continued connection and innovation.
Speaker 4 (28:41):
Yeah, so we'll definitely be active in the carbon removal
community for the foreseeable future, trying to continue supporting the winners,
the finalists and all of the teams to amplify their work,
you know, get them on more stages out in front
of more audiences so people can learn about that. So
that's a big focus for us, having a leading role
(29:03):
in all the big climate convenings like Climate Weeks and
cop and things like that. We're also trying to continue
building more demand in the space. So we have a
challenge called the Global one thousand CDR Challenge, which is
really a call to action for the world's thousand largest
companies to buy a thousand tons of carbon removal this year,
(29:23):
which is not a large amount at all. It's kind
of trying to get more people to dip their toe
in and start to build this into their sustainability and
net zero strategies. So we're convening buyers and geographies around
the world to help facilitate those discussions and you know,
continuing to support relationships with investors and organize events in
that space too. So we'll be working in carbon removal,
(29:46):
but then we'll also as Xprize and our climate and
Energy practice, we're starting to look at what are the
next big challenges, what are the things that a prize
could be helpful at, and so we're going to start
entering a new cycle of designing the next phase of prizes,
and we're looking at a few areas that we've kind
of identified as hot spots that are ripe for a prize.
(30:08):
Methane removal is one of them. So looking at how
we do something similar to what we do with carbon
removal for methane, what is the other side of kind
of this Carbon markets coin is really more on the
nature based side of things, so we didn't focus as
much on that with this prize.
Speaker 2 (30:25):
But what would it be like to try.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
And improve quality and increase trust in the crediting market
around you know, forestry projects and ecosystem restoration and could
a prize be useful there? And then you know, if
those things aren't successful too, we're all going to need
to start thinking more about adaptation and resilience and what
does it look like to live in a warming world?
And how do we be more you know, preventative and
(30:50):
improve you know, our planning process and have better faster
responses to the disasters that do happen. So those are
some of the areas that are high on the list
right now for us.
Speaker 1 (31:03):
Given what we know from the contest and what you
know from your experience talking about this all over the world.
Where will carbon removal be in a decade? Are we
going to be at the gigaton scale? How much momentum
do you foresee paint a picture.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
I'll just step back for a second and say, personally,
it's very nice to bring a project to a close.
You know, we've been working hard in this in this
area for a few years and it's very satisfying to
sort of see the fruits of our labor and having
awarded this X Prize. But you know, this isn't a
mission accomplished moment. We can emissions continue to go up.
(31:39):
The greenhouse gases remain humanity's grandest challenge, and so it's
really important to number one, recognize innovation and recognize high
quality performance, and that's something that we've really been focused
on doing. You know, in awarding this prize, I think
(31:59):
I think we've done a good job of that, but
we can't take our eye off the ball. We have
a long way to go in terms of deployment, and
so you know, NICKI mentioned all of the great impact
programs that we've been working on. Niki also mentioned the
areas of interest that we're looking at at X Prize
in terms of launching new challenges. It's all, you know,
(32:20):
for us, it's all about supporting innovation, supporting innovators and
development of new technologies and then supporting deployment of those technologies,
and so that's where that's that's really sort of like
at a high level, what we, you know, hope to
achieve over the next decade. You know, the proof is
going to be in the pudding. You know, are we
removing carbon at gigaton scale in ten years? Yes? Or no?
(32:45):
And I hope I hope the answer is yes. I
also hope that we are going to see emissions come
down to the point where where the you know, the
atmosphere and humanity is left in a healthier place.
Speaker 1 (32:57):
Absolutely, I hope that that happens as well. What can
people who are listening right now do to drive adoption
or awareness of carbon removal? We all want this to happen.
How can we help you do it?
Speaker 3 (33:12):
I mean, for me, learn more about carbon removal, learn
more about not just carbon removal, but about emissions reduction
in general. There's a whole ecosystem of brand new companies
that are looking for talent. You know, deploying carbon removal
is going to take a global workforce. And you know,
(33:33):
it's been really cool actually to see new graduates come
into the carbon removal field and getting their first jobs
at a carbon removal company. It's not just for kids either,
you know, they need experience, we need we need you know,
we need engineers, we need tradesmen, we need business people,
we need marketing people. So I mean, really, if you're
looking to contribute to the carbon management or greenhouse gas
(33:56):
management industry, like consider taking a job in greenhouse gas management.
