Speaker 1: Hey, it's Aukshat. I'll be going to COP twenty eight
Speaker 1: in Dubai later this month. I'd love to find a
Speaker 1: way to answer the many questions you may have of
Speaker 1: the United Nations Climate Conference. Check out the show notes
Speaker 1: for details on how to send us your questions. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Welcome to Zero. I'm Akshatrati. This week Reduce, reuse, Remove.
Speaker 1: The sad reality is that even though the world has
Speaker 1: clear climate goals, it was late in starting to do
Speaker 1: something about them. That's why meeting these goals will not
Speaker 1: just mean an end to dumping greenhouse gas emissions, but
Speaker 1: also undoing some of that damage by drawing down carbon
Speaker 1: diox from the air. That's what we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about today. This is the second in a series
Speaker 1: that looks at the state of carbon capture and carbon
Speaker 1: removal technologies. Last week I talked to Emily Grubert. She's
Speaker 1: a professor at Notre Dame University, and we talked about
Speaker 1: the potential and limits of technologies that trap emissions before
Speaker 1: they exit a smokestack. That type of coin source carbon
Speaker 1: capture is expected to do the heavy lifting as the
Speaker 1: world gets close to net zero by twenty fifty. But
Speaker 1: as we get closer to that date, which is only
Speaker 1: twenty seven years from now, that zero models say that
Speaker 1: carbon removal technologies will have to kick into gear. The
Speaker 1: International Energy Agency suggests the world needs one billion tons
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide removed from the air by twenty fifty.
Speaker 1: Currently we draw down less than ten thousand tons each year.
Speaker 2: I think it's really indisputable right now that we will
Speaker 2: overrun our climate safety barriers, and because of that we
Speaker 2: must be able to remove CO two from the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: You can't have net zero without a negative.
Speaker 1: The science is clear industrial carbon removal is a necessary
Speaker 1: part of our climate toolbox. Point source carbon capture is
Speaker 1: cheaper than carbon removal. It costs less than sixty dollars
Speaker 1: a ton to stop CO two from entering the atmosphere,
Speaker 1: whereas it costs ten times as much to pull it
Speaker 1: back down from the air. If carbon removal is to
Speaker 1: play a meaningful role in reaching climate goals, the cost
Speaker 1: has to come down to about one hundred dollars a ton.
Speaker 1: That's how much European companies pay currently for every ton
Speaker 1: of CO two pollution they put out.
Speaker 3: We're at a point where avoiding emissions since the atmosphere
Speaker 3: is no longer enough.
Speaker 1: This is my guest today, Jennifer Wilcox, a professor of
Speaker 1: chemical engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently
Speaker 1: on leave from that position to oversee the Office of
Speaker 1: Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the US Department of Energy.
Speaker 1: The US government has devoted billions of dollars to scaling
Speaker 1: carbon capture technology, and it is now funding carbon removal projects.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask Jen about the US strategy for
Speaker 1: getting carbon removal out of the research phase, what happens
Speaker 1: if we don't hit the price points we need, and
Speaker 1: why for once it was private industry that took the
Speaker 1: lead on developing this clean technology. Jen, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Let's start with how you got to run the Office
Speaker 1: of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management.
Speaker 3: Sure, so, back in twenty twenty, I was approached and
Speaker 3: asked if I would be interested in coming into the
Speaker 3: new administration and overseeing the work and the Office of
Speaker 3: Fossil Energy at that time, and so I had to
Speaker 3: learn a little bit about what that meant. And my
Speaker 3: background is in chemical engineering and getting excited about how
Speaker 3: we separate things like CO two, Whether it's from a
Speaker 3: power plant, or whether it's from a cement plant, or
Speaker 3: maybe from the atmosphere, which is a lot more difficult
Speaker 3: to do. Back in twenty twelve, I did write a
Speaker 3: textbook on carbon capture, and really the reason for me
Speaker 3: of doing that is that I felt that there was
Speaker 3: a lack of human capital in this space that were
Speaker 3: educated in a way that could help to contribute in
Speaker 3: a meaningful approach to helping us to making sure that
Speaker 3: we have this in our toolkit as we are trying
Speaker 3: to achieve net zero goals. And so when I came
Speaker 3: into the position, one of the asks was how can
Speaker 3: we reconcile investments in this space with climate goals. So
Speaker 3: in the first year, we reorganized our entire office and
Speaker 3: we added two keywords carbon management to the office because
Speaker 3: that's big part of what we do.
