At this point, the science is very clear. If we want to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, we must not only reduce existing emissions, we must also at some point become net negative – meaning that we are removing more carbon from the atmosphere than we are putting into it. In this episode, Chad Reed sits down with Climeworks CFO Andreas Aepli to discuss the promise of Direct Air Capture (DAC) to provide a scalable, measurable and permanent solution for carbon removal. In addition to discussing how DAC works and both the DAC facilities Climeworks already has in operation and the DAC hubs in United States they are now developing, they delve into the viability of the business model for carbon removal, the need for supportive policy incentives and the imperative to establish transparency and trust for a truly scalable and tradable carbon removal credit market.
At this point, the science is very clear. If we want to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, we must not only reduce existing emissions, we must also at some point become net negative – meaning that we are removing more carbon from the atmosphere than we are putting into it.
In this episode, Chad Reed sits down with Climeworks CFO Andreas Aepli to discuss the promise of Direct Air Capture (DAC) to provide a scalable, measurable and permanent solution for carbon removal. In addition to discussing how DAC works and both the DAC facilities Climeworks already has in operation and the DAC hubs in United States they are now developing, they delve into the viability of the business model for carbon removal, the need for supportive policy incentives and the imperative to establish transparency and trust for a truly scalable and tradable carbon removal credit market.
Links:
Episode recorded August 22, 2023
Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hasi.com or tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.
Chad Reed: I'm Chad Reed.
Hillary Langer: I'm Hillary Langer.
Gil Jenkins: I'm Gil Jenkins.
Chad: This is Climate Positive.
Andreas: When you make a net zero strategy, you start by calculating how much am I actually emitting, and then you start by thinking about methods, how you can address those emissions, but at some point, you end up at what we call unavoidable or hard-to-abate emissions, you cannot reduce anymore. We help them to address part or the entire portion of that amount.
Chad: At this point, the science is very clear. If we want to limit global warming to 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, we must not only reduce existing emissions, we must also at some point become net negative – meaning that we are removing more carbon from the atmosphere than we are putting into it.
In this episode, I sit down with Climeworks CFO Andreas Aepli to discuss the promise of Direct Air Capture (DAC) to provide a scalable, measurable and permanent solution for carbon removal. In addition to discussing how DAC works and both the DAC facilities Climeworks already has in operation and the DAC hubs in United States they are now developing, they delve into the viability of the business model for carbon removal, the need for supportive policy incentives and the imperative to establish transparency and trust for a truly scalable and tradable carbon removal credit market.
Chad: Andreas, thank you so much for joining us today. It's a real pleasure to have you.
Andreas: Great to be here.
Chad: First, I want to start with your background. Tell us a little bit about where you grew up and then eventually studied.
Andreas: Yes, happy to do that. I grew up in Eastern Switzerland, pretty much a bit in the countryside, also went to school there, and we have a great business university in St. Gallen. That's where I went to. Then I joined a medium-sized Swiss multinational company called Bühler that manufactures machinery and plants in the food industry. One of the reasons I joined them was I want to work on, actually, another sustainable development goal, how do we feed 10 billion people in 2050? But I also joined the company because I wanted to work abroad.
I then spent over 10 years working in a lot of other countries outside of Switzerland. I also lived in a lot of countries in the Middle East, in Africa, and in Asia. Always tried to do some startups inside the corporate in those places and develop new geographies and new businesses. Eventually, I ended up creating a new business unit for sustainable proteins from insects that brought me closer to sustainability. That business unit was made in collaboration with a scale-up. We helped scale up to bring a technology from pilot to industrial scale, and there you can already see some of the connection to Climeworks.
Eventually, two and a half years ago, I made my way to Climeworks because I always wanted to be on the front end of some of the biggest challenges that we have, and climate change obviously is one of those challenges. Yes, I've been leading our finance team in Climeworks in the last two and a half years. I'm also responsible for fundraising on the equity side, on the project side, and new now also on the public finance side.
