 Hello, everybody. I hope you're doing well today. Welcome to the state of carbon tech I'm coming to you live from the empty XPRIZE office. Don't tell anybody, but I've snuck in here So that my kids don't interrupt me every five minutes during this session jokes aside though It's great to be with you. Thank you for taking a couple moments to be with us this morning If you caught our state of carbon tech summit at the Canadian Consulate in New York City last year during climate week Welcome back. If this is the first time at the event welcome to the 2020 virtual version It's been an exciting climate week a busy climate week And of course it comes in the midst of a pretty incredible and crazy 2020 But nevertheless climate change continues our fight to innovate our way out of this problem Both the equity the technology the policy the finance everything about it continues and carbon tech is still front and center in the middle of that What we've got lined up for you today are a great couple of presentations followed by a panel discussion So we're going to hear about some latest news and insights from the circular carbon Network We're going to hear about the carbon to value program from GreenTown Labs and Urban Future Lab from New York And then we've got a panel of fantastic speakers to really chop it up and get into a bit of a conversation About what is the state of carbon tech now for this climate week? And what does it look going forward? I'll remind everyone that's joined us today to please use the Q&A function if you've got questions That'll really kind of kick off in about 30 minutes when we get into the panel discussion The session is starting now and it's going to wrap up in 90 minutes So once once I get through just saying again, thank you for joining us and welcoming everyone I'm going to take a moment to kick it over to Nicholas Eisenberger Nicholas Eisenberger is from Pure Energy Partners XPrize is partner in standing up the circular carbon network If you haven't checked it out, have a look at circularcarbon.org We've worked with a lot of organizations to bring together a lot of great data resources And so now what I'd love to do is hand it over to Nicholas to walk us through a short presentation on what the latest with the Organization and that project is but also what are some of the insights that we're gaining for this carbon tech space as We think about this climate week and as we take it forward So without further ado, let me take it and hand it over to Nicholas Nicholas. Are you ready? If you are go ahead and share screen. Hey, there you are. Please take it away, Nick Thank you, Marcus and welcome everyone. So glad you can join us particularly during these strange times as Marcus said I am not here in this lovely landscape. It's my COVID escape landscape but here in Connecticut and Glad we can do these kinds of things which can draw people from around the world in this in this new Climate week in these new times as Marcus said I wanted to take a few moments to just give you an update on the circular carbon network and some of the research We've been doing to help tee up the panel discussion today. So with that I'm going to share my screen and That work Marcus Okay, thank you everyone Terrific, let's dive right in. So the circular carbon network Started in 2007 as a joint effort between X-Prize and pure energy partners After standing up the carbon X-Prize, we understood that there were a lot of people around the world working on these issues But they weren't connected We felt that we could advance the state of the art more quickly by forming a network and creating a self-aware community And starting to enrich the ecosystem where we thought we could bring the most value was really focusing on the commercial and Capital dimensions. There's lots of organizations that are working on policy and technical dimensions But we really want to dig in when we had the expertise and sort of the visibility around. How do we dramatically accelerate? investment and then deployment As we get started here just to touch on those sometimes tricky issues of terminology which have been Challenging for our field for some time and I don't think it's going to end immediately We define circular carbon as essentially an umbrella term encompassing both carbon tech and carbon removal and The idea is that Technologies and solutions that are directly touching the carbon molecule and trying to cycle them into something That has some positive impact on climate change So we can get into and there are certainly debates that should go on in terms of improving our use of terminology Particularly as we try to communicate with others, but that's how we define it So I won't spend a lot of time on this because you're joining us today I presume that you think this is important, but this is really important. There are a few things that are more important at least in our view science tells us that we have to both reduce dramatically the amount of CO2 emissions we're putting into the air and Remove CO2 from the air at massive levels hundreds of gigatons if not thousands of gigatons over the coming decades and in turn those Present potentially as we'll talk about today significant business opportunities And in human development opportunities as we transition from a fossil-based economy to a using, you know, recycled or cycled CO2 in its place as Today we're going to focus more on the carbon to the carbon tech the carbon to value pathways and there are many of them We live on a carbon-based planet many of the things that we enjoy in society are based on carbon and You can see the list here and and some evocative pictures, but we're surrounded by carbon Nature itself is really our our ecosystems are all built on carbon There's no reason why we can't use human engineering to try to mimic that and take this waste or this excess We have and create value from it and there are many ways to do that In addition as I mentioned significant upside carbon 180 and many others have looked at the opportunities over time to Take carbon and put it into products that we value building materials fuels fertilizers plastics chemicals, etc. And It's a very significant opportunity. They estimated up to six trillion dollars in 2030 Is the total available market for those different channels? So Lots of good news lots of growing momentum We certainly feel this increasing urgency the climate science is clear the climate impacts are Unfortunately increasingly clear whether you're talking about glaciers or massive storms We were hit by what I call a hernado Combined hurricane and tornado just a few weeks ago on the east coast the west coast of the United States has been hit terribly by the fires and Many places around the world are experiencing this in addition We've all been shut in and see what the consequences are of avoiding and not preparing for a crisis with this pandemic So the urgency is there and that is driving momentum We're seeing a lot more interest across all those areas on the right But key challenges remain First of all, we don't have a lot of time Science tells us we have a decade or more to really get a grip on The climate issue and the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere. We need a massive amount of capital There's still perceptions people are still confused about these issues where should we Spend our time in terms of addressing climate change and what are some of the better solutions and Then of course techno economics There are real issues that need to be addressed in terms of getting the solutions to work and getting them down at a cost that the market can bear So there are a set of critical needs that need to be addressed as soon as possible. We need to continue to innovate We need to dramatically accelerate scaling And the amount of capital going to the field and ultimately deployment so to succeed at this endeavor We essentially have to build an entire new ecosystem Not not quite from scratch, but very very quickly at really a historic scale We've done this before with things like power plants at the end of the last century or two centuries ago aircraft manufacturing automobile manufacturing we have ramped up In in human history things at the scale that's required, but it's it's very up there So we've got to get out. We have a lot of work to do So CCN is really built on that idea of how do we help this ecosystem come together and thrive? So these are just some of the key stakeholders that we're focused on trying to bring together in a self-aware community So what do we do? We build we try to convene people bring them together. This is an example today of this event We've done as things as the fourth or fifth climate week event. We've done we've done many other events We participate in other people's events. We try to help bring this conversation In into many places around the world and then provide real content and education to stakeholders about the state of the market and about the opportunities and Ultimately, we're trying to drive towards action So we've built a set of indexes which I'm going to talk to you about it shortly that Try to really create visit more visibility into the trends that each of these stakeholders are facing and the And ultimately help them connect and collaborate And and an act more effectively We're very pleased with the audience that we've been able to Grow here over the last couple of years. We have Over 6,000 subscribers to our newsletter and approaching 800 members. I have 500 investor subscribers Nicely distributed across our different stakeholder groups as you can see there on the upper right and People are responding very Strongly to the data. We're putting out some real institutions asking and using our data on a regular basis So we're very pleased that We put we're putting this effort in and it seemed to have a positive impact in the real world So I just want to take a moment before we dive in the data to quickly thank Our sponsors and partners first of all X prize. It's been The primary sponsor from the beginning here and also the New York community trust. It's been a stalwart supporter And then all our partnered partners some of whom are participating today Pat and others and These the data that we bring you today and I tell you about really wouldn't have been possible to aggregate without the help of Collaborative organic collaborative minded organizations who share our passion for trying to grow this ecosystem So I really want to thank all of them And then of course our