Interview and report: Carbon Removal
Q: What is carbon removal and why is it important?
A: Humans emit about 50 billion tons of CO₂-equivalents every year. To avoid the worst effects of climate change, we need to get global emissions to net zero emissions by 2050. That means broadly doing two things.
First: radically reducing the amount of CO₂ we’re pumping into the atmosphere every year.
Second: permanently removing huge amounts of carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere and ocean. Carbon removal is important both because it’s unlikely we’ll be able to fully eliminate all sources of emissions, and because, even if we did, we’d still need to deal with the CO₂ that’s already in the atmosphere from the last 100+ years. Most climate models estimate we’ll need to remove around five to ten billion tons per year by 2050, roughly the equivalent of the United States’ annual emissions.
We’ve already done a fair amount of damage to our ecosystem. And even with new, clean sources of energy, we’ll need to clean up the mess we’ve already made. That’s where carbon removal comes into play.
We did a Q&A with Nan Ransohoff, Head of Climate at Stripe, on carbon removal and Frontier’s approach to it. Just yesterday, Frontier announced its second round of carbon removal purchases.
Stripe worked with three promising startups working on carbon removal to tell their stories, and we’re sharing those videos below to give you a tangible sense of the breadth of approaches to carbon removal. Maybe it even motivates a few of you to tackle similarly ambitious projects or support theirs.
Charm Industrial – Putting Oil Back Underground
Mission Zero – Capturing CO₂ from the Air
Travertine – Converting CO₂ into rocks