Chad: Let's dive into Climeworks then. Climeworks is a developer of carbon removal technology that captures carbon from the air to often be stored underground, hopefully for thousands of years, or potentially also used as raw material for some other industrial process. Tell us, first, why we need to remove carbon from the atmosphere. Isn't simply replacing all of our greenhouse gas-generating technologies today sufficient?
Andreas: No, it is not. The climate science is very clear. If you want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees or even 2 degrees above pre-industrial levels, the most urgent task is emission reduction; we say about 90% emission reduction from the levels we have today by 2050, but the 90% already tells you that's not all. Unless we want to go back to the Stone Age, we will still need some technologies that emit CO₂, and we cannot fully eliminate CO₂ emissions.
You need active carbon removals from the atmosphere basically for two reasons. Number one, to compensate for those emissions that we will still have in 2050 and that we'll continue to emit. Secondly, to remove all of the historic emissions that we have made over the last 150 years, but also to compensate for the ones that we'll continue to emit on our path to net zero. Actually, we need to get to negative, and the only way to do that is through actively removing CO₂ from the atmosphere.
Just to give you a scale of this problem, so today we emit about 40 billion tons of CO₂. If you reduce that by 90%, hopefully we'll end up at around 5 billion tons. IPCC actually predicts that we will need between 3 to 12 billion tons or gigatons of negative emissions, and Direct Air Capture is one of the solutions that can provide that.
Chad: How much are we removing today, just to talk about how big this market could grow?
Andreas: The market estimates are roughly 10,000 tons. The plant behind me, which has hopefully gone into these estimates, Orca, that removes a nominal capacity of about 4,000 tons every year. It's very clear that we need to drastically scale this if we want to reach megatons or million-ton levels by the end of this decade, and then billion-ton levels by 2050.
Chad: Yes, we certainly have a long way to go, so let's talk about how we can get there. There are a few different technological approaches to carbon removal. There are nature-based solutions, of course, whether that's tree restoration or soil management. There are tech-enabled solutions like Direct Air Capture, or DAC, which we'll talk about today, or enhanced mineralization. There are hybrid solutions as well that are more emerging, bioenergy with carbon capture, and ocean-based carbon removal. Why is Climeworks specifically focused on DAC?
Andreas: I outlined we need to remove billions of tons of CO₂ from the atmosphere, and that is if we reach our reduction targets. If we don't reach them, every billion that we keep emitting, that creates additional demand for carbon removals. Now that also means that the solution will likely not be one solution, but we need to invest in a couple of different solutions. Now all solutions come with advantages and with trade-offs. We have seen traditionally, most widely used solution today is purely nature-based solutions because they are still available today at relatively affordable prices, but all of these come with limitations. The same is true of hybrid solutions.
There's a couple of ways how we like to think about that. Number one is permanence, how permanent did you actually remove the CO₂ from the atmosphere? Direct Air Capture has a big advantage because it's actually a truly permanent solution. We take the CO₂ from the atmosphere, and then we mineralize it underground or we put it into permanent storage, and that means 10,000 of years of storage. It's the most permanent solution available. Whereas other solutions, they are more challenged on the permanent spectrum, so they might only last for 30 years or 50 years. There's also a question of, how safe is that solution? We've all seen, especially this year, how quickly carbonate is bound in biomass, for example, trees, can be released again if you have wildfires. It's also about the safety of how sure can you be that this is really removed permanently.
Then the other aspect that we look at is scalability. I think it's truly important that any solution that we propose has the potential to scale to the gigaton. A lot of solutions that are out there in the market, they have a potential to get to millions of tons, but they are at some point limited. That's true of a lot of these biomass-based, nature-based, or hybrid solutions, that there is a limited amount of biomass that we can use to store CO₂. There's limited amount of land that we can use to plant trees because we might also want to feed people and to house people. There's simply not enough land and enough biomass available to remove those 3 billion to 12 billion tons that I have mentioned before.