Speaker 1: Why does having those extra to words, having a sort
Speaker 1: of a new brand so to speak, matter.
Speaker 3: Well, because we're at a point where avoiding emissions into
Speaker 3: the atmosphere is no longer enough. And I think, you know,
Speaker 3: previously when we were only fossil energy before this administration,
Speaker 3: I think the perspective was more about how do we
Speaker 3: make sure that everybody has access to energy in the
Speaker 3: United States, not just access to energy, but that that
Speaker 3: energy is affordable and it's clean. And carbon management more
Speaker 3: broadly has another aspect. Right, It's not just about avoiding
Speaker 3: emissions into the atmosphere. It's about recognizing that the accumulated
Speaker 3: CO two in the atmosphere is mostly also from legacy
Speaker 3: fossil and so recognizing that that should be our mandate too. Right,
Speaker 3: as we look at carbon dioxide removal tackling the accumulated
Speaker 3: CO two that's in the atmosphere, that it may make
Speaker 3: sense that the Office of Fossil Energy is tackling that
Speaker 3: one because most of it was sourced from hydrocarbons that
Speaker 3: we got deep underground.
Speaker 1: In the past decade, we have started talking about carbon removal,
Speaker 1: which is, as you said, taking down the legacy emissions
Speaker 1: that already exist in the atmosphere. Because we've left the
Speaker 1: climate problem so late that to be able to meet
Speaker 1: our climate goals, we are going to have to do
Speaker 1: some of that carbon removal. And so somebody coming cold
Speaker 1: to this subject, how would you separate what is traditional
Speaker 1: carbon capture technology versus what is an important and multifaceted
Speaker 1: way in which you could actually remove carbon dioxide from
Speaker 1: the air.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, how do you separate? We have
Speaker 3: been also just trying to keep these tools separate as well,
Speaker 3: because they're so easy to conflate. So if you're looking
Speaker 3: at a point source and you're retrofitting it with a
Speaker 3: carbon chapter technology, you're avoiding the emissions from ever entering
Speaker 3: the atmosphere. We recognize in the United States there's a
Speaker 3: concept of committed emissions. A lot of power plants, you know,
Speaker 3: were built thirty plus years ago and they'll probably retire,
Speaker 3: especially as we you know, squeeze our wedge of dependence
Speaker 3: on fossil energy down and we have so much opportunity
Speaker 3: in the United States for renewables, but there are going
Speaker 3: to still be some units that are going to continue
Speaker 3: to operate on fossil for the unforeseeable future. And what
Speaker 3: we need to think about is that it is cheaper
Speaker 3: and easier from an economic perspective to retrofit the units
Speaker 3: that are going to persist because they're new coming online
Speaker 3: today in some cases. So there's going to be some
Speaker 3: amount of carbon capturing storage that's going to be point source.
Speaker 3: And the reason why that's important is because now it
Speaker 3: reduces the burden of carbon removal. When we think of
Speaker 3: carbon removal, you know, we all use it so loosely
Speaker 3: now because we recognize that we have to take CO
Speaker 3: two out of the accumulated pool in the atmosphere. All
Speaker 3: climate models tell us we need it, but not we
Speaker 3: need it because we're not going to do deep decarbonization
Speaker 3: fast enough. We actually need it for truly hard to
Speaker 3: decarbonize sectors. We need it for the agricultural sector, We
Speaker 3: need it for aspects of shipping, in aviation that are
Speaker 3: truly hard to decarbonize. And so if we look at
Speaker 3: our emissions in the United States, you know, roughly five
Speaker 3: and a half to six gigatons of CO two every year,
Speaker 3: and when you do the bottom up calculation of thinking
Speaker 3: about what's truly truly hard to decarbonize, it still adds
Speaker 3: up to a little over a gigaton. So that's carbon removal.
Speaker 3: That's the role of carbon removal is to counterbalance truly
Speaker 3: hard to decarbonize sectors, not to counter balance sectors by
Speaker 3: which we have technologies that we can decarbonize.
Speaker 1: When you're talking gigatons, you mean billion tons, right, yes,
Speaker 1: And when you say truly hard to decarbonize. What's the
Speaker 1: hard part? Is it just we don't know how to
Speaker 1: do it, or it's too expensive, or it's politically impossible.
Speaker 1: What is hard?
Speaker 3: Hard means it's not ready today.
Speaker 1: So it's technologically not ready today.
Speaker 3: Well, so technologically not ready, yeah, it's at an R
Speaker 3: and D phase, maybe not at the demonstration phase yet,
Speaker 3: or there's other reasons too write. So it could also
Speaker 3: be that when you look at the aviation sector, we
Speaker 3: get very excited about sustainable aviation fuel, but the question
Speaker 3: is is it going to do it all right? Sustainable
Speaker 3: biomass as a feedstock, do we have enough? When do
Speaker 3: we start competing for food? And even an aspect of
Speaker 3: sustainable aviation is also downstream use of CO two CO
Speaker 3: two with clean hydrogen for synthetic fuels that could play
Speaker 3: a role, But the question is are we going to
Speaker 3: be able to close that wedge quick enough? And so
Speaker 3: it's really unclear even how much carbon removal we're going
Speaker 3: to need to offset the truly hard to decarbonize sectors,
Speaker 3: and if we don't invest today, we're just not going
Speaker 3: to even have it available to us in time.
Speaker 1: Before we discuss the challenge of doing this at scale.
Speaker 1: Let's look at what types of technologies are available. It's
Speaker 1: one thing that keeps surprising me. Point source carbon capture
Speaker 1: typically does just one thing. A chemical process separates our
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide from a mixture of gases before they go
Speaker 1: into a smokestack. Carbon removal can piggyback on that technology.
Speaker 1: Swiss startup climb Works uses the same chemical process, but
Speaker 1: instead of industrial gases, it uses air as the input. However,
Speaker 1: carbon removal technologies can also get weird. I wrote about
Speaker 1: an Australian startup called inter Earth, which takes trees and
Speaker 1: then buries them in highly salty soils. The trees capture
Speaker 1: certo from the air and the salty soils stop it
Speaker 1: from degrading, thus carbon removed. Another idea is to use
Speaker 1: waste from agriculture, turn it into a carbonaceous black goop
Speaker 1: not unlike oil, then sync that deep underground. That's what
Speaker 1: US startup charm Industrial does, and there are tens of
Speaker 1: other wacky ideas available. It's up to investors and governments
Speaker 1: to back the ones that they think are scalable. Carbon
Speaker 1: removal startups have received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding.
Speaker 1: Most of that has come from private industry. The Frontier Fund,
Speaker 1: led by the payments company Stripe, has promised to buy
Speaker 1: one billion dollars of carbon removal. Bill Gates also funds
Speaker 1: many of these startups, and he pays for his own
Speaker 1: carbon removal at a price of six hundred dollars a ton. Now,
Speaker 1: a lot of the green technologies that got started started
Speaker 1: through government R and D. You know, very early solar
Speaker 1: research happened in labs, then it happened in some private industry.
Speaker 1: Same thing with battery. Carbon removal technologies, however, have had
Speaker 1: a different route. A lot of the scale up that
Speaker 1: has happened in the past decade has been driven by
Speaker 1: private industry, even before the government stepped in. You know,
Speaker 1: we had a billion dollar fund launched last year that
Speaker 1: is private industry trying to push carbon removal. Why do
Speaker 1: you think that is the case?
Speaker 3: I mean, we've seen a lot of corporations that have
Speaker 3: announced net zero pledges back got some momentum in the space,
Speaker 3: and the reason is they're recognizing just within their own
Speaker 3: framework of their organization that they can control for the
Speaker 3: most part, those Scope one emissions right even Scope two
Speaker 3: where they're accessing their electricity from. But when you look
Speaker 3: at scope three cement, steel, paper, aviation, food, even some
Speaker 3: of these are very difficult to decarbonize sectors in terms
Speaker 3: of a company that wants to reach net zero, they
Speaker 3: can't control those supply streams and they don't exist today
Speaker 3: in a low carbon way, and so the only way
Speaker 3: to achieve net zero for those groups was to have
Speaker 3: carbon removal as a tool to counterbalance the scope through
Speaker 3: emissions in their portfolio. And so, you know, you started
Speaker 3: to see a lot of interest in some of the
Speaker 3: forest offset programs. And then the wonderful thing is is
Speaker 3: that these companies also have really thoughtful leadership and recognizing
Speaker 3: when you dig into those nature based offsets that are
Speaker 3: available that were not very expensive, that there's not a
Speaker 3: lot of durability in the removal. In fact, a lot
Speaker 3: of uncertainty because in some of those nature based approaches too,
Speaker 3: you see a lot of reversal carbon sinks that we
Speaker 3: rely on even on our climate models becoming carbon sources
Speaker 3: with forest fires. And so that started to bring more
Speaker 3: tension to the very few players several years ago in
Speaker 3: terms of the technological approaches to removing carbon from the
Speaker 3: atmosphere and representing a durable approach to carbon removal.
