Climate change solutions typically center on carbon, and addressing carbon is essential for a safer climate future. But we sometimes forget that carbon isn’t the only culprit. Fluorinated gases such as old HVAC refrigerants can have more than 10,000 times the climate-changing potential of carbon. The climate research nonprofit Project Drawdown determined that refrigerant management is one of the most impactful ways to mitigate climate change. As CEO of Tradewater, Tim Brown is racing to aggregate potent gases from around the world and destroy them before they leak into the atmosphere and wreak havoc on our climate. In this episode, host Hilary Langer speaks with Tim Brown, CEO and Founder of Tradewater – a Chicago-based company that finds and destroys the world’s most potent climate-changing gases. Tim shares how his eBay purchase of a common refrigerant inspired him to build a company that produces some of the highest quality carbon offsets. He explains how the Tradewater team leverages partnerships to scale their impact, why they expanded internationally, and how they plan to accelerate their work before potent GHGs are released into the atmosphere.
Climate change solutions typically center on carbon, and addressing carbon is essential for a safer climate future. But we sometimes forget that carbon isn’t the only culprit. Fluorinated gases such as old HVAC refrigerants can have more than 10,000 times the climate-changing potential of carbon. The climate research nonprofit Project Drawdown determined that refrigerant management is one of the most impactful ways to mitigate climate change. As CEO of Tradewater, Tim Brown is racing to aggregate potent gases from around the world and destroy them before they leak into the atmosphere and wreak havoc on our climate.
In this episode, host Hilary Langer speaks with Tim Brown, CEO and Founder of Tradewater – a Chicago-based company that finds and destroys the world’s most potent climate-changing gases. Tim shares how his eBay purchase of a common refrigerant inspired him to build a company that produces some of the highest quality carbon offsets. He explains how the Tradewater team leverages partnerships to scale their impact, why they expanded internationally, and how they plan to accelerate their work before potent GHGs are released into the atmosphere.
Links:
Project Drawdown: Overview of Refrigerant Management
One overlooked way to fight climate change? Dispose of old CFCs. (National Geographic)
Episode recorded: May 5, 2022
Email your feedback to Chad, Gil, and Hilary at climatepositive@hannonarmstrong.comor tweet them to @ClimatePosiPod.
Chad Reed: This is Climate Positive – a show featuring candid conversations with the leaders, innovators, and changemakers driving our climate positive future. I’m Chad Reed
Hilary Langer: I’m Hilary Langer.
Gil Jenkins: I’m Gil Jenkins.
Tim: We are preventing the release of these very potent greenhouse gases. We focus on some of the worst ones, such as old refrigerants. These are gases that are up to 10,900 times as potent as CO2. Every pound that we collect is the same as 10,900 pounds of CO2.
Hilary: Climate change solutions typically center on carbon, and addressing carbon is essential for a safer climate future. But we sometimes forget that carbon isn’t the only culprit. Fluorinated gases such as old HVAC refrigerants can have more than 10,000 times the climate changing potential of carbon. The climate research nonprofit Project Drawdown determined that refrigerant management is one of the most impactful ways to mitigate climate change. As CEO of Tradewater, Tim Brown is racing to aggrege potent gases from around the world and destroy them before they leak into the atmosphere and wreak havoc on our climate.
Gil: Climate Positive is produced by Hannon Armstrong, a leading investor in climate solutions for over 30 years. To learn more about our climate positive journey, please visit HannonArmstrong.com.
Hilary: Tim, thank you so much for joining us from Chicago today.
Tim: Well, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Hilary: Throughout your career, you've been focused on the environment in both the non-profit and the business sectors. In the late '90s, you co-founded the Delta Institute to address the intersection of economic development and environmental quality. You then founded Wabashco to create carbon offset and renewable energy projects. Most recently in 2016, you launched Tradewater, a company where you now serve as the CEO, you oversee the collection and destruction of potent greenhouse gases.
Did you always know that you wanted to focus on the environment, or was there something that drew you into this space?
Tim: I've always known that from really when I was in college. I knew that I was looking for a career in the environment. I felt passionately about it even as a kid. I think that some of the turning points for me were I grew up in the Chicago area and I spent a lot of time in the Great Lakes region, spending summers up in Lake Superior and of course, living right on Lake Michigan.