team You know myself and my partner Samir Marcus and Nikki, you know, we've been working out this day today for several years now and I'm very proud of what we've achieved, but I really want to point out the the tireless effort of my colleague Edward Hill who for the past two years has been you know our primary data jockey and Is tremendously talented at that and these indexes wouldn't been possible without his help and I Also want to thank over the last six months Zach Grace Axel and Ariana who have as fellows or interns really weighed in and helped us put the indexes together that I'm about to give you a quick brief overview of and You know in this in this strange times. I have only met one of them. I just be happy because he happens to live in my town But we've been very effective and very It's been a great joy to work with all of you. So thank you so much So let's dive into some of the data here So I'm going to go in index by index that we've built the first one we started with was the innovator landscape and the reason that we did this is that we Investors ourselves What really was the pool of technology developers solution providers that was out there working on carbon value and carbon removal So we really tried to aggregate as much to be could That to provide context for others or investors to say there's a there there And you should get you should get in as well as corporates as well as talent looking for entrepreneurial opportunities and so This was really focused on carbon tech, but we're now starting to expand to carbon removal But you can see we've got several hundred companies and across the world and you know perfectly honest We're very We're bound by North America. That's our you know where we have the easiest reach We have some good partners in Europe and so we've been able to bolster there We're definitely eager to expand the richness of our data into Europe. Sorry into Asia The Middle East South America and other geographies so we welcome your input on that So just I'm gonna fly by here and just give a couple of tidbits and so we can get to the conversation We are going to release a market report next month at verge I'll tell you about that at the end and there'll be a lot more data in that market report But I just wanted to give a little bit of the flavor of a couple things here first of all We're seeing a real increase in the amount of companies being formed in this space, you know Just year by year a growing amount of companies. We haven't really been able to add 2020 data there yet But we will soon So entrepreneurs are really entering this this is a increasingly active field and I would say at least At a gut level we can feel that pace picking up even in 2020 The the types of companies these are the the pathways that they're pursuing The kinds of products are bringing to market as well as the customers that they're serving are very diverse So this just speaks to the customers We have a lot of data on the different product pathways, but not showing that here in the interest of time But you can see here that there's a tremendous amount of diversity in the different customers that these carbon-de-value companies are serving But of course a strong focus on oil and gas and chemical industries Not surprising. We're dealing with molecules carbon molecules Those are the companies the industries that know how to deal with those molecules that have some of the most Biggest issues with those molecules, but it is more diverse than that. So we found that interesting Similarly, if you look at the capital dimension, there's a broad spectrum of Capital providers that have invested in these firms So that was encouraging to see and of course, there's a concentration The government corporate and angel level, which is not surprising for a relatively early stage ecosystem where you have You know governments with look, you know kind of getting over take risk forward on technologies coming down the pike Strategics that see the real need to get engaged in this new area and in angels who are often the most You know individuals who have some capital who are willing to take a risk So that's not surprising, but it does suggest that there's this institutional investor Gap or you know, there's still more room for institutional investors to get involved Although as you'll see that is starting as we go over the capital index So that we also did a deal hub not just so the the innovator index is really Focused on trying to provide context and color To the growing ecosystem of technology providers innovators the deal hub is to try to help You know, as I said at the beginning facilitate real action real investment real connectivity between investors and entrepreneurs and we've been tracking over 80 deals and close to half a billion dollars of deal value across both project and Corporate equity and of course, this is more focused on the kinds of criteria that are of interest to investors in terms of deal size stage Etc. And so let me give you just a couple of tidbits here There's definitely a wide variety of investment sizes that we're seeing so, you know investor there is opportunity across different types of of If you check sizes if you will in this space so a broad spectrum of opportunities for capital providers At the same time we do see a still concentration at the seed and series a level But it is growing at the series being and later rounds This compared to our data in 2019 is definitely seeing some maturation down the pipe Companies tell us that they're really seeking specific types of investors as they're thinking about growing their companies and you can see that here Top of the list of course is corporate and that's also reflects to some of the major providers of capital have been But there's a feeling I think that they the corporates can provide the technical and commercial Capacity to help them scale There's also a big interest in family offices a sense that they may have the ability to May have some concern for climate and may have stability to Flexibly deploy capital in way that institutional investors may not yet And then of course there is a growing interest in venture where you you get the benefits of having institutional discipline investors So what are the implications of this we can argue different things? But for me it suggests that there may be if if some of these early investors are right There may be a big opportunity For people get in early to have big returns and big impact So let's look at the investor landscape. We're tracking a hundred and twenty two firms That are deploying capital across all types venture private equity project Public family office, etc Across these companies and you know close to two hundred billion dollars of assets under management Of course not all that's going into this space, but a significant amount of it is I think we're all aware that there's increasing interest in climate solutions across the investment landscape But our focus here in our index is really to say who's interested in active in circular carbon specifically And our goal here is not just to facilitate that connectivity between investors and entrepreneurs that I talked about earlier But also to help investors if you think about Someone trying to deploy capital They really want to know where the follow-on capital or the co-investors are going to come from or they may be Trying to think contemplating putting together a fund in this space but You know want to know where the sources of capital for that might be or people who want to put capital Into funds who are the leading investors? So we're also really trying to address the investor audience here and We're really pleased with what we find we're finding here first of all In terms of who are some of the most active investors you can see the different types of institutions We're tracking here and in the green bar You know both the number of firms in that institutional bucket that have deployed capital and so far we're seeing that VCs and angels are the most active investors in the circular carbon space and Private equity and venture have deployed the most capital in terms of raw dollars In terms of the people that were tracking or the institutions that were tracking in the investor space over 82 percent Say carbon tech is a core focus or something that they currently consider You know words are somewhat cheap But we do see as I just showed you on the previous slides from real activity but I was surprised by this is a very high percentage and very encouraging and Over 70 percent say they say the same recarbon removal I think carbon tech has got a little bit longer tail in terms of where it's coming from It's been around a little bit longer, but carbon removal is up and coming and get garnering significant interest as well so What are these investors interested in so some of the top focus areas you can see here Really at the very top you have carbon to value pathways around materials chemicals and polymers and then also carbon capture from both existing sources and air That's you know the the direct air capture has been rising on the on the radar I have some interest in direct air capture. So just to be aware, but I It's it's it's encouraging to see that the both the capture piece and the carbon of value piece are starting to to grow in interest and interestingly Enhance all the recovery is not seen as something as a great interest to investors It's a controversial topic And we'll see some more about that in the later data here. So just quickly going into The corporate landscape now. I think we're all aware that the last Couple of years have seen a dramatic increase in corporate announcements in this space And we're tracked we what we've tried to do is sort of put some numbers behind that You can see a representative sample of some of the corporations that we're tracking here They represent approximately a tenth of all global emissions and a tenth of all Fortune 500 revenue and what we've tried to do is say where there are intersection points with a circular carbon across r&d Investment project hosting purchasing sales. We've sort of seen these as the most substantial intersection points where they can help Grow the sector And so this is a sense of what we're seeing in terms of broad industry representation on the left and on the right sort of a breakdown of where they are Intersecting so r&d and investment are the top and that's not surprising again because we're still relatively early although again It's all maturing But those would be natural