Direct Air Capture has a big advantage because it's, in essence, almost infinitely scalable. Yes, it will need capital, it will need steel and concrete, but it doesn't require a lot of land, it doesn't have big ecological impacts, it doesn't need a lot of water, and so it can be scaled really quickly. What makes me optimistic about the potential to scale this is, to scale by a factor of 1,000, which is what we want to do between 2030 and 2050, so from million ton to the billion tons, or megaton to the gigaton, that actually has already been done before in renewable energy. They have scaled in a similar time frame by a factor of 1,000, so it is possible to do it, as long as you have a technical solution that is modular and that has this potential to scale.
Then finally, it's about measurability. Now the topic of measurability, or MRV, has been a huge topic, especially over the last couple of months, when it comes to carbon removal solutions. There have been a lot of challenges, how measurable is this actually? The advantage of something like Direct Air Capture is that we can precisely measure the exact quantity. Basically, you have a flow meter on a pipe, and you can measure exactly and in real time how much CO₂ you remove, and so there's no doubt and no question about this is actually what the technology is performing, and it's not an estimate.
Chad: Permanence, scalability, and measurability are the advantages of DAC, in your view. How does Direct Air Capture actually work? Walk us through the process and how your facilities operate.
Andreas: Our facilities are essentially modular constructions. They consist of what we call a collector container, which is standard 40-foot shipping container size which contains individual segments of what we call collectors. You can see that's already inspired by the solar industry because of the modularity. The collector on the inside, you have to imagine essentially a big metal box that is filled with a filter material called adsorbent that sits inside of these collectors. On one end of the collector is an airway inlet, and on the other end is a big fan that pulls in a huge amount of air because of the low concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere.
As we pull the air through, our filter material is highly selective to CO₂ molecules. It forms a weak chemical bond with those CO₂ molecules, and that process lasts roughly three hours. After that time, the filter is saturated, and then we move into Phase 2. In Phase 2, we close the collector container. We heat up the contents of this metal box to about 100°C, so that's a low-grade heat. That means it can be powered by renewable energy. At that point, the weak chemical bonds are released, and we can suck out the pure CO₂. We can collect CO₂ in very high purity and high concentration, and then we can send it to permanent storage or to recycling in the case of reuse of CO₂.
Chad: How do you choose whether you go with the permanent storage, mineralization route or the industrial process route, and what sorts of industrial processes or recycling can this CO₂ be used for?
Andreas: When we built our first large-scale plant in Switzerland in 2017 on the shores of Lake Zurich, we actually put that on top of a waste incineration facility because we could use the off-heat from that facility to power our plant. Then because we couldn't do storage here in Switzerland, we actually reused the CO₂ for soft drinks. CO₂ in bubbly water, that's also CO₂. We also recycled the CO₂ into greenhouses. I think there is a huge potential for this application also for other processes. For example, for making renewable fuels.
There's a couple of different industries that will be very hard to do without any fuels, for example, aviation. That's another potential use, to use the carbon molecule from the air, so a truly recycled carbon molecule, but as I've outlined, the biggest problem that we have to solve is carbon removal negative emissions. That's why that's the key focus of the plants that we build today. It doesn't mean that we will not build also plants for the other application, but that's our focus at the moment.
Chad: How do your facilities actually generate revenue? Obviously, through some sort of carbon credits, but walk us through the revenue generation streams.
Andreas: Our facilities generate revenue by, essentially, two markets that we are addressing: one is for corporates and one is for individuals. For corporates, we typically work with really blue-chip, large corporations that already have a credible net zero strategy. When you make a net zero strategy, you start by calculating how much am I actually emitting, and then you start by thinking about methods, how you can address those emissions, but at some point, you end up at what we call unavoidable or hard-to-abate emissions.