I always felt that the real problems that the lakes were experiencing in terms of pollution, et cetera, were solvable, that it wasn't the lake's fault that they were experiencing these problems. I think it was from that perspective that I was became really interested in like, well, how is it that we can prevent these problems in the first place as opposed to really looking at the struggle to clean up problems after they've already occurred, which is some of the major water quality problems that exist in the Great Lakes region around contaminated sediments and waterways, et cetera, that are the result of industrial activities and that kind of legacy.
I think it was from that awareness having grown up in this region and really appreciating the amazing natural beauty and the huge water resource that we have here, but also feeling really badly that human activity had really damaged that resource. That's when I became very interested in working on pollution prevention and cleanup-related efforts and really trying to find a way to get to scale in that work. That's how it all began.
Hilary: In terms of prevention, you've certainly been quite successful with Tradewater. Since you started, Tradewater has prevented the equivalent of, I think 5.1 million tons of carbon equivalent from being released into the atmosphere. How do you do this? What's the basic business model?
Tim: Well, I'm happy to say that it's actually 5.3 million metric tons now.
Hilary: Congratulations.
Tim: This work has been quite gratifying because we are preventing the release of these very potent greenhouse gases. We focus on some of the worst ones, such as old refrigerants. These are gases like freon, they are chlorofluorocarbons, CFCs, and hydrochlorofluorocarbons, HCFCs. These are refrigerants that have been banned from production by the Montreal Protocol because they impact the ozone layer, but they're also very potent greenhouse gases.
We collect these gases that are either in cylinders and cans that are unused or from chillers and cooling systems and refrigeration systems that are being decommissioned. We collect them, we aggregate them and then we destroy them. That prevents their release into the atmosphere. These are gases that are up to 10,900 times as potent as CO2. Every pound that we collect is the same as 10,900 pounds of CO2, they really do pack a punch.
Hilary: How do you actually destroy the gases? What does that look like?
Tim: Well, the Montreal Protocol, which is the prevailing global environmental policy that all countries have signed on to, requires that you use a destruction technology that addresses 99.99% of these gases. There are approved technologies that apply in the Montreal Protocol. One of them is a rotary kiln incinerator. That's the technology that we've been relying on most recently.
Prior, we also used plasma arc furnaces. Both of these technologies use high heat to break down the contaminants and need that 99.99% destruction efficiency requirement to the Montreal Protocol.
Hilary: How do you source the gases?
Tim: When we started this work-- maybe I could just back up a little bit to say that when I was working on project development through Wabashco, my former company, that was about 2012, the California Global Warming Solutions Act had been passed. That actually was passed in 2006 and California was looking at how to implement that program, like what would be the regulatory mechanism to implement that program.
What they chose was a Cap-and-Trade Program where regulated entities in California would be allowed to release greenhouse gases, but at a declining cap over time and also at a price point that would increase over time. That was their method for achieving the reductions of the global warming solutions act. Part of that Cap-and-Trade Program included the use of carbon offset credits, which are indirect reductions of CO2 or sequestration of CO2.
They're allowing carbon offset credits into that program. One of the carbon offset project types is the collection destruction of ozone-depleting substances such as old refrigerants. I went out to California from Chicago in 2012 to understand more about the California Cap-and-Trade Program, and to learn about the carbon offset program and thus became familiar with this particular project type.
On my way back, I thought to myself, I bet we could do something around that. We could look for and find these gases. When I got home, I just started researching a bit, and to my surprise, I found that this material could be had on eBay. I bought a cylinder of R12 Freon off of eBay. I think I paid too much for it.
Hilary: Do they then just deliver it to your door?
Tim: It arrived at my house, and my wife was wondering, "What are you into now? What is that?" It was so intriguing to me that you could actually buy this pollution off of an e-commerce platform and actually, I felt that it was a very interesting form of pollution prevention would be to simply buy the pollution and then destroy it, and that's how it all began.
When you ask, where do we find it, it's remarkable how much of this stuff is still out there to the point that individuals are putting it up on e-commerce platforms. We don't find it that way very much anymore. We've evolved to know where to look for it, to know who might have it, and the different sectors that are still using these old refrigerants. Many people have cylinders that are unused or stockpiles that we learn about and that we end up buying and then there are plenty of old buildings that have old chilling and cooling systems that have this material as well.