places for corporations to start but it is distributed In terms of their focus areas 73 are focused on carbon capture And 30 on see carbon value into fuels and chemicals and then some of these other numbers And finally in terms of their investment so that was r&d in terms of their investment We talked a little bit about general investors. Here's what corporate investors are really focused on First and foremost capture And then carbon value again, and then again not eor which is a little bit more surprising Finally in the capitalist, sorry the catalyst landscape Just a quick preview here the catalysts are organizations that are really essential to the growth of any emerging market They're the supporting organizations. They're the accelerators the service providers the ngos and all the different types of people That really help a market mature and provide the services they need and so We have we're tracking these types of organizations in our index catalyst index and for the moment is dominated by ngos and convening orgs like ccn and Climate week, but you're starting to see commercial service providers and project developers enter as well And these are some of the major core activities. They're bringing to the table So it does suggest that this ecosystem is growing and maturing. There's a richness there that we didn't see just a couple years ago I'm going to skip this in the interest of time. This is just a little Insight into the specific focus areas of these organizations But the idea is we're trying to help use this index to to match people in the industry who need services with those Who have the capability and the passion around those services? So I hope this has been helpful to give you a sense of flavor and and and some inspiration for our discussion How can you get engaged? Well first send us your data We're always eager to to take in more data so we can enrich in this this landscape Which we do share on our website join ccn. It's free. We'd love to have you part of our network partner with us We'd love to work with you in more more intense and integrated ways We're working on our programming coming up. We've got a lot of resources we need to Source and deploy to help continue to grow this field and as I mentioned at the beginning We'd love you to join us continue the conversation at verge next month We'll be releasing the market report on all this data. So stay tuned on that So thanks very much and look forward to the rest of this conversation. I'll throw it back to marcus Fantastic. Thank you so much nicolas It's nice. It's nice problem to have to have a bit too much data to be able to share So that's another reminder to everybody look out for the report that's got the full Compliment of data and analysis. Uh, there was one great question in the q&a I think the answer is going to be in the forthcoming report. We'll see if we have an interim answer in a moment, I'm going to throw the uh I don't know what to call it the control over to pat sapensley But before I do I'd love to engage the audience in a really quick poll So I'll ask katyn to put up our poll question And I'll let pat know that you're on about one minute standby This is just a way to give us a sense of the audience and we'll be sure to Share these results back. We're going to give everyone about another 20 seconds or so So give this a quick click. How would you describe your current professional focus on circular carbon issues? We've got a couple of other the other of these questions that will sprinkle through the session Probably at the transitions to give us a bit of time to digest this but We always appreciate your feedback and also Want to pick your brains a little bit later with a couple of other questions As you finish up your vote, uh, I'll Prepare to hand over to pat pat's going to tell us a little bit about a really exciting carbon to value program that she and others Are putting together. This is a great opportunity for innovators It's a great opportunity for corporates looking to get into this space or to accelerate their participation Before I do I'll just point out. I think everyone can see this but It looks like We've got What 60 percent about two-thirds of people are telling us that circular carbon issues are their core focus or a core focus And then we have a lot of other people that are working on it as a as a one of many other focus areas So that's great. Appreciate that pull functions working With that I would love to hand over to pat invite you to Turn on your video Share your screen and take us through some of the highlights of the new exciting program that you are behind Over to you pat Terrific. Thank you very much marcus and thanks for set. Can you hear me? Yeah, terrific. Um, thank you for setting us up with all that great information. Nicholas. It is wonderful to see the momentum That has occurred in this industry in the last couple of years, especially since last year's summit Let me try now to share my screen I'm going to turn off my video Because my bandwidth is so limited that if I try to do both We'll have a problem. So This was up a minute ago. Of course, it's not up now There you go Okay, can you all see that? I hope that's a yes. I can't hear you. Can you hear me? We can hear you pat. I can't quite see your slides All right, let's see. What's happening here? I see them Better looks good. You're all good. Okay. Thank you. It wouldn't be a zoom call without someone having a little trouble Um, all right, as I said, thank you so much, uh, to for inviting us to participate On this, uh, call. It's wonderful to see the progress that's been made. I'm delighted to Talk to people about the carbon to value initiative Uh, this is going to be a program run by the urban future lab of which I am head The urban future lab is at nyutend on school of engineering We're a center that has 10 years of experience in using entrepreneurship as a tool to combat climate change So we've helped about 70 companies to scale up 90 of them are still up and running They've raised hundreds of millions of dollars and created hundreds of jobs And and I I like to think that we are a big part of the engine That is building the new york clean economy Uh, for this program We are partnering with let's just see if this will progress Yeah, no, yeah Uh, for the ctv initiative we've collaborated with a spectacular group of partners. You can see them here um to drive the creation of a new and thriving Carbon tech ecosystem We hope to do nothing short then contribute to the creation of a new industry Nicholas gave you some of the numbers. There's a six trillion dollar market opportunity And and we define carbon tech quite broadly It includes both the capture and conversion of carbon dioxide into valuable end products As well as business model innovation needed to drive the market in order to drive the market We need very capable partners. We have two state agencies working with us NYSERDA, New York state energy research development authority Who has made this an important part of the climate leadership and community protection act of of governor comos And of course our partners at the consulate general of canada and new york who've been very Uh involved in this sector since the start and and hosted actually the summit last year You just heard a little bit about what we do at the urban future lab Our other partners here are the really excellent green town labs and fronhofer usa institute both out of massachusetts We have partnered with them in the past. We have great success working with them I'd say more than two-thirds of the young companies that we've Worked on with them together have walked away from our accelerators With corporate partnerships or some kind of channel to market partnership So this multi Stakeholder best in class consortium Will help to rapidly commercialize and scale up carbon tech innovation And and in everything we do we try very hard to build strong collaborations. I'm sure we've done that here So our process is going to be that you should look for in october a call for entries The rfp will go out in october and then we we pull in these companies There's an in-depth technical analysis led by fronhofer, which is a group of scientists. These are the scientists who helped Two decades ago to commercialize solar In germany, so we know we have the right partners here And we will down select from the global entries that come in We'll select eight to ten companies to work with And then we're going to de-risk those companies by providing them mentorship training workshops Preparation for work with the corporates. This will be a dedicated work of corporates that i'll talk about in a minute Our experience with with these partners in the past has proven our methodology you know in fact recently Announced a climate week yesterday or the day before uh The department of buildings in new york city announced that they would be collaborating with four startups in new york on building energy efficiency And three of the four were our companies. So that tells you a little bit about the quality of our work Um, the the most important part of course will be the collaboration with the corporates will be on What we're going to call the carbon tech leadership council Deployment is everything and those those corporates will help with deployment Um, so how do we do it? There will be three Three years of accelerator programs one each year each accelerator will Run intensively for six months and then of course we will continue to work with them as we move on to the next group There will be a tailored customized program To help startups bridge the gap between their technology and the market, you know very often I've worked with a lot of engineers and scientists in the past very often. They're quite far from the market They don't have the market knowledge they need by pairing them with the corporates They will get that market intelligence and it will help them to succeed And we're going to cast the net widely this multi technology focus means that We don't certainly at the beginning of the program Know everything that's out there and everything that will work We want to see and observe everything that will work We want to try to find the right corporates to work with Everything from advanced materials and chemicals to the agriculture sector energy Yeah, the natural resources So deployment help is critical. So we'll find the companies and we'll pair them with corporates and that will Help them to get ahead They'll have access to industry and