Once you switched to renewable energy, and you upgraded all your buildings, and you told your people to fly less, at some point you will understand you cannot reduce anymore. Then you end up with an amount of unavoidable emissions, and we help them to address part or the entire portion of that amount. That means they contract us to remove a fixed amount of their emissions every year for a fixed price, and these are typically long-duration contracts. As we scale capacity, that can get bigger over time, so to eventually help them to get to net zero with fully measurable and fully permanent solutions.
Chad: Right. Then can corporates get credit, with regard to their science-based or net zero targets, through contracts with you and the carbon credits that you are generating?
Andreas: Definitely. In fact, the corporates, they sign offtake agreements with us that go over multiple years and that have the target at a certain net zero target that they define, whether that's 2025, 2030, 2040, or further along. For the corporate buyers, I think they realize, especially the ones who have been in this industry for a longer time, that the market is actually supply constrained. If all the corporates that have made net zero commitments, they will all need carbon removal solutions, and if they all want to buy, then the market is extremely constrained, and that doesn't matter whether we talk about DAC or nature-based or hybrid solutions. They want to secure supply today.
With regards to certification, so we work with a lot of these standard issuing bodies to develop new standards on what counts as a carbon removal, and what are the requirements that you have to fulfill to count for this carbon removal. Since this is still a relatively small market in its infancy, but we all know it will get big and also the standard-setters know it will get big, so we are working together on establishing a clear standard on how these get counted against their goals.
Chad: Excellent. We'll go to that standard in a minute, but you also mentioned individuals can buy credits by contracting with you all. How does that work?
Andreas: Yes. Actually that was our first model, when we started to move away from recycling the CO₂ and actually going into removals, is that we allowed individuals-- on our website, we made them an offering to work on a subscription model. Basically, individuals can subscribe for a fixed amount every month, and then we remove a part of their footprint. Obviously, we always want people to also try and reduce their carbon footprint. We let them calculate their carbon footprint and then what they cannot reduce, they can remove or they can remove part of it through our service every month. We actually have by now over 20,000 people who have signed up for one of these forms of carbon removal, and we're very grateful that not just big corporates, but also individuals believe in the solution and invest in it.
Chad: Excellent. How much do these credits cost in dollar-per-ton basis?
Andreas: Today this is still a quite expensive technology. It will get quite a bit cheaper as we scale, so as the technology improves, as we realize economies of scale and as, hopefully, there will also be policy initiatives for people to do that. Today we talk in the high three-digit dollar amounts per ton, but we expect that this technology can significantly reduce in cost as we scale.
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Chad: The carbon credit market was first launched one and a half-ish decades ago, and it's often been plagued with questions regarding integrity. You mentioned a few things earlier about quantifying and measuring actual removals, about the permanence of removals, about additionality, are these removals actually additional relative to a baseline scenario? How can we rebuild trust in the carbon markets? Because I think there's still a trust issue in many circles. How can folks be sure that the credits that are being generated and purchased are quantifiable or measurable, permanent and additional?
Andreas: Yes, great question. You are right. There have been a lot of challenges, especially this year. We've also seen a lot of articles here. From the beginning, we always wanted to set the standard for the highest integrity in the market. We are very rigorous in terms of what we measure and how we measure, and that means also taking into account, for example, the gray emissions of the solution. That's one of the facts of carbon removal or even carbon reduction, that any replacement method still has a carbon footprint. If you want to be honest, then you should always be very rigorous about calculating that.
The plants that we build, they do also emit CO₂ when we operate the plants and when we eventually decommission a plant, and we are calculating this. We have also independent life cycle assessments that confirm that what we emit is actually around or less than 10% of what we capture. That means if a customer buys a ton of carbon removal from us, we actually move slightly over 1.1 tons to count for these gray emissions.
Chad: Those emissions, are they primarily from the power that you need to power the facilities, the generation, or are they from your processes themselves?