We developed a collection network that is now in 49 states in the United States where we find this material in very small quantities and we collectively aggregate it in our warehouse in Chicago and then we send it off to be destroyed. We have also started to do this work globally, and have many different projects going on and in countries around the world, which really points to the reality that these gases are really broadly distributed globally and they do present a real climate risk and so there is a very nice additionality to collecting this material and certainly a permanence in destroying it. That's the model that we're pursuing now.
Hilary: You're actually paying the owners of these pollutants to turn in the pollutant. Are they motivated primarily by the money or do they have climate goals in mind?
Tim: I would say that the money is certainly persuasive. I think some people certainly have a climate motive and want to do the responsible thing with these gases that they have, but we're very happy to pay for it. We've actually spent, I think it's well over $30 million now in very small quantities. I think we've got over close to probably 30,000 people that we've purchased material from. There is a small scale, but important to economic impact, particularly when you aggregate that up.
I think that's fine with us. Then we create a carbon offset credit from this work which we then sell that offset. It's a very strange business because these refrigerants that we collect are actually more valuable once they're destroyed, so when they don't exist than when they do exist. It all works out. Everybody gets what they need and we're able to collect and destroy this material.
Hilary: Typically, when Tradewater's not involved, what happens to the material? My husband and I recently upgraded our HVAC system to a more efficient model. I assumed that this was a net win for the environment and now I cringe thinking about what probably happened to that old refrigerant. How could I have done that more responsibly?
Tim: Well, you may have done it responsibly if the contractor that you were working with either reclaimed and reused that material or sent it off to be destroyed. The real risk here is that it gets released into the atmosphere. It just simply gets vented. That's really what we're trying to prevent is to catch this material before that may happen. It's very easy for these gasses to be released during the decommissioning process of an old piece of equipment.
Also, the cylinders that you often find in stockpiles of material are prone to rust and leaking. That's the risk is that it's going to be released into the atmosphere. When we talk about the climate impacts and the carbon offset credits, what we're really looking for are projects that meet an additionality standard, meaning that this is above and beyond business as usual.
It is the case that there are no mandates to collect and destroy these gases. There is nothing that requires proper end-of-life disposal of this material. There is always this risk that it's going to be released. By intervening into this system by collecting and destroying, and doing something above and beyond what is required creates this high-quality carbon offset credit that we utilize to fund our work.
Hilary: Why do you think these gases don't get more attention and why people don't know more about them and their climate impact? I understand that about 3% of manmade climate change can be attributed to leaking refrigerant gasses, which is about equivalent to the impact of air travel. We talk so much about air travel and the carbon impact. Nobody talks about the leaking refrigerant. Why is that?
Tim: I think it's just so obscure. We actually participated in some focus groups around this same question, and we're very surprised that even the concept of refrigeration and a refrigerant is something that is really not at the top of mind for most people. It's one of those unsung greenhouse gases. In 2017 Project Drawdown released its report and, to our surprise, and, I think, to many people's surprise, refrigerant management ended up being the number one solution recommended in Project Drawdown to address runaway climate change, which really points to the importance of these gases.
Not only are they incredibly potent, but there are also this class of non-CO2 greenhouse gases that accelerate climate change that, if we can get them out of the system early, it gives a longer period of time for some of the CO2-based strategies to take hold.
It's complicated stuff. Not everybody knows about this. Then who thinks very much about their refrigerant and their air conditioner in their car and their refrigerator? It's just not a mainstream issue. I think that, with publications like Project Drawdown and just a greater awareness of climate, I think more and more people are starting to appreciate that there are these non-CO2 gases such as refrigerants that make up a large portion of the overall greenhouse gas budget that we can start to address.
Hilary: My understanding is you recently launched the catalytic coalition with an emphasis on increasing awareness of these potent gases. How is that initiative structured and what are your goals for it?
Tim: We've been on this hunt for these forms of gases and have done a very decent job of finding the dribs and drabs that we aggregate up to actually be a large impact, but there are still a lot of these gases that are in use in chillers and buildings and manufacturing and industrial processes, et cetera. These are systems that may still be working just fine.