Speaker 1: In a way, you are saying, there's the benevolent corporation
Speaker 1: that is thinking about climate in a sensible way and realizing, oh,
Speaker 1: we have goals. To hit those goals, we're going to
Speaker 1: have to do so many things. Reduce our emissions first,
Speaker 1: but then what remains we have to remove and because
Speaker 1: offsets nature based offsets haven't worked out, have been caught
Speaker 1: either in a wildfire or in greenwashing, we need to
Speaker 1: find more durable ways to do it. There is the
Speaker 1: non benevolent version of the corporation, which is it's there
Speaker 1: to maximize profits, it is there to protect its reputation,
Speaker 1: and it is making sure that through these small investments
Speaker 1: here or there, which sound like big numbers given the
Speaker 1: relative scale of the industry, they're sort of getting away
Speaker 1: with it. They're dealing the inn which is to reduce
Speaker 1: their emissions really drastically this decade, but instead telling you
Speaker 1: we're doing the right thing, we're going to invest in
Speaker 1: the right solutions, how do we handle the sort of
Speaker 1: moral hazard problem that carbon removal technologies throw at you,
Speaker 1: which is, yes, science says it's needed, it's good to
Speaker 1: invest in them, but aren't we using it as an
Speaker 1: excuse to not reduce emissions today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw that too, and so one of the
Speaker 3: things that we've been doing is, as you know, and
Speaker 3: we'll talk probably about the infrastructure law dollars in a
Speaker 3: little bit, but there's dollars within that legislation that allows
Speaker 3: us to invest in the point source capture, decarbonizing facilities,
Speaker 3: and just focusing on industry for a minute, when you
Speaker 3: look at Scope three emissions of some of these groups cement, paper, steel,
Speaker 3: it's a lot cheaper to invest in decarbonizing those industries
Speaker 3: than it is to use carbon remove to offset. But
Speaker 3: the reality is is that CO two capture has not
Speaker 3: been demonstrated on those facilities yet. So we have the
Speaker 3: Petronova example. We have another example where we can make
Speaker 3: hydrogen through steam methane reforming with carbon capture. We certainly
Speaker 3: know how to take CO two out of the fermentation
Speaker 3: process of bioethanol. So we have some great examples to
Speaker 3: point to where we've tested that technology and it works
Speaker 3: for those cases, but we still need to demonstrate it
Speaker 3: on a blast furnace, as a steel plant and out
Speaker 3: of paper mill and things like that. And so we
Speaker 3: have funding to be able to do that.
Speaker 1: After the break, we get into the numbers. How much
Speaker 1: does the US spend on carbon removal and what happens
Speaker 1: if we don't get the price down to one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars a ton. So let's just talk numbers the government
Speaker 1: programs and the money that's being spent. Let's just start
Speaker 1: with the big programs that are in play after you
Speaker 1: got into office.
Speaker 3: So here we've been talking about carbon removals. We'll start there.
Speaker 3: So we have three point five billion dollars to develop
Speaker 3: build out four director capture hubs, each capable of removing
Speaker 3: a million tons of SEO two per year, and we
Speaker 3: recently awarded two demonstrations.
Speaker 1: Those two hubs will back two different types of technologies. First,
Speaker 1: we'll see carbon Engineering working with Occidental Petroleum to trap
Speaker 1: ZEO two using liquid chemicals. The other one we'll have
Speaker 1: Airloom working with climb Works doing the same but with
Speaker 1: solid absorbents instead.