Andreas: Most of it is from two things. One is the build of the plant. Our plants use steel and concrete like any plant and unfortunately, those are not green. I know there's other companies who work on green steel and green concrete, and we hope they will be successful because that will help us reduce our gray emissions as well.
The second is energy. Even renewable energy, and that's what maybe a lot of people are not aware of, they also have a carbon footprint. The solar, wind, geothermal, like what we use in Iceland, they all have a carbon footprint. Then depending on the supply chain of that industry, that carbon footprint can be larger or smaller, and so you have to take that into account when you build your plants.
Chad: There's a new organization called the Integrity Council for Voluntary Carbon Markets. They recently released Core Carbon Principles, which they hope will serve as a benchmark for the carbon credit brokers and marketplaces across the world so that there can be more confidence and trust in these carbon credit markets. What are your thoughts on this organization, and is it on the right track?
Andreas: ICVCM is one of several initiatives in this space, and we're very glad that they're working on releasing guidances on the principles for carbon removal in the voluntary markets. We always advocate for stringent accounting standards because again, that also helps us. We want to strive for integrity because we believe in integrity in doing what we're doing, and I think it will help to create more transparency in the market on what are high-quality and what are lower-quality solutions. That will also help the markets price these solutions accurately.
The key thing and the first thing is that the markets recognize that carbon removals are a separate category from emission reductions and avoidance. Emission reductions and avoidance credits, they're well-functioning markets, they're a bit more established already. I think they're really necessary to drive reductions, but they won't help us to get to negative, to actual removals. In terms of the removal space, as I said before, we support the creation of a lot of these different removal technologies. I think all of them are necessary, but they have a clear quality difference. As I spoke about, durability, additionality. How do you quantify it? How scalable are these solutions, or how worthy are they of investment?
To actually make standards for this is really tricky. I appreciate that the work there is quite tricky, but we do believe that it needs to be done, and we're very grateful that these organizations are working on these, and they're making their criteria in a science-based manner. That will really help to drive the markets and create more transparency.
Chad: I want to talk about a couple of your projects. You alluded to earlier, the first commercial facility you built, Orca, which is located in Iceland, it's powered by 100% renewable energy, geothermal power in that case, and it's been operational for about two years now. Can you tell us a little bit more about it, and why did you site it in Iceland?
Andreas: Iceland has actually been a really great location for us. Orca, as you said, it's the world's first and largest commercial-scale DAC plant. Essentially, when you place a DAC plant, you need two things. One thing you don't need, and I'm going to address that first, you don't need an emission source because we're capturing CO₂ directly from the atmosphere. You can really focus on the two other criteria to locate your plant in the best place possible.
Those other two criteria are renewable energy, ideally at affordable price. In the case of Iceland, we're actually co-located with the world's second largest geothermal plant, and we use their heat as well as their electricity to power our plant, which has been really great for us. The second thing that you need is permanent geological storage, and there we have great partner in Iceland. They're called Carbfix, and they actually developed a method for the mineralization of the CO₂ underground. The CO₂ actually gets mixed with water, the pure CO₂ that comes from our plant, and then gets pumped 300 to 500 meters underground. At that point, the CO₂ then mineralizes in a natural process over two years.
The third factor, sort of-- sorry, I only mentioned two, but there's a third one, and that is actually these two things being available already. Because if we have to-- and in the long run, we're going to need to co-develop storage and renewable energy, but in the short run, we want to scale as quickly as possible to get to that million tons before the end of the decade. That means you need renewable energy in place, you want to have storage in place and you, ideally, already want to have the permits in place for both so that we can just scale as quickly as possible, and we don't face any regulatory delays or risks to build our plants.
That's, by the way, also the reason why we're co-locating our next plant, which is called the Mammoth plant. It's already under construction. It's about 10 times larger than Orca, and it will be actually on the same location, and it's supposed to go online in early 2024.