What we're interested in doing is finding where all the refrigerant is so that we can start to engage with whoever's controlling those gases in a discussion around how to accelerate the conversion of those older systems to newer systems that are more efficient, like the one that you put in your house, and that may use a lower global warming potential gas. Therefore reducing the risk of climate impact from those cooling systems. What we've been doing is talking to companies and organizations that have a large portfolio of buildings and engaging with them on conducting an inventory to understand the greenhouse gases that are under management, and then to engage in these accelerated conversion strategies. It's been really very interesting. We've been working with a range of organizations from data centers to even municipalities. We've been working with a couple of universitiesand others.
I've been looking at inventories of others such as retail and big-box stores, et cetera. For some of the larger companies, just by looking at the refrigerant alone, you find that there's huge amounts of greenhouse gases under management that really haven't been on the radar. One retail chain, for example, had about 2 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent in refrigerant on rooftop cooling units throughout their portfolio.
Each and every one of those systems is a relatively small reservoir of greenhouse guesses, but when you add them up across the portfolio, it's actually quite sizeable. The catalytic coalition is about bringing together companies and organizations that really are interested in working on this and catalyzing additional attention to this problem and start to engage on how it makes sense to accelerate the conversion of these systems in ways that work well for the company but that have an end of life component to them for those old gases.
We're hopeful that this opens up a whole new avenue to find these old gases and then to create these end-of-life opportunities for them. We're always looking for companies and organizations that are interested in exploring this and fortunately, we're getting more and more opportunities to do that, which is great.
Hilary: Do the companies typically get offsets from their end-of-life focus with these refrigerants or are they paid for the pollutants like a typical Tradewater transaction?
Tim: We can do it either way. We can pay for those refrigerants and take them off and get them destroyed. Then we would handle the carbon offsets at the end or we can provide that service of collecting and destroying and returning those carbon offset credits that a company can use in their net-zero climate commitments and that sort of thing.
Hilary: I want to touch back on the carbon offsets. Carbon offsets come under a lot of criticism at times because it can be really hard to quantify the actual impact of $1 spent on a carbon offset. I learned about Tradewater in part because the data-driven organization Giving Green cited Tradewater as one of the most cost-effective ways to reduce carbon dollar for dollar.
You mentioned the additionality of your carbon offsets and the permanence. Could you go into that a little bit more and why your offsets are different from offsets from other organizations?
Tim: Sure. I think that one thing that distinguishes us is the fact that we destroy things, and so there is a permanence to it. Forestry credits, which we love- I think that protecting forests and making sure that those stocks of CO2 remain in the ground et cetera are incredibly important, but they are vulnerable to forest fires or to storms et cetera that may compromise the sequestered carbon.
Our projects really are final. There's no leakage that can occur from the project. What that means is that once we collect and destroy these refrigerants, there's no way for that refrigerant to leak back into the atmosphere. It is the permanence of the project is, I think, what distinguishes it among a whole range of project types. I think our view is that it's good that there's a whole range of project types because, in order to get at and to prevent runaway climate change, we really are needing to do an all-of-the-above strategy and the extent to which more and more project types can emerge that really are strong and of high quality I think the better.
I think ours ends up being good on additionality, good on permanence, and therefore a good deal dollar for dollar. We're happy about that.
Hilary: Once the gases are taken out of service, how long do you have to destroy them? Is there a time period when after, for instance, 10 years, you know that they're going to start leaking out of the canister?
Tim: Our perspective is that the sooner we can destroy them the better. That there's always that risk of them being released. I think we have a sense of responsibility once we have them they're in our possession, in our custody, that we want to hurry up and get them destroyed. With that said, economically you need to accumulate that enough to make a project worth it. It's expensive to ship stuff around, to destroy them, to go through the verification process, which is really very important. We tend to destroy in what we call tranches. Those can be up to 30,000 pounds of material in one destruction event which may yield up to 100,000 or 150,000 tons depending on where you land on it and what is the refrigerant type. That's our take on it is that the faster we can get them in control and then destroyed the better. The longer that they kick around, the more risk there is for release into the atmosphere.
One thing about these gases is that once they're in the atmosphere, they cannot be removed. Unlike CO2, when it's in the atmosphere you can remove it, trees sequestrate, et cetera, but these refrigerant gases cannot be removed, so puts a finer point on the importance of destroying them.
Hilary: That's got to be exciting when you have the new tranch of gases that you're going to destroy. Does everyone toast in the office and celebrate a little bit?