Speaker 3: And then what's also exciting is recognizing that there's just
Speaker 3: such a portfolio of technologies at different stages of readiness today,
Speaker 3: and we wanted to make sure that we're also investing
Speaker 3: in all those ideas and across the United States, and
Speaker 3: so We also awarded roughly twenty projects at concept in
Speaker 3: front and engineering design at one hundred million dollars collectively,
Speaker 3: recognizing that these are systems that are going to be
Speaker 3: outside and in the elements, right, so how are they
Speaker 3: going to perform based upon different conditions across the United States?
Speaker 3: And what energy resources are they coupling too in order
Speaker 3: to maximize carbon removal.
Speaker 1: The energy equation is stark. Removing one ton of carbon
Speaker 1: dioxide using directair capture can take anywhere between a thousand
Speaker 1: and two thousand kilowot hours of energy. That is roughly
Speaker 1: between four to eight months of electricity that I'm consuming
Speaker 1: with my wife in a London flat. It's a lot
Speaker 1: of electricity. How are we going to justify requiring the
Speaker 1: buildout of so much energy infrastructure that we already are
Speaker 1: doing to try and replace fossil fuel energy infrastructure, but
Speaker 1: we are going to require even more in addition.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that's why we have to
Speaker 3: think about these first of a kind projects as responsible
Speaker 3: projects that we can do in a meaningful way that
Speaker 3: can serve as examples for the end of a kind.
Speaker 3: And one example is citing in a way that you're
Speaker 3: not competing for low carbon energy that would otherwise go
Speaker 3: for decarbonizing fossil power for instance, that needs to be prioritized.
Speaker 1: Now, there are various estimates of the cost of carbon removal.
Speaker 1: One from Howard Herdzock at MIT, who's been a long
Speaker 1: time researcher in this space, comes between six hundred dollars
Speaker 1: and a thousand dollars a ton. One from David Keith
Speaker 1: at Howard, who also is the founder of Carbon Engineering,
Speaker 1: which is one of the companies that got the award
Speaker 1: for our Director Capture Hub alongside others, has put it
Speaker 1: between three hundred dollars and four and twenty five dollars
Speaker 1: a ton. The goal eventually is to try and get
Speaker 1: it all down to one hundred dollars a ton, sort
Speaker 1: of a realistic number. That's about how much the carbon
Speaker 1: price is right now here in Europe, for example. How
Speaker 1: realistic is that aim, because yes, we've seen cost declines
Speaker 1: in green technologies for solar, for wind, for batteries for
Speaker 1: electric cars, but they have come because of what is
Speaker 1: unit economics. They make millions of the same thing again
Speaker 1: and again, and they reduce the price. In direct air
Speaker 1: capture or carbon removal, you could get some unit economics,
Speaker 1: but we're still not talking millions of them. So how
Speaker 1: realistic do you think is the priced target that we
Speaker 1: have for carbon removal?
Speaker 3: So the idea with the carbon negative shot and that
Speaker 3: that is what we're investing in DOE and not just
Speaker 3: our office, but our EA is part of the Office
Speaker 3: of Science and eer E, Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy,
Speaker 3: but our four offices of together to invest our base
Speaker 3: appropriations across R and D to be able to get
Speaker 3: to first of a kind demonstrations. So in that space,
Speaker 3: we are estimating that if we invest and get to
Speaker 3: the scale of millions and tons of removal per year.
Speaker 3: Once we hit millions of tons per year removals, we
Speaker 3: will get down that cost curve with a target of
Speaker 3: one hundred dollars per ton. But to be honest, we
Speaker 3: don't know that until we build you know, more thousands
Speaker 3: of tons of removal. You know, that's where we're at today.
Speaker 3: We need to get three more zeros in. We need
Speaker 3: to get to millions, and I think at that millions,
Speaker 3: once we're actually operating that facility and we are transparent
Speaker 3: and true about the cost, we'll learn from that experience.
Speaker 3: Right If it's six hundred dollars a ton, if it's
Speaker 3: three hundred dollars a ton, and then the idea, though,
Speaker 3: is to not just stop there. The idea is to
Speaker 3: usher a new generation of direct dere capture technologies to
Speaker 3: be able to be on the pipeline of more demonstrations.
Speaker 3: It may not be that one, right, that first one
Speaker 3: that they all look like.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of things in net zero scenario
Speaker 1: that we have to think about, and we can't always
Speaker 1: have faith in all those things. We can't have faith
Speaker 1: in politics, it may swing here or there. We can't
Speaker 1: have faith in economics and finance, it may swing here
Speaker 1: or there. Technology is one that we can have a
Speaker 1: little more faith in because we understand the science, we
Speaker 1: know some of the history, et cetera. But say we
Speaker 1: don't reach the one hundred dollars per ton target number,
Speaker 1: what happens to carbon removal? Then?