Chad: That's excellent. Well, in the U.S. here, we're also hoping to be a leader in Direct Air Capture and storage. Through various recent pieces of legislation, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill, and I believe the Inflation Reduction Act as well, the DOE has recently announced $1.2 billion for a couple DAC hubs, one located in Texas, another in Louisiana, as well as nearly 20 other additional projects that hope to become future DAC hubs. Climeworks is involved in at least three of these hubs, including the one in Louisiana.
Tell us a little bit more about this initiative and hopefully, it's essential role in growing the DAC market in the U.S.
Andreas: Absolutely, and we're obviously very excited to be selected for this funding, including one of the bigger portions of the funding. The U.S. is a really important strategic market for Climeworks. We have a lot of clients in the U.S., and so we were very excited when a year ago or one and a half years ago, the U.S. has decided to take a clear leadership on Direct Air Capture and carbon removals, and it's really a model for a lot of other countries to follow. They're really good policies to promote the growth of this industry, and there's obviously huge commercial potential and project development potential for us here.
There's, as you said, two initiatives. Regional DAC Hub program, which in essence is a CapEx funding program, so it reduces the cost for the developer to build these projects, which will help us build faster and at larger scale than we could by just getting the funding from the private side. The second program is 45Q that was increased under the Inflation Reduction Act to $180 a ton if you remove and store the carbon permanently, and that obviously helps on the market side. We were very fortunate that our offering has convinced a lot of corporate clients to be early investors, even today when the price point is quite high. Obviously that then also gives them the right to get more capacity at lower prices when they come in later.
I think if we really want to accelerate the growth of this industry, it cannot just be corporate buyers that are offtakers here. There's two potential models here. One is something like 45Q, like a tax credit, that in essence it acts like a feed-in tariff for renewable energy. It reduces the price premium for early buyers of a new technology. That's obviously great, given the price levels I've told you. It's part of the contribution, it doesn't bring us all the way there, so we still need a very large private demand. Another way to do this is a government procurement program, which as I understand is also being discussed.
Actually, it's been interesting. Since the U.S. has announced this, we heard there's other policymakers which are starting to consider these types of initiatives. It's really great that the U.S. took a leadership role here. We're still early in the process. A lot of governments are still figuring out how exactly to achieve those targets that they have set. We're excited about the possibility of working with governments and with project partners to show what carbon removal can actually look like in the U.S. and around the planet.
Chad: I imagine one of the barriers to growth today is the cost of financing to actually build these facilities. How do you bring down that cost of debt and equity at the project or asset level? I think part of the way you do that is through these long-term credits that have certainty or government procurement contracts, but ultimately you need agreements like power purchase agreements. Multiyear-- you mentioned, some of the corporates that have initially contracted you have contracted you on a multiyear basis, but multiyear revenue contracts with credit-worthy counterparties is, I think, really how you can ultimately get the lower-cost financing you need to build more of these facilities.
You talked a little bit about it earlier, but how do you really drive that demand at the private sector level?
Andreas: Great point. As I mentioned before, we really try to sign long-term agreements with our customers. We were inspired a bit by power purchase agreements, or by these agreements that span multiple years because they essentially give you the certainty that there will be demand for the plant, and that drives down your financing cost. These agreements can always vary in the amount of CO₂ that's removed and the time frame.
The market is quite dynamic, but we continue to push the duration of these agreements outward, and we also continue to work with financing partners to bring down the cost of capital here. That can be in the form of project equity or project debt. We're actually working with, for example, the Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, which has been also a leader here in this space, on partially refinancing our plants, ones that are proven out and ones still working. I think these types of models will be really essential for the industry to keep growing.
On the other hand, I think long-term supply agreements are also in the interest of the market at the moment. Because anyone who's really educated about the market understands that there could be really supply constraints, so they want to be able to secure their 2030, or 2035, or maybe even 2040 supply, and they want to make sure that they can actually fulfill their net zero targets that they've set themselves, and so it's also in their interest to sign longer-term agreements.