Tim: We do. We have a gong here.
Hilary: Do you? That's good.
Tim: The gong is actually native and old cylinder of these gases. We bang the gong now since we're somewhat distributed, we have a virtual gong, but yes, we do celebrate that there's a bunch of these gases that are going to see their end of life.
Hilary: I love it. How often do you get to bang that gong?
Tim: Around every six weeks or so, we get to send material off. It depends. We have these international projects that are under development. They take a little bit longer to get through the whole cycle, but those are what we would call gong-worthy events as well. We've got a few of those coming up soon here too.
Hilary: When you go overseas, I understand you first worked in Ghana in 2017, I used to work in the Middle East and East Africa implementing USAID programs. I always found it so important to find the right people, but that's really hard. Then once you find them, you can do absolutely anything. How do you find the right partners on the ground and establish a presence in a new country overseas?
Tim: In the case of Ghana, Ghana found us, which was really fun. There was an organization called City Waste Recycling that's in Accra in Ghana, and they had been recovering old refrigerators and recycling them. They were removing the refrigerant from those refrigerators, but they didn't have any place to take the gases. There was no destruction capacity in Ghana.
I don't know how they found us, but they contacted us and said, "Hi, we're in Ghana and we've got these gases. Can you help us find a place for them?" We decided to try to figure it out and we ended up working with the Verra Registry to create a carbon offset protocol that would work in an international basis for this kind of project.
Then we went to Ghana and inspected the material. We asked the City Waste Recycling folks if they could find some more materials so that we would have a large enough project to make it worth it. They found a huge stockpile of these old gases, so we ended up taking the recovered gases that they had, along with some of the stockpile, we didn't want to take at all because we weren't sure if this would work.
Then we worked with the United States Environmental Protection Agency and the government in Ghana to provide for its export from Ghana into the United States, so that we could destroy it under the offset protocol that we had helped put in place with the Verra Registry.
We did that project and then we needed to find a buyer for the project in order to make it all work out. We found a wonderful partner in Intuit that was looking to offset their climate impacts, and so they bought those credits. Then with the money from those credits, we went back and got the rest of it out of Ghana, so we ended up doing two projects in Ghana.
You're absolutely right that it works best when you've got a strong partner like we did with City Waste Recycling. We have since been working to find material around the world and we've got a really strong team that's headquartered in Costa Rica that is leading that effort. That effort too is leading to partners that we can work well with in other parts of the world.
As a result, we've got projects going on in Latin America, in the Middle East, in Southeast Asia, and certainly, in North America. All of a sudden, this whole effort is going global, which is really quite astonishing when you think of how it all started.
Hilary: Do you expect that in the future you'll establish destruction facilities overseas?
Tim: The access to destruction capacity is a very big issue for this line of work, and so we have found other destruction capacity around the world. We can't bring all of the material to the United States, anyway, so we've found capacity in France and in South Africa, in Saudi Arabia, in Thailand. We've been looking for other places to take it as well, but that gives us some decent coverage for the projects that we're developing. Again, all of these destruction facilities must meet the very strict standards of the Montreal Protocol, as well as the carbon offset protocol standards which are very rigid as well, and it takes a while to do the due diligence and to characterize those facilities, but we're fortunate to now have a good network of destruction facilities that we can utilize.
Hilary: My understanding is these refrigerants are being phased out, and that, by 2028, they cannot be put into use around the world. Is that right?
Tim: There's different schedules. The CFCs, the older stuff, the chlorofluorocarbons have been phased out. Those can't be produced anymore and used, but they still exist. Well, I shouldn't say they can't be used, you can't make a new appliance that specifies those CFCs, but all appliances can still use them.
Hilary: So CFC is still produced?
Tim: No, that production ban is done. The next generation are the hydrochlorofluorocarbons, the HCFCs. Those are in the process of being banned. The production ban is taking place and in a staggered basis around the world. In the United States, for example, that ban is in place, and in other parts, but it's not completely taken effect. Then the other form of refrigerant or HFCs, hydrofluorocarbons, where that ban is going to take even longer, but it's started.
It was part of what was called the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which aligned with the Paris Agreement. All these gases are now-- that ban will take place over time for all of them.
