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Transcript

Scrubbing Carbon from the Air · What's Your Problem?

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin. The other day I spoke with Dan Friedman. He's
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the CEO of a company called Carbon Engineering. Maybe we
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: could start with what's happening out in Texas, Like, there's
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: actually somebody's building something big in Texas and you're mixed
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: up with it in a good way, right, tell me
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: what's happening in Texas.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: Yes, and in Texas happened big. That's the good part
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: about Texas. Yeah. We are building well. Our partner is
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: building our first commercial scale plant. Just broke ground about
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks ago, and all the big pieces
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: of equipment are under order, which is, you know, quite substantial.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: We got all our permits, took about a year, and
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: the road's been put in place. It's just a big
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: bunch of desert with some shrubs. And yeah, construction has started.
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  Speaker 1: Construction has started on a billion dollar project that will
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: be by far the biggest plant ever built to suck
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  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere. I'm Jacob Goldstein,
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  Speaker 1: and this is what's your problem. Carbon engineering is at
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: the frontier of an infant industry called direct air capture,
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: as in directly capturing carbon dioxide from the air. Direct
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: air capture won't be able to solve climate change on
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: its own. There's no way we could capture anywhere near
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: enough carbon to do that, but it might help at
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: the margin, pulling hundreds of millions of tons of carbon
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: out of the atmosphere every year to buy us some
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: time as industry is decarbonized over the next few decades.
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  Speaker 1: To get there, the direct air capture industry needs to
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: solve a bunch of problems, including how to bring the
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: price of direct air capture way down, and also how
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: to convince companies and governments to pay for sucking carbon
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: out of the air. I talked about both of those
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: problems with Dan, but to start, we talked about what
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: exactly he's building out in the Texas Desert. Let's say
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: it's two years from now and you and I drive
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: out to this spot in the middle of Texas and
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: you've just turned it on, the thing is working. What's
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: actually going to be happened? Well, first of all, we
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: get there, what do we see. What's it look like?
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so you know, when when you build any direct
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  Speaker 2: air capture facility, you've got to process a lot of air.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: So the main thing you see in all of them
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  Speaker 2: is what's what we call an air contactor, which is
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: a fancy name for a huge box with a huge
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: fan that's drawing air through the contents of the box.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a giant box fan like the one I
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: have in my living room, but way bigger.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: How big A couple of stories with stories, okay, so
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: you know it looks like it looks like a small
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: a small apartment. You know, I've quite a small apartment,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: but it's still like couple of stories, and you know
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the width of a narrow house.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 2: The fan is right on the roof of it. Okay,
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: So the fan turns on and air is drawn in
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: from the sides and goes up the top. So you
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: would see about seventy of those in two years when
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: this is done, lined up in rows.
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  Speaker 1: So danisying, there would be seventy of these apartment sized
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  Speaker 1: fan buildings, like a little subdivision out there in the desert.
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  Speaker 1: The fans suck in the air and then they have
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  Speaker 1: this liquid that binds to the carbon dioxide. And one
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  Speaker 1: of the things I'd heard Dan talk about in other
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: interviews is that the chemistry this part of removing carbon
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: from the air is actually pretty straightforward. But what's hard
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  Speaker 1: is removing it efficiently because of how little carbon dioxide
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: is in the air, Like carbon dioxide is way less
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  Speaker 1: than one percent of the atmosphere.
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  Speaker 2: It's very, very tiny, and that's what makes it so
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  Speaker 2: hard because you you have to touch so much air
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  Speaker 2: to get at the little tiny you know, mining a
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: tiny bit amount from the air. And traditionally, you know,
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: people have been extracting carbon dioxide from the air for
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  Speaker 2: a long time. If you recall the Apollo thirteen movie,
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  Speaker 2: they were suffocating from breeding their own carbon dioxide, and
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: in a couple of hours they built that.
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  Speaker 1: And just to be clear, that's the Houston We've got
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  Speaker 1: a problem. Yes, their problem was that there was too
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: much carbon dioxide in their in their space capsule.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, their director capture machine in there. The little one
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  Speaker 2: wasn't working, so they were suffocating in their own so
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  Speaker 2: they built one and they scrabbed it out. So the
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  Speaker 2: hard part, and that's what's unique about what we're doing.