There's a lot of really great opportunities and scaling CDR,
scaling greenos gas management, scaling methane removal you know, is
really about bringing people to the cause and deploying that
time and effort towards the area. So that's the number
(34:16):
one for me.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
Yeah, those are all great calls to action.
Speaker 4 (34:21):
I think, you know, if you're not ready to take
a job in this space, maybe really just like go
learn if there's a project in your community, understand it,
support it at the most fundamental level. We know that
new things don't happen in society without public support. So
we need to get to a place where normal people
and communities are comfortable with this intervention and we understand
(34:44):
that it's necessary and people just kind of have more
of an acceptance level with it.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
That will help move the needle.
Speaker 4 (34:50):
With policymakers who are making decisions about, you know, moving
new regulations forward in any jurisdiction around the world.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
It is a human grand challenge that we face. But
congratulations on completing this important step.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Thanks so thanks.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Itch, you've been listening to a conversation about the X
Prize Carbon Removal winning team Macky Carbon and the runners
up Net Zero, Vaulted Deep and Undoe with Nicky Batchelor
and Michael Leach who led the program. You can learn
(35:26):
more about the X Prize Carbon Removal and other grand
challenges at xprize dot org. Xprize is all one word,
no space, no dash, xprize dot org, and do check
out the article that accompanies this podcast to find a
link to the X Prize Carbon Removal channel on YouTube,
where the docuseries they described about the project and the
winners is available. There's a lot of fascinating viewing there, folks.
(35:48):
If you don't know much about carbon removal, I do
urge you to visit the channel because, as we heard,
there are many ways to draw down atmospheric carbon from
natural solutions like enhanced rock weathering and biocha enhancement of
agricultural soil to direct air capture and underground carbon sequestration.
We're going to need all those techniques deployed globally and
(36:09):
more to meet the challenge of reversing climate change. But
jump starting an industry isn't easy. Grand challenge programs like
the nonprofit X Prize can de risk the initial steps
in launching novel sectors like this, but those early investments
need follow through in the form of private capital, government support,
and favorable regulations, as well as the commitment of peoples
(36:31):
around the world to learn about and work in the
carbon capture and sequestration industries. The kiloton scale projects today
have to scale up to the millions of tons sequestered rapidly,
if only to keep up with our continually rising emissions.
Despite predictions that it was going to stop and reverse,
emissions levels have continued to rise. Last year, in twenty
(36:54):
twenty four, humans sent another forty one point six billion
tons of planet warming CO two into the appmosphere, and
that's on top of the approximately one point five trillion
tons emitted since the dawn of the industrial revolution. We've
dug ourselves into a climate hole, and we must begin
a coordinated response to avoid bequeathing future generations and environment
(37:16):
too warm for human life. Stopping new emissions by reducing
or eliminating the carbon footprint of manufacturing, transportation, and the
built environment are important complementary steps to the carbon capture industry.
Carbon capture cannot simply serve as an offset for new emissions.
We've already set the thermostat too high to sustain our
(37:37):
way of life and need to commit to draw down
two to ten times more emissions annually than society produces.
The combination of lowered emissions and carbon sequestration will put
us on a slow path to environmental recovery. The fast
track to co two levels that we evolved in, which
were about two hundred and seventy parts per million compared
to today's four hundred and twenty seven parts per million,
(38:01):
could be spurred by this X prize if all of
us follow through. So take the time to learn about
and follow the development of the carbon capture industry and
practice carbon reduction in your daily life. The first step
is awareness about the emissions inherent in the products that
we use in our way of living. So get involved
and get active, And of course we're going to continue
(38:23):
to track the carbon removal movement here on the show
stay tuned, and would you do me a favor, Please
share this or another of the more than five hundred
episodes of Sustainability in Your Ear with a friend right now,
or take a moment to write a review of the
show on your favorite podcast platform. It will help your
neighbors find us. You, folks, are the amplifiers that can
(38:43):
spread more ideas to create less waste. So please tell
your friends, family, and coworkers that they can find us
on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Audible, or whatever purveyor of
podcast goodness they prefer. Thank you for your support. I'm Mitracliffe.
This Sustainability in Your Ear and we will be back
with another innovator interview soon. In the meantime, folks, take
(39:05):
care of yourself, take care of one another, and let's
all take care of this beautiful planet of ours. Have
a green day.
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