I think what's important to note is that the bans simply ban production, they do not ban use, nor do they require an end-of-life scenario for the existing gases, which means that the same issue that we have seen with chlorofluorocarbons, the original bad ones, CFCs, are going to be the case for the HCFCs and HFCs. There's going to be a gargantuan volume of these gases. Whereas new production is banned, the old stuff is still going to be out there.
This is an issue that is going to take a long time to resolve, which is why projects like the [unintelligible 00:27:05] coalition, which is looking at accelerating conversions to lower global warming potential and refrigerants is so important. We want to see the more efficient to lower GWP systems take hold, and then create these end-of-life solutions at scale for the remaining refrigerants, but it's a big project.
One thing I wanted to mention is that, just to give you a sense of scale, MIT, the Massachusetts Institute for Technology, some of the researchers there did some modeling on the remaining stocks of CFCs, which were the first gases that were banned. Their results showed that they surveyed about 9 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent in the form of those old CFCs are still in existence around the world. That's just that form of refrigerant. Of course, it's the most potent kind, but nevertheless, it just shows you the scale that we're talking about.
Hilary: Given how destructive these gases are, why isn't there more of a push to come up with an end-of-life policy requirement, at least in the more developed countries where you have more infrastructure to support it?
Tim: That is a good question that you should probably ask of the regulators. I think it is always interesting to me, having been in this pollution prevention business for so long, as to why that is the case. Why isn't there a greater attention to end of life? To really looking at the responsibility of producers around these gases. This is an age-old problem that we have is just why we have these big problems is companies or manufacturers, et cetera, don't take responsibility for the impacts of what they create.
I think that the refrigeration and air conditioning innovations were certainly welcomed. Certainly, nobody knew, at the time, of what the unintended consequences of these gases would be relative to climate. That wasn't on anybody's radar. Nevertheless, that's where we find ourselves, like in so many other environmental problems, where we're dealing with the effects of what people put in motion a long time ago. It is too bad that there isn't more responsibility being taken.
I think what is interesting now and is different from other things that I've worked on over time is that the climate benefit enables possibility to collect and destroy these gases because there's a monetary reason to do it. There's a way to fund it. The more that companies and individuals, et cetera, appreciate and value the climate benefits and are willing to pay for it, then the better chance we have to get at scale to go after these gases because their collecting and destroying is additional to business as usual. There is a permanence to it. The more people will realize that, "God, this is a solution that we can support and get behind and use the climate benefit," I think the better chance we have of going after them.
Hilary: Then beyond the refrigerants, Tradewater has started to focus more on methane capture. What are you excited about in that space?
Tim: Early on, the methane has been of interest, and the original company that I started, Wabashco, that was one of the first things we did was look at methane releases from abandoned coal mines and look at the climate benefits of making sure that form of gas was destroyed or prevented from being released into the atmosphere.
We got away from that a little bit as our work and the refrigerant space ballooned and we were very busy building that program. Methane is such another important non-CO2 gas. It's potent. It has an accelerating effect on climate. There are a lot of these abandoned small sources of it that in and of themselves are small. Again if you aggregate it up the impact is huge.
We have been looking at the opportunity to control methane releases from abandoned oil and gas wells, which is a important issue. There's been some new funding available from the Department of Interior in the United States to go after these sources but it won't be enough to get at the incredibly huge volume of these old oil wells and gas wells that have been abandoned where there is no responsible party available and that are continuing to release methane.
We are looking to start a program that will plug those wells, as many as we can find. To me, it works really well with our refrigerant program because these methane sources are active, they're happening right now.
As a mission-based company, I like the combination of both preventing the existing releases of potent greenhouse gases as well as destroying potential releases and ensuring that those don't get released at all. Anyway, that's what we're up to there. We're working on designing some chamber tests in order to utilize with some existing abandoned oil and gas wells to measure the flow of method that's coming off and to understand what that climate impact is.
Then we'll be working with people in that sector to get those things plugged up and therefore create a good climate benefit. The landowners will be delighted because they've got an abandoned well on their land that will be taken care of. Then we would prevent this otherwise ongoing source of greenhouse gas from getting into the atmosphere. It's a really nice project type.
Hilary: It's so nice how you use the cap-and-trade and the offsets to come up with this market solution to something where nobody wants to deal with it otherwise. Are you going to have to come up with a different gong? Like a different sound for those?