Speaker 3: I think it depends too on what are the other
Speaker 3: options that are cheaper. We talked about what truly hard
Speaker 3: to decarbonize means. So when we get to the point
Speaker 3: we cross that, and we'll call it a finish line,
Speaker 3: it's more of like a water station stop or something
Speaker 3: like when we get there at that millions of tons
Speaker 3: of removal, because we still need three more zeros to
Speaker 3: get to a billion or a gig a ton, Right,
Speaker 3: So it's like, once we get there, if we're only
Speaker 3: say at millions of tons of removal, and we haven't
Speaker 3: hit one hundred dollars mark, and we look at what
Speaker 3: we're trying to counterbalance, we might have to need more
Speaker 3: policy to further incentivize direct air capture. I don't think
Speaker 3: it's the policy that's going to get us to the
Speaker 3: finish line. I think it's the policy that's going to
Speaker 3: probably get us to the millions of tons of removal.
Speaker 1: And that sort of speaks to the importance of having
Speaker 1: a portfolio approach to try and tackle this problem. That
Speaker 1: you're not betting on one technology or one horse or
Speaker 1: even one company do get us there. Now, if you
Speaker 1: were to think about the criticisms that come your way
Speaker 1: for doing the work that you're doing, what do you
Speaker 1: think is the biggest criticism of your own work? Maybe
Speaker 1: an unreasonable one and maybe a reasonable one.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great question. I do feel right now
Speaker 3: a lot of criticisms in this space, in part because
Speaker 3: maybe of the version one point zero of what carbon
Speaker 3: management look like. And I think we have so many
Speaker 3: solutions that we are leaning on fossil energy companies to
Speaker 3: be there with us as kind of part of the solution,
Speaker 3: but at the same time they haven't always been good
Speaker 3: stewards or good players on their word, and so it
Speaker 3: makes it really difficult. I think what's going to be critical, though,
Speaker 3: is working with that energy community and being able to
Speaker 3: help that energy community be able to see a path.
Speaker 3: When you look at the downstream management of CO two,
Speaker 3: the only way of kind of disposing of CO two
Speaker 3: that scales with our emissions is deep injection in geologic formations.
Speaker 3: We can convert it to synthetic fuels and chemicals, we
Speaker 3: can put it in our built environment and buildings and
Speaker 3: things like that, and all those things will be wonderful,
Speaker 3: but at the end of the day, it needs to
Speaker 3: go deep underground where it came from. And the community
Speaker 3: that the workforce that is skilled to do that are
Speaker 3: the same ones that produced oil and gas and coal
Speaker 3: to begin with. And so it's that workforce, it's that engineering.
Speaker 3: And so you may have a direct air capture hub,
Speaker 3: you may have a carbon capture project, and you say,
Speaker 3: I'm not gonna partner with the fossil fuel industry. That's great,
Speaker 3: but at the end of the day, to dispose of
Speaker 3: that CO two in a meaningful way, you're gonna call
Speaker 3: on the expertise. We can get to millions of tons,
Speaker 3: but how are we going to get to gigatons? Are
Speaker 3: we going to rely on taxpayer dollars again? Or maybe
Speaker 3: we can get the energy companies to step up and
Speaker 3: help us get to scale, because they've got the workforce,
Speaker 3: they have the engineers, they have the expertise, and they
Speaker 3: could make up that gap.
Speaker 1: That was a great conversation. Covin capture is a complicated subject,
Speaker 1: and so the work that you do at the Department
Speaker 1: of Energy is enabling both clarity while it's pushing the technology.
Speaker 1: So thank you for your time.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Carbon removal technologies sometimes get overhyped, so it's important to
Speaker 1: remember that the first thing to do is to reduce emissions.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Zero. If you like this episode,
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Speaker 1: Zero's producer is Oscar Boyd and senior producer is Christine Driskell.
Speaker 1: Our theme music is composed by Wonderly Special thanks to
Speaker 1: Kirra Bindrim, Brian Kahan, and Michelle ma I'm Akshatrati back
Speaker 1: next week.