technology relevant expertise and knowledge Based on the best carbon tech thought leaders These will be people coming from academic institutions and some of the NGOs here today. I'm not ready to announce anything yet, but Who the members are of the carbon leader? Carbon tech leadership council But it will be the best of the NGOs the best of the academics and the most important big multinational corporations in those areas I mentioned Together we'll be able to boost deployment because that is what will make these companies successful So the carbon tech leadership council Will be Top executives. It will be invitation only We will invite some now and we will invite some as we find the startups That we wish to provide with corporate help So this is an ongoing process Um, the startups will have the opportunity To hear firsthand From the clc members about their carbon tech strategies about what it is they need what the gaps are What What the market needs and what they're looking for and why they're looking for these things I'm sure we'll talk about the why of it a little bit later in the conversation Um, I think the clc members will benefit from participation Because they will be able to supplement their own rnd. They can't do rnd on everything They'll be able to supplement their own rnd with the best of class startups They'll get the opportunity to work with new york state and with canada They'll get the opportunity to collaborate elbow to elbow at the quarterly meetings with the top NGOs and the top academics in the field So this will have value for everyone and help our companies to scale up So here's the website c to the initiative dot com on the website We now have a form you can fill out if you're a startup and you're interested in knowing when the rfp goes out Please fill that out If you're a corporate that's interested in joining us Please make that known too. There's another form for corporates There's lots to read about the initiative there and we would be delighted to have you join us So thank you marcus over to you. I'm going to stop the share here Fantastic. Thank you so much pat exciting new initiative for innovators for corporates for others. Stay tuned for that Panel you are on deck david uh poor pat. We're going to hear from you again and rio before we do Let's pop up another question. Kayden if you've got it ready drop it We'd love your feedback again folks through a poll We'll do the same thing we did last time. We'll flash it up on the screen give you about 30 seconds to think on it and report back A year from now. Do you anticipate that you will spend more or less time on circular carbon issues? Okay Give you a couple more seconds to answer that More time. Look at that. We're growing. I think we're biased in this audience, but also it's good to hear That most folks see that they might be spending more time I think that's great because it's clear the space is growing But also it takes really I think individuals the people that have joined this call and many others Like us to really take it forward. So that's great to hear Alrighty, I'm excited to get into a bit more discursive part of the the program today I'm going to invite a poor of sinha david elenowitz Rio okumara and pat sapin's lead to come back turn on your videos on mute yourselves These are folks that represent a broad spectrum of this space the entrepreneur investors corporates Catalyst organizations they all come from a different perspective. They've all got deep experience and expertise And I think creativity in the space and they've all got a slightly different angle on it. So I'm going to really focus the rest of the time on getting them to Tell us inspiring and creative and thoughtful things But before I do I'll ask them to introduce themselves David, I will start with you and ask you to please introduce yourself Tell us how I came to the space and briefly what you're up to Great. Thank you marcus. I spent 25 years in private equity Where I invested in scaled companies from the tens of millions the hundreds of millions of dollars And then about two years ago. I decided to shift 100 to climate change Originally as a philanthropist and then after a few months after seeing the IPCC report talking about the absolute need for carbon dioxide removal I decided to shift gears focus on the technology side and eventually set up a new entity called zero carbon partners And which I invested just my own capital and look to invest in and scale companies low carbon space I've made five investments to date The most relevant for this area is one in selidia One of the leading co2 to concrete companies Where I actually just this past week we closed a 75 million dollar capital round that I led So that was kind of exciting news in the co2 to concrete space I'm also a senior advisor to global thermostat one of the world's three directorate capture companies and part-time advisor to x prize for the carbon dioxide removal prize, so But very excited to be here and certainly looking forward to seeing what we can all do to further You know scale up the the co2 removal and c2 utilization spaces Thanks so much david Rio, maybe I'll go to you next and then a poor then pat. Rio, please introduce yourself. Marcos. Hi. Can you hear me? Perfect. Okay. My name is real I'm working in Mitsubishi corporation silicon value office. I'm based in Palo Alto, North California Mitsubishi is Doing very much anything. We have 10 business body calls including natural gas petroleum mining infrastructure power consumer blah blah blah so We are kind of conglomerate And myself my background is oil and gas natural gas which you may hate so But I completely shifted to the climate change type of business So, uh under Mitsubishi corporation. We have recently announced three ccu programs to mineralization concrete blocks We very recently in this week. We have announced a partnership with blue planet Which is a startup company in seacon valley. They are making co2 aggregate And uh, suikom, which is japanese technology Capturing co2 into concrete blocks a very similar technology And other one is a synthetic fabric More specifically co2 based on para xiden Demonstration project in japan. So Mitsubishi corporation is very keen. Actually the ccu is very versatile and cross industry type of business, so By having our versatile business Capabilities, we are keen to contribute to enhance this industry. Thank you Thank you rio, uh poor over to you Oh, yep. Yeah You can hear me now, right Excellent, uh, my name is a poor sinha. Uh, i'm still Going with my covet hair style. So I apologize for not looking as formal as the rest of the panel here Um, but the company itself. Yeah, marcus marcus can relate. Um, we're a six year old company We just turned six about a month ago. Uh, and we're a calorie based carbon utilization firm that has been working on Uh, converting carbon emissions into solid nano materials for use in construction plastics As well as a range of applications looking at pharmaceuticals and energy storage I did want to just very quickly show A little bit of state of carbon tech from our perspective I'll try to share my screen here marcus. Let me know if you can see it um, so The reason I wanted to share these couple of slides is just to show Um, I guess what we have found to be a very hopeful Kind of message and something that has kept us going pretty pretty hectic way through the summer Um, what you see at the top of the screen here is a panorama image. I took on my phone this is our setup at the Alberta carbon convergent tech center where the Canadian leg of the carbon x-prise is happening This is our eight ton a day reactor that you see in the middle of the screen And our 50 by 100 foot building that's actually housing that along with the gripe train and a lot of the auxiliary carbon capture Or carbon transport systems from the capture system. That's further back on the screen there This picture is already outdated But it does show The amount of progress that we've been able to make like this was literally untouched land as of five months ago And we've been able to set up this entire thing over What has really been an extremely taxing time with covet and and it's repercussions both here in Alberta as well as elsewhere And what we found fascinating in our journey through the carbon x-prise is how much that is forced us to accelerate Since we actually started as a company I mean as a trl one one company back in fall 2014 We were still dealing with small reactors that were the size of a small cookie jar And in the first four years of our company's existence, that's really where we stayed because we're validating the technology At a very early stage of development We were arguably only at trl four when the x-prise began back a few years ago And just in the year and a half since the semifinals we've been able to Take on what is essentially an industrial operation And the hope is that with the results that we're able to show here We're able to engage in a meaningful way with strategic companies like Mitsubishi and others To show that we can not only reduce the carbon footprint of legacy industries such as construction Plastics and others which we think are going to be a big part of our future moving forward But also reduce carbon emissions from the atmosphere as a result And I just wanted to finish by saying What has also been exciting for us and and there are many examples of companies Through 2020 that have been able to make a real splash in the field from our perspective Taking a novel material getting it through the regulatory hoops in north america as well as actually doing commercial deployments where There is a greenhouse in alberta now and two projects around Electrical, you know commercial developments where our concrete with lower carbon emissions has actually been put into the ground and been paid for by a client We've seen those as extremely Good silver linings for what has otherwise been a tough period and it keeps us pretty optimistic about the decade That's to come Great. Thanks apurth Exciting to see more picks from your setup in calgary. I'm hoping to get to actually see that in person If I can figure out how to get into the country Okay, pat, I think we know you but if there's anything else you'd love to add Please go for it and I've also got a question from the audience for you, but over to you pat Okay, let me very quickly tell you a little bit more about ufl We are part of nyut and on school of engineering. We're funded largely by nyserda We run four