Tim: Yes. I'm glad you mentioned that, we'll have to get on that. You mentioned the cap-and-trade. The Cap-and-Trade Program really has been great. That's a nice example of what happens when a regulatory program puts a price on carbon and there's a compliance piece to it such that regulated entities have to do it. I think what we're also seeing is the strong emergence of the voluntary markets.
These are companies and individuals that have made climate commitments such as net-zero commitments or they have a climate-facing commitment of some kind that they're looking to address.
The more that those kinds of entities value and are willing to pay for the climate benefit of these kinds of projects, the better chance we have to get at scale. We're starting to see that happen at a much higher level globally. Leading companies are really taking the stuff seriously and they're enabling projects like what we're working on to happen, which otherwise just simply wouldn't.
I think that all speaks to a nice trend in valuing climate benefits and supporting them. It's been very helpful. The combination of a compliance market and a voluntary market is what we see as being able to get to scale.
Hilary: It's always refreshing when they have a partner like Tradewater where you are so science-driven and precise, so you know it's not just the greenwashing.
Tim: That is obviously always a concern. I really take pride in the intense documentation that comes with our work. When you think about it, in the case of the refrigerants, we have to prove that something existed and then we have to prove that it doesn't exist anymore.
We have to document it the whole way through from where did we find it, every single pound of the stuff, when did we find it? What is the chain of custody? When did we have it? When does it go to the destruction facility? Then to show that it was indeed was destroyed. That whole documentation set makes, again, for this strong carbon offset that there really is not a chance that one can greenwash the way around it.
Hilary: I like it.Tim we're almost done, but first I want to move to the hot seat. Fill in the blank for the following statements. The most important advice I have ever followed is?
Tim: Don't take no for an answer.
Hilary: I bet you get no a lot enough to push back.
Tim: Yes. I think that if you're in this entrepreneurial space where you're doing something that's so unusual, there's plenty of people that will tell you that can't be done, or "I don't understand what you're talking about, so I'm not going to support it," or whatever it is. I think that having determination to not be derailed by that kind of sentiment, I think, is what makes the difference in actually achieving something.
Hilary: Success is?
Tim: Success is seeing scale happen, is seeing a meaningful scale. When we started this work, we thought that it was going to be one and done, you find these stuff, you collect them destroy them and that's it, you move on to some other project type. Knowing that so much of it exists and to move to having goals that may have been a million tons and then to 3 million tons every year, I think that's what success is.
What feels good about it is that you can actually make a contribution that is growing, that can persist over time, that can transcend boundaries, and it can be global in scale. That's pretty exciting.
Hilary: My climate hero is?
Tim: I think I'd have to say it's Al gore. He early on created such awareness of climate change and brought the issue to the forefront through the inconvenient truth, uh, his lectures and advocacy. But I would also say that Fran Pavley is my climate hero. She was in the California State Assembly and Senate and wrote the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. And this put a price on carbon and created a mandate for companies in all sectors to reduce emissions, to be within a declining cap. And the results of her work have been amazingly effective and far reaching.
Hilary: When I need to recharge, I?
Tim: Go to the woods. Getting into nature, being in the trees and the forest has always been a way for me to recharge.
Hilary: Which are your favorite woods to go into?
Tim: I take really any but I'm particularly fond of the Northwoods along the Lake Superior shoreline in Northern Michigan is a go-to place for me.
Hilary: That's great. Then finally, the last question. To me, climate positive means?
Tim: Climate positive means taking care of your past, addressing emissions that have already occurred, plus making a big investment in prevention of future emissions. I think that is how I would look at climate positive. I'm heartened and impressed by organizations that are really taking a climate-positive view. I think that's where we need to be.
Hilary: Tim, thank you so much for doing this with us, and we're inspired by your work and really excited about all of the growth that Tradewater has had.
Tim: Thank you. It's been really fun, and I really appreciate the opportunity to share this story, and certainly, all the work you do to bring similar stories.
Hilary: If you enjoyed this week’s podcast, please leave us a leave a rating and review on Apple and Spotify. This really helps us reach more listeners.
You can also let us know what you thought via Twitter @ClimatePosiPod or email us at climatepositive@hannonarmstrong.com.
I'm Hilary Langer.
And this is Climate Positive.