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  Speaker 2: The hard part is to pull a million tons of
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  Speaker 2: carbon dioxide out of the air. So it's all about
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  Speaker 2: how much we have to do. It's not about doing it.
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  Speaker 2: The doing it is not that hard, but doing a
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  Speaker 2: lot of it is incredibly challenging.
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  Speaker 1: So it's a scaling problem.
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  Speaker 2: It's coming up with a process that will scale and
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  Speaker 2: that want use so much energy and materials that it
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: becomes useless. Right, so we need to be net negative,
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  Speaker 2: not net positive. So the challenge is, you know, is
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  Speaker 2: how much power do you use doing this? And how
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  Speaker 2: much steel do you use to build these air contacts
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  Speaker 2: and so on, and how do you scale that smartly?
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  Speaker 2: So in the end you are net negative, which is
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  Speaker 2: what the business is all about.
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  Speaker 1: How long do you have to run the plant do
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  Speaker 1: you estimate before it will capture all of the carbon
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  Speaker 1: that was emitted to build the plant and to build
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  Speaker 1: all of the materials in the plant.
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  Speaker 2: I don't have that figure, but it's because it depends
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  Speaker 2: who the final contractors are and their footprints and so on.
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  Speaker 2: It's similar to electric cars. It's not significance a few
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: months and their I year for sure.
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  Speaker 1: So Okay, you get the plant up and running, you're
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  Speaker 1: sucking carbon dioxi out of the air. So far, so good.
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  Speaker 1: But now you've got tons of carbon dioxide and you
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  Speaker 1: have to do something with it, right.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, that's that's the hard part that it
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: alver forget. What we do is we hand it to
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  Speaker 2: the world's expert on how to deal with carbon dioxide.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Occidental our partner who has you know, been burying carbon
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  Speaker 2: dioxide for a lot of years to.
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  Speaker 1: Be clear, that's Occidental Petroleum, the big oil company.
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  Speaker 2: Yes. Yeah, they are the companies that understand how to
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  Speaker 2: handle carbon dioxide. So what they do is they bury
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  Speaker 2: that carbon dioxide safely underground according to the US government regulations,
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  Speaker 2: so that it's permanently stored, meaning that it's scanteed for
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  Speaker 2: at least one hundred years to be underground.
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  Speaker 1: So Occidental is they're an investor in carbon engineering. They're
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: on the board, right, and they're they're the ones building
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: this biggest in the world by far, direct air capture plants, right,
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  Speaker 1: They're the one paying for it.
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  Speaker 2: Yes?
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  Speaker 1: Is that is that?
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yes?
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  Speaker 1: Yeah? Well why is why is Occidental Petroleum doing this?
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: Where are they paying all this? And they're the ones
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: spending a billion dollars to do it? Right?
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  Speaker 2: They were trying to figure out how to become net
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: zero meaning net zero in their own production, net zero
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  Speaker 2: in everything they subcontract and buy, and net zero, and
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  Speaker 2: what the customers like you and I would burn so
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  Speaker 2: all the emissions, and they decided to use this to
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  Speaker 2: decarbonize themselves. And then they said, whoa, we can offer
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  Speaker 2: this as a solution for other people that don't know
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  Speaker 2: how to do this, for them to decarbonize like airlines.
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  Speaker 2: It was a period took a period of years to
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  Speaker 2: develop to the point where it is now. And so
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  Speaker 2: they went from being a partner to being a customer
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  Speaker 2: to also being a part owner and then to being
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  Speaker 2: a deployment partner of all this thing. And they're trying
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  Speaker 2: to make this their next business after oil is done, basically.
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  Speaker 1: Basically selling carbon removal as a service. Let me ask
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  Speaker 1: you a question. You said in there that Occidental wants
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  Speaker 1: to be net zero? Why do they want to be
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  Speaker 1: net zero? And like in particular, given that you know,
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  Speaker 1: they have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits,
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  Speaker 1: Like why are they spending a billion dollars to the
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  Speaker 1: extent it's for them to be net zero? Like why
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  Speaker 1: is that a sensible thing for them to do?
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  Speaker 2: You know that kind of gets the heart of this
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  Speaker 2: whole problem. You know, it's not just Occidental. Microsoft wants
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  Speaker 2: to be in net zero. Amazon wants to be in
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  Speaker 2: net zero. Air travel wants to be net zero. Most
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  Speaker 2: of ninety odd percent of the world GDP has set
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  Speaker 2: a target to be net zero. So I think everybody's
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  Speaker 2: realizing Occidental included that in order to survive in the
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  Speaker 2: long term, we need to get to net zero. So
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  Speaker 2: at some point, I think society is going to say, well,
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  Speaker 2: if you're not net zero, you're not in business.
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  Speaker 1: So the sort of the financial case for getting to
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  Speaker 1: net zero is the assumption that policy governments will basically
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  Speaker 1: force companies to be net zero, like that's the or
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  Speaker 1: customers or customers right right, they will say we will
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  Speaker 1: only do business with a net zero support.
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  Speaker 2: You know. I think it goes deeper in terms of
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  Speaker 2: their management team that they're just committed to kind of
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  Speaker 2: lead the whole oil sector to get there, just recognizing
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  Speaker 2: that this has to happen. And in the end it's
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  Speaker 2: good for shareholders because if you keep your head in
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  Speaker 2: the sand, then eventually people don't buy from you one
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  Speaker 2: way or another.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I will say, given the history of
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  Speaker 1: oil companies behavior with respect to climate change, I'm wary
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  Speaker 1: of their involvement at some level, like just based on
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  Speaker 1: the fact that they knew that emissions were driving climate change,
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  Speaker 1: and they obfuscated that fact. Not occidental specifically, but that
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  Speaker 1: was clearly a widespread practice in the industry, and so
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  Speaker 1: it makes me some what weary of their involvement.
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  Speaker 2: Now, yeah, you know, I can't comment on that. All
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  Speaker 2: I can tell you is that when you scour the
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  Speaker 2: planet to find somebody that can deal with a megaton
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  Speaker 2: a year coming out of one plant, and then a
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  Speaker 2: thousand megatons a year coming out of one thousand plants,
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  Speaker 2: only the oil companies can do that, for better or worse.
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  Speaker 1: Huh you mean in terms of how do you stick
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  Speaker 1: it back in the ground. Yeah, you're the only ones
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  Speaker 1: who know at vast scale, how do stick carbon dioxide
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  Speaker 1: back in the ground.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and understand the underground. They've been mapping the underground
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  Speaker 2: for fifty years. They understand. Any country you go to,
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  Speaker 2: the oil companies the only people that understand what's under there,
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  Speaker 2: how to operate under there, how to keep it under
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  Speaker 2: there and not have it leak out. If you want
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  Speaker 2: to do this at scale, you've got to go to
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  Speaker 2: the world's experts, and the world experts that have been
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: looking at what goes underground with the geology. Because of
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: the oil business. Are the oil companies, there's nobody else.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, No, it is interesting the way this is, you're
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: basically running the oil business in revert.
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  Speaker 2: Right.
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  Speaker 1: For one hundred plus years, they have been digging hydrocarbons
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  Speaker 1: out of the ground, and then we've been burning them,
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  Speaker 1: and they've been going the carbon dioxide's been going into
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  Speaker 1: the atmosphere, and now it's like, okay, let's just it's
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: like on the It's like on my power drill at home.
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  Speaker 1: You know, you push the button one way and it
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  Speaker 1: drills in, and then you push it the other way
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  Speaker 1: and it drills out.
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  Speaker 2: Right, like exactly, it we got to I think the
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  Speaker 2: saying goes, we got to put it back where it
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: came from. Yeah, and you know, anything else is mucking
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: around with this natural system and I don't know what
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: the output of that would be, but this is pretty straightforward.
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  Speaker 2: We just put it back, bring the carbon back down,
• 11:43
  Speaker 2: and everything should return to normal.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Let me ask you one more thing, just on the
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: oil company thing, and then we'll leave it. There's basically
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: a concern that direct their capture will act as a
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: fig leaf to allow for even more emissions, right, and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: it will slow the energy transition that we need. Do
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: you buy that?
