Carbon removal is often conceived of as only separating greenhouse gases from ambient air. But what if it also creates other valuable products in the process? Should they still be selling carbon credits? Does this competition make it harder for carbon removal companies that can't produce additional value streams? What are the trade-offs here, and is financial additionality the right place to intervene if intervention is even necessary?
In this episode of the Reversing Climate Change podcast, Nori Cofounder Ross Kenyon interviews Eric Matzner, an alumnus of Carbon Removal Newsroom and Cofounder of Project Vesta who has a new venture leaving stealth mode called Metal Plant. This is Metal Plant's podcast debut!
This innovative project combines hyperaccumulator plants and enhanced rock weathering to extract nickel from soil and crushed rock while removing carbon from the air. Eric discusses the economics of co-producing nickel and carbon offsets, addressing the challenges of carbon removal scale-up, and his views on the importance of vertical integration in ensuring quality and cost control. The episode delves into Metal Plant's initial operations in Albania, leveraging the country's rich olivine resources on non-arable land, and generating local employment.
Much of the conversation focuses on a possibly looming intellectual crisis in carbon removal: what does the industry do when it realizes that many of its methodologies are co-producing value besides carbon? Will it try to find a way to square that with conventional applications of financial additionality, or will they abandon or amend additionality to make sure co-producers aren't held down while the world desperately needs them to scale their operations?
So much to talk about, and there will almost certainly be more on this topic in the future!
Resources
Metal Plant's website
Eric Matzner's website
Eric Matzner on Carbon Removal Newsroom back in 2019: "Project Vesta for olivine drawdown leaves stealth mode"
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