programs. The largest is the acre incubator, which I mentioned that has scaled up those 70 companies over 10 years But we run smaller accelerators the h2 refuel accelerator was one we ran last year and we'll run again next year It was based on the success of scaling up green hydrogen with fraunhofer and green town that we came up with this program So it's tried and true. We've done it before. It was a huge success. We also run an educational program We are part of an educational institution where we take in career changers who want to Enter the clean economy. So if you're in new york and you're actually everything's virtual now You could be anywhere But if you're you know an accountant Accountant lawyer architect and you want to learn more about how to enter the clean economy. We give courses every semester that teach people about building energy efficiency project finance utilities how energy is traded And people graduate after a capstone project on some course work with their certificate and clean energy from nyu So that's very helpful as people are trying to change careers and come into this industry I think that's all I might want to say. What's your question for me marcus? Okay, it's i'm channeling bent altman who asks what kind of technologies are allowed I think in the carbon to value program. What's the scope carbon drawdown or capture? So we are aiming for all of these in the first year. I know it sounds like an enormous amount to bite off But as we're learning we don't want to close the door on anything Um, I think carbon capture carbon utilization natural solutions And then we will bring in a corporate who can help you so we want all of those and above all and I think we'll talk about this more I'm curious as to business model innovation There will be business model innovations that drive this sector the same way the power purchase agreements and yield cost Drove solar and made them deployable and prevalent and brought the costs down And and right now we're going to need some business model innovation in order to provide value here So we're looking for all of it and and we we will you know Select down from the hundreds of entries we get But please if you have something sent it to us, we are looking for You know TRL for of course, that's not applicable in something like business model innovation But in the technology companies We're looking for something that's you know already got a little bit a little bit of a tested project going Okay, gotcha. Thank you pat now. We've got about another 40 minutes of these folks time I'm going to pepper them with as many questions that I possibly can think of But this is also an invitation to the audience to please get your questions for our panel using the q&a chat function Uh fire them in and we will get to as many of them as we can There is one more pointed question for you, David. This came in a couple moments ago This is from uh menasha zeleka. I apologize if I didn't get that name right What is the investment focus? Do you invest in non-us companies a particular stage or uh, do you have a defined average check size? um so in terms of uh size Most investments are between 250 000 and 2.5 million Stage is very variable. I just did this lydia deal as I mentioned, which is very late stage I also actually started up a company. So that's pretty early stage and anything in between The focus is really on businesses that are deemed to have a a good chance of materially impacting climate change meaning I define that as a 0.5 to 1.0 gigaton per year impact on co2 or greater And so obviously it has to be a And a business that is material going to impact co2 levels and also be scalable on a on a you know significant scale Okay, terrific. Thanks for that all right The first topic I'd love to engage the panel on is well it's climate week and you've probably noticed It's sort of raining net zero commitments companies are making commitments national governments are making commitments sub-nationals even other organizations I'm curious what you think this means for this sector. That's a fairly broad question. I guess I'll narrow it to Do you think carbon tech and circular carbon will play a strong part in that or a peripheral part? What do you think those announcements mean for this sector? uh volunteer if you'd love to go first or I'll call on someone I'm happy to go first. So um, yeah, I think it's going to have a pretty big impact and I and I know personally because I've had Already been engaged by several of the large corporates on this exact topic where they say that they've got a commitment To reducing their carbon footprint and they want to put money out to that effect So it could be I think a primary focus the moment is carbon dioxide removal So that they can specifically point to some level of carbon dioxide removal But also see its utilization is something that they're open to so It's early days for a lot of these big corporates that have made these announcements But they're all trying to move quickly There are more and more corporates that that join all the time And I think it's going to have a transformative impact on on the overall area because prior to this You know, those of us in the business, uh, or looking to build a business How to find a way to to meet, you know, market price And here's an opportunity where we got corporates that say, oh, I don't care if you're at the market price We'll give additional capital to doing it. So I think it's uh, got a potentially huge impact Thank you any other comments on that Of course, uh, as a large inter-corporate, uh, we are very very serious about, uh, this kind of announcement actually Mitsubishi corporation, uh, haven't announced net zero yet But uh, we are very keen Actually the issue, uh, for, uh, net zero announcement in scope one scope two. Okay, scope three So so we are selling hydrocarbon still because that's our business. So, uh, to think about scope three It's very tough. So I think, uh, uh, uh, it's Greatly scope three has great impact on Environment, of course, but having said so, uh, Usually, uh, people don't know about scope one scope three. So I think, uh, uh, it's very important topic. So I think, uh, uh, the people investors, uh Has to institutional investors has to understand what is scope one scope three and I think I It's very Because it's important. So, uh, I think a clear distinction. Uh, we need to have and And of course scope and scope two. I think most of large corporations have to announce net zero Okay, thanks for that rio. We will keep our eye out for any announcements that might be coming from Mitsubishi in the future I would add One piece there marcus, uh, from a startup perspective. I think what has been interesting to see Especially with some of the the news that's been coming around from europe and even other jurisdictions about stimulating the economy post-covid um, I think there has been a lot of notion about Using clean tech and and the renewable sector and and essentially clean technology as a way of Of restarting the economy and I think from a startup standpoint I think david made an excellent point about companies like solidia and others that have Kind of established themselves in the field over a period of time But I think as a company that is just beginning to enter enter the commercial sphere Um, we're we're realizing that the onus is now on the entrepreneur to really accelerate the pace so that we can catch this wave And and use this as a way of of getting into the market in a meaningful way Um, so I think in in a way. It's an exciting opportunity. I know having talked to a few other startups that are less than you know, seven or eight years old that they're seeing the same opportunity and and it's exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time because There are going to be a lot of changes that are going to enable potentially uh, government procurement strategies private You know private companies to change their behaviors in the short term and I think For for the entrepreneurs like myself and others I think the challenge is to be able to Really make sure that we have a tangible path to be able to leverage that that scheme or that that wave that we're seeing Perfect. Thank you um, all right, I'd love to Stay on this theme a little bit and zero in on the topic of offsets Uh, Rio, you brought up scope one scope two scope three I'm getting the feeling that a lot of the scope three reliance is coming through offsets So in other words behind a claim that says we're going to be carbon or net zero by I don't know 20 60 50 40 whatever um If you dig deep the the answer is We're going to do some carbon tech or something in the future and we'll use some offsets And I think we all know that the offset game can be pretty murky So i'm curious of the panel's thoughts about how you think the carbon tech and circular Carbon community can become part of the offset Conversation or do you see it another way? Is it something to be a bit careful with? Because frankly we've been burned by offsets before and I think there's still a lot of suspicion about do they work? How do they work? What types? I'm curious your thoughts on that Thank you actually To capture co2 is very costly But actually to offset the buy by buying carbon credit very cheap So I think I just to capture co2 you have to pay maybe 40 50 60 sometimes 100 that has a ton of co2 But actually if you wish to offset you just pay three five. That's okay So, uh, I think the carbon tech is very important in this context because uh The issue is not spoke scope one scope two. I think issue is scope three So why the large corporation is keen to contribute support? entrepreneurs or static startup technology companies because it's a scope three carbon reduction So I think if you think about scope three Emission liability. I think why don't you think about scope three reduction benefit? so to for large corporation to to Support contribute startup companies or emerging technology emerging carbon tech is kind of scope very much scope three thinking so I think Under current offsetting scheme it's very tough to think about scope three reduction but I think We need to go beyond the current legitimate carbon offsetting scheme And I would just add to that Marcus that You know, I'm finding that a lot of the corporates who have recently made announcements are very interested in the carbon tech space I think they recognize the issues and offsets that there's some Uncertainty as to what's the real value you're getting what's the