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  Speaker 2: No? You know, whoever says that just hasn't done the mass. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: this is not going to be an excuse for not
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: doing anything else. We already know from very well done
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: studies that there's only so much we can do to
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: avoid emissions. In the end, you're left with depends who
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: you talk to, you're left with somewhere between ten and
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: twenty percentage you just cannot avoid. And that's where direct
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: their capture comes in. It's the last bit of garbage
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: that you can't recycle, you can't do anything about it,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: and you've got to take it out. And that problem
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: alone is an immense challenge to think that we could
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: do ten times that and have everybody go one in life.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: People just haven't done the math. It's just just not possible.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: And then the other key thing is that if we
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: stop today and don't emit another carbon molecule into the air,
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: we've already emitted enough that we're going to crash through
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: one point five at some point.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: One point five degrees of warming one.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: Point five degrees because it's cumulative, and we've, like you
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: just said, we just spent the last hundred years burning
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: oil and coal, So you know, at some point beyond
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  Speaker 2: twenty fifty, we want to bring stuff back down.
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  Speaker 1: In other words, we don't just need to stop emitting
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. We need to reduce the
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: amount of carbon dioxide that is already out there in
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: the atmosphere. In a minute, the big problem with direct
• 13:28
  Speaker 1: air captured, where's the money going to come from. That's
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: the end of the ads. Now we're going back to
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: the show. Last year, Congress passed and the President signed
• 13:44
  Speaker 1: into law the Inflation Reduction Act, an act that confusingly
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: did not do much to reduce inflation, but did do
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: a lot for direct air capture. Specifically, it said that
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: the federal government will use tax credits to basically pay
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: companies to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere.
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: If we prove to them that we have captured a
• 14:06
  Speaker 2: ton of CO two from the air and we've buried
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: it up to their requirements, they write your check for
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: one hundred and eighty dollars.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: And one hundred and eighty dollars per ton.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: Per ton, so it's one hundred and eighty million per
• 14:20
  Speaker 2: million tons.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: And how much this this big plant that you and
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: accidental are building in Texas. How much does that pull
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: out of the air per year?
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: The first plant half a million tons, so that'd be
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: like ninety million a year from the US government. And
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: you know, the plant would not have happened without the IRA.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: This wouldn't have taken off in any kind of speed
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: without the IRA. You just couldn't do it without something
• 14:42
  Speaker 2: like that.
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: So, if one hundred and eighty dollars per ton is
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: the carrot is, what is the cost to you per
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: ton on your plant?
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: That is confidential, but it's significantly over that today it's more.
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And so to be a real viable business, there
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: needs to be some combination of getting more than one
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: hundred and eighty dollars a ton and or bringing your
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: costs down a lot.
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but you've put your finger on it. We need
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: to bring the cost of production down over time by
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: improving the technology and making it more and more efficient.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: And that's really the job of carbon engineering. That's what
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: we do for a living.
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Can you give me a specific example of some detail,
• 15:30
  Speaker 1: some part of the process, either that you have made
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: cheaper or solved.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the easiest example, and the one we've
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: worked the most done, is Hey, let's get those seventy
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: things down.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: To fifty seventy units.
• 15:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, there's seventy units. Let's make the way the whole
• 15:47
  Speaker 2: thing is configured, and the way the fan runs and
• 15:50
  Speaker 2: so on, and the way we place it to the
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: prevailing wind. Let's make that more efficient. So the next
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: plant has fifty not seventy. You save yourself a pile
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: of steel, You save yourself a pidle of sorbent, you
• 16:02
  Speaker 2: use less electricity, it becomes more efficient.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a way of saying, let's pull out
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: more carbon with every thing, right, with every spin of
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the fan. Let's get more carbon right out of the atmosphere.
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: And is there an example of how you have done
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: that already? I mean, presumably that is the endless quest
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: for improved deficiency. Is there just one little example you
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: can give of a way you have improved efficiency so far.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: So inside what we call the air contact or where
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: the air is flowing through. In our case, the reaction
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: is from a very thin film. That film is exposed
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: to the air and react to the carbon. So if
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: we can pack a honeycomb structure in it, we got
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: more surface that the air is going through.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: Wait, is that one. Is that one you've done already?