Chad: Got it. Then finally, on the policy side, we talked a little bit about earlier, whether that's tax credits or government procurement contracts, but are there any other important policy levers or mechanisms that you think would really help supercharge this market going forward, whether that's a carbon price or some other policy mechanism?
Andreas: My view here is you need the right mix of carrots and sticks. We tend to say here in Europe, we're a bit better on the sticks, and in the U.S., a bit better on the carrots. Ideally, a good strategy for carbon neutrality has both. Now, what are potential ideas? I think CapEx grants, as we have seen them in the DAC Hub program, are a good idea. The challenge is you obviously need to select then the right projects, and that comes with a lot of due diligence and effort. I think something like 45Q is also a great idea because it's a bit project-agnostic, but essentially whoever does it and whoever proves that he does it gets that tax credit. We really like feed-in tariff type structures like that. Government procurement programs can also help to accelerate demand.
I think one of the most important things and that often gets overlooked is what I mentioned before when we were talking about standards, is the real distinction between removals and reductions. When Jan and Christoph, our founders, founded the company back in 2009, a lot of people said, "Well, you're a bit crazy because actually what we need to work on is reductions and removals come later." The problem is if you don't scale them today, then they won't be available later. I think that view has been adopted by science already seven, eight years ago, but I'm not sure if it has really come through in all the policymakers.
I think the real next step is, one, for people to understand this, and we're working hard on helping to educate people on this. Then also to put in some legislation in place and some standards in place that this can become a tradable market, and not just a company-to-company agreement, but actually a lively market that takes into account the quality. That's the other policy effort that I think can really help.
Chad: Excellent. Well, thank you so much, Andreas. We're almost done, but first we have the hot seat. We ask for your immediate reactions to the following statements. One thing I changed my mind on is--
Andreas: How much small, focused and capable teams can accomplish in a short time frame.
Chad: When I need to recharge, I--
Andreas: Meditate, take a walk in the beautiful Swiss nature, or play video games.
Chad: Excellent. The key ingredient to my productivity is--
Andreas: Writing a lot. Writing what I did, writing what I'm going to do, planning my day and my week ahead, and then focusing on the truly important things.
Chad: Planning, reflection and prioritization, that's what I'm hearing. I like that. [chuckles] I want my kids to know--
Andreas: Don't have kids yet, but hopefully in this near future, I would want them to know that I wasn't only aware that we have an emergency and we have a problem, but also that I decided to do something about it.
Chad: My favorite Swiss ski resort is--
Andreas: Laax.
Chad: [chuckles] Some folks in the U.S. believe Switzerland is clean and beautiful, but somewhat boring from a cultural dynamism perspective. Tell us why they're wrong.
Andreas: Actually, I used to agree with them. I left Switzerland because I thought it's a bit too boring for me, and now that I've come back after spending more than 10 years abroad, I actually started to enjoy it. Number one, Switzerland, and specifically, Zurich, where we're based, it has become a much more interesting city over the last 10 to 15 years. A lot of great international companies here, amazing restaurants, great events. It has gotten a lot cooler despite the reputation.
Secondly, actually if you think about it, predictability is not necessarily a bad thing. It allows your mind to focus on what really matters and worry less about traffic and about other things. For example, I really enjoy public transportation since I came back to Switzerland, how on time it is, and how I have less climate impact, and I can actually use the time that I commute to work. Those are some of the good things about being boring.
Chad: I love it. [chuckles] Finally, to me, climate positive means--
Andreas: Focusing on a solution to the problem and not just the problem.
Chad: Well, thank you very much, Andreas. This has been really fun and informative at the same time. I really wish you and Climeworks the best going forward, and appreciate your time today.
Andreas: Thank you. It was really great.
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I'm Chad Reed.
And this is Climate Positive.