sustainability And the advantage in carbon tech is that it's much more measurable I mean if you capture a ton of carbon, you know, you capture a ton of carbon if you if you Use a ton of carbon or several tons of carbon in utilization. You can measure that and clearly define it. So I think Uh, you know, many of the large corporates are saying, you know, yes, it'll cost more money per ton So to speak, but they're willing to do it because it's got certainty And also they feel it's really enabling a very important set of industries. So so I think that that's been a nice Uh, element of what's happening and more and more These corporates are talking about things like carbon dioxide removal, which by definition, particularly if you talk about director capture Is is relatively expensive, but there's a real commitment to pursuing it Any other thoughts on this? Okay, I'll take a little bit further and ask, uh, I just want to lean into the sort of the let's say the public perception of offset So I think it was a few days ago or maybe last week google made an announcement And I think the announcement was our emissions were zero now You welcome everyone surprise our emissions are over. We've we've zeroed them out And I read a piece on medium and I apologize. I forget the off It was basically a rip of that announcement saying this is meaningless because it relies on offsets and offsets are fake Um, this is a real perception challenge that I think the broader industry will face and this sector will face I'm curious if the panel have any thoughts on how you would address that kind of comment or that kind of feeling because I think it is out there uh Well, I mean, I I think the the point is there really does need to be a higher level of integrity brought to the entire process of measuring You know what really counts of what doesn't and I think that you know There are instances where some of the so-called offsets aren't really what you think you're getting at the other hand There are plenty that are perfectly legitimate So, you know, those comments are making our are unfair in some ways, but fair in other ways and and ideally You would have some sort of independent body or something Established that I think was like a good housekeeping seal of approval. They said, okay This is truly something this is truly measured and hopefully, you know Governments or other policy makers will establish some sort of Organization so that it can it can clarify exactly what counts and you know level set the entire area Yeah, I think I have one thought on that as well Marcus, which is I think more, uh I guess it builds upon the point that David just made about the implications that this may have for carbon utilization and I think You know a couple of years ago with the global CO2 initiative There was an effort and I know it's still going on within the XPRIZE with the University of Calgary around baselining different technologies and creating a standardized way of looking at What are the the direct and the indirect carbon emission reductions associated with certain tech? Um, I still think that in many ways, ccu is still the wild west in that regard And a lot of the claims are not, you know apples to apples comparisons and I think You know, especially with the ethanol industry I mean there isn't a month that goes by where you don't see another claim about the lcao bio ethanol Not looking as great as it did back, you know, eight or nine years ago And I think there is a risk that needs to be addressed from that from that standpoint for our industry Um, and and even some of the criticism that people have of direct air capturing things like that I think to david's point some of those are valid concerns and criticisms and others are not And I think being able to look at them Transparenly and having an academic component to that to make sure that the analysis is done objectively And and in a way that can be Conveyed to the mass audience so that you know, it's a relatable message that can be digested I think that's that's definitely a need. Um, that is going to need to be addressed before this becomes a mainstream policy discussion So I think this is a very immature market, you know, it it brings up ideas images in my mind of, you know, the commodities trading market in Chicago and 1920 and people bidding on corn Without real, uh, data behind them. And I think what we're seeing now is that there are many different Methodologies for measuring there's a lot of inconsistency. There are different markets in different places of the world And as this market matures hopefully some of the young carbon tech companies will be companies that measure with real transparency Across various geographies in a way that this is made more uniform and Becomes the norm and I I also think a lot of what people are doing now with Voluntary mechanism is also a dress rehearsal for the next government Presumably in the United States that might have a proper policy Um, so there's a lot that's going on voluntarily That's a little messy that might be regularized with real policy going forward and with some better technologies Over the next that will be developed over the next couple of years Okay, thank you for that a comment from the audience Anonymous attendee says what if we sell offsets that are not about planting trees But are based on setting up and operating carbon capture plants I think that's exactly what is being discussed right now what the panelists are hitting at For the record, no one should be against planting trees But I think the idea of sort of a verifiable data backed Clear providence of co2 backed offsetting system would go a long way for everyone no matter what type of offset you're using And it is definitely something I think we need in this space Okay, I'd like to get to a couple of other audience questions that Take us away from just the offsets conversation and into How does this actually work? What does a practical and realistic project look like? This is a comment a poor brought up when the panel was chatting about this session yesterday So there's a couple of questions here This is a new sector says anonymous Which industry would you think would naturally drive this in the future? Is it a chemical industry play? Is it an energy play or other? The second question is I'll just do it to it once to what degree is access to capital On accelerant versus a headwind to scaling ccu technologies that we need Is this a capital question or are there other and more pressing challenges to scaling these critical technologies? So the first question was which sector drives this second question was are we capital limited or are there other limits? So I guess for the second question. Sorry, shall I Second question, you know, the only policy we have now is 45 q and policy will drive the market Certainly in the short term even more than investment dollars. I think uh, and the assessment that the department of energy made about 45 q made wonderful projections about Numbers of jobs created Numbers of dollars that would be deployed uh, and and I think we need Additional policies that are coherent that have these Transparent measurement data collection mechanisms that we just referred to I think policy will be a huge driver and I think it's coming David you were gonna add. Yeah, so so to that point I would add that You know policy is certainly very important I mean, it's it's not the only thing since you can have policy But if you don't have the capital to take advantage of policy, you're sort of stuck So, you know, you need that as well I mean on the policy front One of the pluses is you know, certainly the department of energy has stepped up You know nicely over the last few months and issued several FOA of funding opportunity announcements offering several millions of dollars for director capture or for uh Point carbon capture combined with uh, COT utilization. So that helps, uh, you know support interesting projects Um in terms of your your other question on industries I mean, I think it's going to be a range of industries. It's really hard to handicap them I mean, there are a lot of different industries are important CO2 to cement and concrete chemicals plastics fuels And I think it's really going to be a function of what are the technologies that come down the pike What are the companies that grow them and how you know, how great is the Is their performance in terms of what they they're going to do? So I would say it's sort of all all the above and I think it's interesting to see which companies come out And what technologies and how far they're able to to move in terms of growing what they're doing and impacting the CO2 equation Okay, thank you. Um, I'm going to add a follow-up question to that which is, uh You mentioned multiple industries and I'm going to ask Rio to comment on this one first Do you think that the carbon tech space or the circular carbon space is at a point where it's still helpful to talk about multiple industries all together chemicals fuels building products food advanced materials, etc Or do you think eventually there will come a time where it's more beneficial to speak Just about the building sector to building sector people and sort of have it Sort of flip the flip the script and speak that way I'm asking you Rio because I know Mitsubishi has several business lines and you've got Task force that crosses all of them. So I'm curious your thoughts is now the right time Is it a time to later or is there just another way to think about this? Thank you for question actually The multiple uh approach is very very important So the building materials. Yes. I think a carbon tech people know CO2 can be captured in Building materials concrete blocks probably, you know, but actually the user of concrete block is Maybe the construction industry or The people who is living who is using the building so The architecture construction company It's a building material industries very much different from construction industry Very much different from architectures So I think we have to think about Holistic even and even for this mineralization CO2 mineralization technology. You have to be holistic and CO2 Yeah cement industry is emitting CO2 But actually cement industry is not exactly same as building material industry. So I think we have to think about the whole value chain. Maybe fabric saying so uh The material company is burning fuel oil to produce plastic But actually the user is maybe fabric so I think uh, we have to be holistic so And and one more thing