The Carbon Curve
The Carbon Curve
Natalia Dorfman, CEO of Kita, on why insurance is key to scaling carbon removal
0:00
Current time: 0:00 / Total time: -42:24
-42:24

Natalia Dorfman, CEO of Kita, on why insurance is key to scaling carbon removal

Kita's forthcoming carbon purchase protection cover, the reason commercial scale CDR needs insurance, and what insurance can (and can't) do about carbon storage durability

Episode 15 of The Carbon Curve is with Natalia Dorfman, CEO and Co-Founder of Kita

This episode is sponsored by Carbonfuture.

Carbonfuture is an end-to-end platform for companies who want to participate in removing carbon from the atmosphere. Unlike conventional marketplaces, Carbonfuture’s monitoring, reporting, and verification platform solves carbon credit uncertainty for buyers like Microsoft and SwissRe while Carbonfuture’s support helps scale the world’s most promising carbon removal ventures for real climate impact.

Share

After a short pause on new episodes, I’m excited to cover something I’ve been dying to talk about … insurance. Just hear me out.

According to carbon removal purchase tracker CDR.FYI, around 640,000 tons of CO2 removal have been purchased globally, and only 7% of those tons have actually been delivered. Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is still very much in its infancy

As CDR solutions move from pilot to commercial scale and purchases and deliveries really start to pick up, the market is going to become increasingly complex.

We’ll see more public sector involvement, more private sector buyers, more projects being deployed, and more communities being impacted. We’ll see more successes, but also more failures - and as a result - more risk.

My guest today, Natalia Dorfman, CEO and Co-Founder of Kita, thinks that insurance is critical to unlocking the scale potential of CDR. We talk about what problems innovative new insurance products can solve for buyers and sellers in the CDR market and the limits of insurance in solving some of the more thorny risks associated with scaling up CDR.

In this episode, Na’im and Natalia discuss:

  • Natalia’s career shift into climate and Kita’s origin story

  • What Kita plans to cover, and their first insurance product - carbon purchase protection cover

  • How Kita is developing carbon removal-specific insurance products in a field this nascent

  • The role insurance can play in the durability or reversibility of carbon storage

  • Why carbon removal needs robust insurance offerings to successfully scale

Relevant links:

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to this podcast on your favorite podcast app or subscribe via The Carbon Curve newsletter here. If you’d like to get in touch with Na’im, you can reach out via Twitter and LinkedIn.

Share

Na’im Merchant, Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Curve, is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge of removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Every week, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

Discussion about this podcast

The Carbon Curve
The Carbon Curve
Few people realize this, but fending off the worst effects of climate change is going to require the removal of billions of tons of CO2 from the air every year. To even comprehend that scale - imagine running today's oil and gas sector... in reverse. Every two weeks, carbon removal specialist Na'im Merchant speaks to entrepreneurs, innovators, activists, and policy experts advancing bold ideas to scale up carbon dioxide removal to bend the curve on climate change. If you're concerned about climate change and want to learn about an entirely new pathway to doing something about it, be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode!