Great post! Totally agree we need to be going bigger/bolder and there's a role for innovative finance in all the ways you outline, and others to boot. It's so hard for people to wrap their heads around the role that (unimpeachably near-permanent/additional) CDR will be playing decades from now. In part because even experts underestimate the compounding effect of learning rates / cost reduction as you go up the deployment curve - so people are gobsmacked when you see just how low cost structures can get for solar/PV, LIB, HIV drugs, etc etc.
Agree with Lian's comment that government $ is crux as that scaling happens, and Carbon 180 is wisely laser-focusing on USG CDR procurement over the long haul. But philanthropy clearly has a gap-bridging role to play.
Quick reflections on venture philanthropy specifically ... a simplistic view of that is philanthropy backing specific innovators bringing specific techs toward market and retiring fundamental science risk, maybe even early engineering risk. And getting those techs/ventures to point where they can offer attractive potential returns to investors on a viable timeframe. But don't think we should think that narrowly about venture philanthropy role.
Wrt CDR, what Additional Ventures is trying to do for the Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement field is a good case in point. They're not trying to replicate the Prime playbook by (e.g.) grant-funding Ebb Carbon etc. to develop their core technology. Instead, they're running successive RFPs to advance the field in ways that complement the investor $ that Ebb / Planetary Tech / etc are able to raise. Specifically, AV is trying to a) set up new central platform / single coordinating actor to drive more accelerated research on the core OAE fundamental science Qs ("Focused Research Org" model a la March of Dimes / polio vaccine); b) advance cross-cutting technologies that will be important to the leading ventures like Ebb/Planetary but often outside their core proprietary tech; c) help develop public goods (e.g. permitting processes, hub sites, etc.) that will advance the OAE field.
And that'll be tens of millions just for OAE, and partial at that ... so many needs across CDR writ large.
AMC -- big potential, whole other kettle of fish ... lots to learn from the pneumo AMC and excited to keep talking with everyone involved in pushing that vision forward. One big set of Qs among many is what's the post-AMC state you're working backward from (i.e., what's the 'handoff' to) and how you'd need to size it & design it to have it to bridge effectively to that handoff point -- what's the post-AMC demand picture, deployment stage / cost level, etc.
Every time I read a piece like this (well written, by the way) I wonder whether we are making things way too complicated.
Most leaps in infrastructure were done with government money, if I am not wrong. Who paid for the railroad networks, highway systems, and man on the Moon. Who paid for massive electrification initiatives? Who pays for wars, when they happen and sustains the military when they don't.
Why are we talking about philanthropy? Don't we all believe that climate change is critical?
I guess, with all due respect, my question for the writers is whether we are, as a society, thinking big enough.
Great post! Totally agree we need to be going bigger/bolder and there's a role for innovative finance in all the ways you outline, and others to boot. It's so hard for people to wrap their heads around the role that (unimpeachably near-permanent/additional) CDR will be playing decades from now. In part because even experts underestimate the compounding effect of learning rates / cost reduction as you go up the deployment curve - so people are gobsmacked when you see just how low cost structures can get for solar/PV, LIB, HIV drugs, etc etc.
Agree with Lian's comment that government $ is crux as that scaling happens, and Carbon 180 is wisely laser-focusing on USG CDR procurement over the long haul. But philanthropy clearly has a gap-bridging role to play.
Quick reflections on venture philanthropy specifically ... a simplistic view of that is philanthropy backing specific innovators bringing specific techs toward market and retiring fundamental science risk, maybe even early engineering risk. And getting those techs/ventures to point where they can offer attractive potential returns to investors on a viable timeframe. But don't think we should think that narrowly about venture philanthropy role.
Wrt CDR, what Additional Ventures is trying to do for the Ocean Alkalinity Enhancement field is a good case in point. They're not trying to replicate the Prime playbook by (e.g.) grant-funding Ebb Carbon etc. to develop their core technology. Instead, they're running successive RFPs to advance the field in ways that complement the investor $ that Ebb / Planetary Tech / etc are able to raise. Specifically, AV is trying to a) set up new central platform / single coordinating actor to drive more accelerated research on the core OAE fundamental science Qs ("Focused Research Org" model a la March of Dimes / polio vaccine); b) advance cross-cutting technologies that will be important to the leading ventures like Ebb/Planetary but often outside their core proprietary tech; c) help develop public goods (e.g. permitting processes, hub sites, etc.) that will advance the OAE field.
And that'll be tens of millions just for OAE, and partial at that ... so many needs across CDR writ large.
AMC -- big potential, whole other kettle of fish ... lots to learn from the pneumo AMC and excited to keep talking with everyone involved in pushing that vision forward. One big set of Qs among many is what's the post-AMC state you're working backward from (i.e., what's the 'handoff' to) and how you'd need to size it & design it to have it to bridge effectively to that handoff point -- what's the post-AMC demand picture, deployment stage / cost level, etc.
Every time I read a piece like this (well written, by the way) I wonder whether we are making things way too complicated.
Most leaps in infrastructure were done with government money, if I am not wrong. Who paid for the railroad networks, highway systems, and man on the Moon. Who paid for massive electrification initiatives? Who pays for wars, when they happen and sustains the military when they don't.
Why are we talking about philanthropy? Don't we all believe that climate change is critical?
I guess, with all due respect, my question for the writers is whether we are, as a society, thinking big enough.