is the hydrogen So to think about synthetic fuel or synthetic fabric You have to source hydrogen as well So hydrogen is also also very much different in I think industry so To think about this kind of complexity this is very complex new supply chain We have to think about CO where's CO2? Where's where's hydrogen? Where the user of the fabric where the user of a concrete block so It's very versatile So that's why it's I I always say this is not competition This is a collaboration. So we have to collaborate with many industries entrepreneurs Many sectors. So that's very important. I think Okay, thank you. Uh poor. Are you going to comment on this? I just wanted to tackle this the second question. I think uh, Rio just made a really good point about the type of industries that would be involved in taking different segments of the sector forward but I think the question around What is required apart from financing is something that that I do have a couple of thoughts on and I think I would say A lot of it is about getting the right stakeholders together For a project. I think ultimately even for very advanced carbon tech projects, you do need a corporate or strategic partner that has operating facilities With a a lower aversion for risk than maybe is the case for most industries that have been around, you know with 30 or 40 year life periods for their facilities and I think especially in direct air capture. I think with Things like I talked about with 45 q, you know companies like oxy and others have actually been able to take that step forward and say Look, like we're going to take that risk with major assets and hundreds of millions of dollars That is generally not the case for new technologies You know, if you think about the construction space really apart from solidia There isn't another bet that a company like lefarge is taken with that big of a Of an investment and so I think setting more precedence for that and I think again, it's To the point that we all made about collaboration I think one of the things we're finding now Is getting a strategic partner on board like if you can get one of the top 10 cement companies on board As a strategic partner not just from a financial perspective, but from a technical standpoint to make sure you're taking the boxes from a regulatory Perspective and and you know from a client perspective that really goes a long way towards getting the whole supply chain engaged And and enabled so I think more so than project financing It almost seems like you know is especially in the last six or seven months. There have been a lot of questions from Companies that deal in project finance like reaching out to to companies and saying can you put a project together where we can deploy 20 or 50 or 100 million dollars And and the challenge then becomes like can you put all of the ecosystem together? You know the different stakeholders to make that project come together with the type of risk that is purely financial and commercial and almost Take it to the point where you know solar got to in 2006 and seven where it's all about offtake And once you get that offtake, you know, you're you're off to the races and the project is going and I think that's kind of the bridge That needs to be built over the next few years for for most ccu tech Okay, thank you Is just articulated the exact reason For the carbon to value initiative. This is the voice of a founder Saying we can't go to market without a big corporate We aren't the market. They're the market The only way to get to the market is to be paired with one of these giant corporates and that's exactly what our program will do So thank you our poor for articulating exactly what a founder needs that we will hope to supply Okay, fantastic. I promise that was not pre-planned No, I will be applying to that too Batsy I have a specific question for you. I think you've kind of answered it, but I'll put it to you anyway It's from Aaron Bronfman after that. I'd love to go to Jen Wagner from carbon cure We're going to pull some technology magic and bring her into the conversation because I know Uh, well, you've probably read about them in the news recently But I'd love to get Jen's perspective on the discussion Very briefly So one more question for you poor from Aaron Bronfman Over the last six years of your startup. Have you found it difficult to connect two sources of capital like David? Have you noticed an uptick in investment interest in the space? Sorry, have you noticed an uptick in investment interest as the space has gained visibility over the last few years and months? upward Yeah, so first off, I would put a shout out to David here I think he is fairly unique in in the type of connections he's got and and also The kind of acumen like I've had the pleasure of talking to David a couple of times in last year and And he's very pointed with his questions and I think he knows exactly where corporations like Mitsubishi and others are coming from so I think one of the bets that we took on early I guess Aaron is is really trying to get the technical risk As de-risk as possible and and we're trying to do that in as lean a way as possible like the the picture I showed at the beginning of the presentation Generally a facility facility like that cannot be built for the type of money that we put into it and that's that's a bootstrapping mentality that I think is is Very difficult to carry out in clean tech and software, you know The old garage thing and buying a decent laptop works a lot better than when you're dealing with Approvals for pressure vessels and putting together engineered drawings for for P&IDs and things like that But we're extremely proud of where that's gone and and really We'll find out over the next few months if that bet is paid off But definitely to your to your second question about financing in general I think generally we found three avenues for funding So one that we've been very fortunate with within the Canadian ecosystem Is federal and provincial funding And there is a lot of interest in carbon to value And I think a lot of people look at carbon tech in particular or carbon to value initiatives as a way of Not involving the climate change issue But catalyzing Can be facilitated at a faster time scale and and really that's kind of where we see our Our role in this bigger scheme. And within that, I think, you know, even within the states You know, there is positive movement and talk around that The other two pieces are venture capital, which I think is definitely getting more and more active I think Nick covered that very well at the beginning of this presentation And lastly, I would say and this is kind of Suspenseful Oh, no, the best part Okay, he's probably saying that pearl of wisdom right now Okay, let's hold it there. We'll come back to why Sorry We missed that we missed the pearl of wisdom you were about to drop approve Was that the third piece or the second I can't remember? I think it was a third. I'll tell you what I'm going to ask you to hold on that Let's come back to it in a second because I see Jen Wagner is just here from carbon cure I'd love to bring her into the conversation. Thanks for joining us Jen Great to see you guys in the news again in the last couple of weeks I'd love to hear a bit more insight on how things look from your perspective Or any news you want to share around some of the recent announcements Sure. Thanks Marcus. Hi everybody I've been really enjoying the conversation. It's on back-to-back panel, so I apologize for my previous background there, but yeah, I just Want to echo some of the comments Nicholas made around accelerating scaling and Pat's comments around sort of business model innovation So this couple people have touched on the fact that there's been quite a few Climate pledges offset purchases and the new climate funds announced over the last few weeks really And all of these are really important Accelerators to scaling technologies like ours. So if you don't know what carbon-cure does we're a climate technology Repurposing CO2 to make concrete stronger and greener and we were the recipient Within the first tranche of amazon's first investments in their new fund Co-led by breakthrough energy ventures And we were also recipients for both stripe and Shopify's first offset purchases So no question. Those are wonderful levers to get us to move a little faster You know capitalizing the company is one thing but also The beauty of the offset purchases is that we actually can share the funds like to the point Pat was making about business model innovation is we push those funds down the supply chain to our industry partners To incentivize them to actually use the technology more often. So adopted at more plants maximize usage Because all of those things create more reductions So we sort of noodled on this for many months and tried to figure out a model that would Help us meet our goal, which is 500 megatons by 2030 and Sort of putting that offset revenue as a bit of a carrot in front of them creates this beautiful flywheel effect Where it in turns then creates even more reductions So I think that's sort of the what what we're seeing at least today in the last few weeks with all of the attention in the space is that There are solutions available today, you know dollars in equals carbon out and that's that's available today So we're really excited about about what's to come Okay, terrific. Thank you so much Jen I'm seeing a bunch of questions. Thank you again really for joining us. I really appreciate you can take time to step in here I see a handful of questions related to carbon removal and direct air capture Before we get to those, let's pause Caden. Please put up poll number three because I think it'll sort of put a Put a nice wrapper on some of the conversations we've had just recently So, uh, if you're I see a lot of people are still with us stretch your legs By that I mean read this question And give us your best answer Do this week's corporate and government commitments to get to net zero make you more or less enthusiastic about circular carbon issues And as I mentioned once we get some responses in we will move to a handful of other audience questions that are grouped around carbon removal Uh and direct air capture, and then we've actually got a few great questions after that. I'd love to get to Okay survey says Uh More optimistic or about the same is almost everyone. Um, and one person said less optimistic, which I think is pretty interesting But on balance, but two-thirds people more optimistic Okay, let me get to some of these carbon removal direct air capture questions. Um, I'll take moderators privilege. I am in the x-prize office I'll just point out, uh Both Apurva and jen are leading companies that are in the finals of the nrg cosia carbon x-prize That means they are demonstrating industrial pilots now Either in wyoming or in calgary And the covet curveball for us this year means we have a couple of companies that are based in asia They have no chance of getting to north america to test this year. So they're trying to set up demonstrations there So please check out those companies follow what they're doing because they're doing it now And we hope to announce the winners of that prize in the spring time There's a it's a 20 million dollar total prize and there's 15 of that million still on the line We also have ambitions to raise several tens of millions for a carbon removal prize And so I see several people from the x-prize community asking questions And I know a lot of people are uh focused on that topic whether it's direct air capture rubber means David has been a great supporter and advisor on this as well So we have interest in this as well, but clearly there's interest in the broader community Um So from greg marinac Co founder of x-prize What is the current state of the art of carbon removal in terms of cost per ton? Another question i'll add here is does the humanitarian impact and sustainable development goals impact make carbon dioxide removal more attractive And get more attention from investors So what's state of the art in cost per ton? and Do stg's uh get the attention of investors from a perspective of uh, well making an investment decision Uh, David, I know you have thoughts on these, but i'm inviting anyone on the panel to comment so um, if you want me to start off, uh You know in terms of uh director capture that the stated numbers from uh climb works one of the three companies It did a couple years ago. It's about six hundred dollars a ton Uh, the carbon engineering's target numbers for their next Plant they're putting up the million ton plant they're doing with oxy Is getting you know towards a hundred dollars a ton and long term Uh, you know that's similar. I think to what carbon uh clamor is helping to do and then global thermostat Who i'm a senior advisor to is looking to get towards a hundred dollars per ton or well under over the next several years So I think um Also just to give a you know a sense of the likelihood of that If you look at solar solar uh decreased by 250 x multiple over, you know, 20 or 30 years Win 25 x so to get from 600 to less than 100 dollars a ton I think is not only doable But actually very likely based on how experience curves work and learning by doing so Um, you know today, we don't have yet an announced plant with with great numbers yet But I think they're they're coming sometime over the next 12 24 36 months. So I think it's going to be an exciting time for the area Thank you I'll add editorially that there are other carbon removal pathways that claim uh or can demonstrate lower prices But I'll also quote gen wagner in a comment. She's written the chat at some point Which is let's not forget to focus on permanence And so I think we see that the spectrum between some types of removal can really have long duration others don't Others are are sort of a slightly different play Um, any comments on the question? This is a really interesting one. Do Does connecting sdgs to carbon removal or the sdg impact of carbon removal mean anything to investors? That's a really interesting one. Anyone want to comment on that? Do people see this as a plus and react to it or not quite? I can just maybe put in a quick comment from some of the interactions we've had with corporations. Um, Especially in the last year and a half About two years ago, we participated in the le farge wholesome accelerator in in france And and we've been able to engage with a few european entities since then and we've generally found them to bring up the sdgs And pretty much every conversation we have We've seen that to be the norm more so in europe than we have in north america by having said that I think At least from from our experience We're still seeing there Still seeing As a listed company, of course, yes, like on the Sorry apur, we're having some network difficulty. I think with you. I apologize for that But I think rio backed you up by saying yes, of course Yes, of course. Yeah, because uh, the esg investment is very critical for listed company. So, uh, sgd esg I think I We are talking about in the same context. So of course So I guess the the path there would be investors Who are holders and public companies or private companies exerting pressure as investors through boards That's sort of the esg pathway you're talking about. Okay okay um We are short on time, but I want to get to a couple. There are really a lot of great questions here One is from chris gasman are their best in class monitoring and verification standards that consumers should look at In order to trust the carbon tech play is having the real impact claim and bought this one could go a while So I'll ask you to keep your answers short Any best in class verification standards emerging yes um In the carbon x prize we had to basically create our own standard for ccu because we couldn't find one that was adaptable Then back in 2015 and since then several have started to come on the market. So we can sort of relate to that concept of emerging And let me just make a shout out if folks in the audience are in that space about Sort of verification of these types of technologies. We'd love to hear from you because I think the need is still there and the opportunity is growing Okay, there are a couple more that are along the themes of How do I get involved in this space? So here is one For those of us who aren't founders or investors. Where are the career opportunities in the circular carbon space? um Well, just if I can answer that, you know, I think more broadly, um, you know The interesting thing about the whole area is that today the revenues are close to Zero or very modest in the whole area and the forecast over trillion a dollar So by definition, this is going to become an enormous area both from a capital standpoint and revenue standpoint and You know job standpoint, so I would say anyone who's looking at that that's probably a good instinct to look at it um, I think you know, I'd encourage people to look at what are the The industry groups you can join either online or you know, other things like that get to know the community Community isn't that large and I would just say, you know The community is very welcoming because there are so few people doing it So even though this is supposed to be a multi trillion dollar industry over time You know, there's you can you can fit about everybody in one very large conference room So, you know, if you're interested, please join. I'm sure there'd be a, you know, some great opportunities over time So there's one tiny little corner of this world that is going to be a great market opportunity employment opportunity It's an odd one in new york city. We've passed something called local law 97 that puts every building over 25 000 square feet on a carbon emissions budget If you and the first part of the law will kick in by 2024 So everyone is supposed to be scrambling now to get off of fossil fuels. Let's see if that happens Once the penalties kick in. I think it's about $260 per metric ton Is a penalty So that will drive the market and it will drive a market for carbon trading between buildings it will drive a market obviously for uh energy efficiency retrofits, but that's not the issue the issue is what people will be paying to exceed their carbon emissions budget and that will create jobs in carbon trading In carbon capture coming out of smokestacks of buildings all kinds of interesting things And then what's going to be done with that carbon that is captured So there will be a little mini market in new york that's not so many Uh estimates have been I think Over 200 000 jobs and over two billion Spent to make these buildings Meet their carbon targets Yes, okay, really interesting Trading between buildings is something I've never considered. I'm glad you raised that pretty interesting Especially in a place like new york We are almost at our time. I'm going to read out one final question Not ask you to answer, but I think it's a good one and uh something for everyone to think about And then we'll flash up a a quick poll question before we thank our panelists Um, the question is what are the types of skill sets that people need to advance progress? And are there particular gaps in human resources again? I don't think we have time to speak to it But I think it really speaks to the idea of how do we actually get the resources and energy to grow this space? And I'm glad uh, steven kaufman for raising this because human resources will certainly be part of that Okay, it are closing few seconds. Kayden, I'd love for you to put up the last question Uh, it's a softball for the audience Are you more optimistic or less optimistic about the future of circular carbon after participating in this discussion? While you contemplate that question, I'd just love to take a moment to say thank you so much for a poor Rio pat and david for giving us your time and insights today We always appreciate your thoughts, but especially joining us today with our audience Audience members. Thank you for joining and sticking with us. We've got great participation right through to the end And finally, let me give a huge thank you to the whole team putting this on That x prize at pure energy and all the other organizations that have come together to support this Um, especially the x prize team technical team kated nicky mike james who are hosting Uh our web interface today Now I don't think I caught the results of that poll Uh, maybe I missed it. There it is More optimistic about the same few people less optimistic Listen with that, let's close the session. Happy climate week everyone. Thank you for your participation today Um, check out circular carbon dot org. Check out carbon to value program Check out what bits of bishi what david is doing what approve is doing is a lot of excitement in the space And we look forward to joining you again either at future climate week events or next year at this summit. Thanks very much. Have a great day Thank you everyone Thank you. Well done