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: Yes?
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: Have you already turned it into.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: A honey yes, well not a honeycomb, but yeah. We
• 16:57
  Speaker 2: have been improving what we call the fill of the
• 17:01
  Speaker 2: air contact or what's inside it for many years, and
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: then in the last year before we went to final production,
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: we made our own custom filled what we call the
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: CE one, and it was twenty percent better. And we're
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: now working on the second fill, not going into the
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: deck the director capture plan we just talked about, but
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: we'll go into the next one and that might be
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: another twenty percent and we might be down to fifty
• 17:27
  Speaker 2: five fifty six air contact us once we do that.
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: What else should we talk about?
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: So you know, we know we have to do this,
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: and right now our partner is selling these credits. They're available,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: we can go buy them today. But it's not really happening.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a few sales going on, but it's
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: not really happening. And if it was really happening, we'd
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: probably be building four plants, not one plant. And that's
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: the real challenge that bothers me. How do we make
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: this happen. We all know we have to do it,
• 18:01
  Speaker 2: but if you and I do it, and nobody else
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: does it. We just spend a lot of money and
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: accomplish nothing. We need everybody to do it at the
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: same time kind of thing.
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: But it's a weird product, right, Like you're selling you're
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: selling a thing that is like the absence of a
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: thing globally, right, Like you're selling a weird product. Nobody
• 18:17
  Speaker 1: in the absence of policy, really well, nobody in the
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: absence of policy or very different customer demand than we're
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: seeing now has to buy your product, like nobody, nobody, nobody,
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: And so people aren't going to do it out of
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: the goodness of their hearts, right, Like they're just not
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: gonna They're not even gonna do it for marketing at
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: any meaningful scale. So like, I have to think the
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: only way it's gonna work is with way stronger policy levers,
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: be they carratter sticks.
• 18:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the key thing. We need to make this
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: happen at the scale we need it.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, what really has to happen for it to work
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: at scale? Like, what is the policy you need for
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: this industry to actually be a thing?
• 19:00
  Speaker 2: You know where the US is once again taking the
• 19:02
  Speaker 2: lead is the governments are one of the largest polluters
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: in the world pickarly. About thirty percent of the carbon
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: dioxid problem in a country comes from the government operations,
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: the military in particular. So the US is pushing policy
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: right now compelling government to clean up after itself and
• 19:24
  Speaker 2: buy so to the extent that governments begin to buy,
• 19:28
  Speaker 2: that would be amazing. So there are many different ways
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: in which we can do this. You know, we already
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: cleaned up our garbage used to flow down the streets
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: and cause plagues. We then cleaned up our rivers, and
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: now we've got to clean up the air.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's interesting thinking of this like a basic hygiene problem, right,
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: like water quality. Water quality is an amazing one. Right,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: If you go back one hundred and fifty years, the
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: advent of modern sewage systems essentially was like one of
• 20:00
  Speaker 1: the great public health breakthroughs in the history of the world. Really,
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: and thinking of this in those terms is interesting.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: There was a sort of collective action problem. It was
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: a kind of early government doing something other than fighting wars.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Like this reminds me a little bit of that when
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: you put it that way, right, this is like a
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: global version of sewage collection. Yes, with similar things.
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: The hard part about this one is you know, when
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: when the sewer is running down the street or the river,
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: I can see it's in my backyard, and unfortunate climate
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: is not in my backyard, or is in everybody's backyard. Yeah,
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: so it's harder, but you.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Know, yeah, there's a collective action problem here, right, Like
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: London cleans up as sewage, London is better off, right,
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: But if London is the only one taking carbon out
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: of the atmosphere, nobody's going to be better off.
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: That's it.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: It makes it a much harder problem.
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: But that's it. Just you know, when when we first
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: cleaned up the sewers, it was really your neighborhood. When
• 20:56
  Speaker 2: we cleaned up the rivers, it was quite a big neighborhood.
• 20:58
  Speaker 2: And now it's the whole planet. We got to expand
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: to the whole planet. Yeah.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll be back in a minute with the lighting around. Now,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: let's get back to the show. Okay, we're going to
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: do a lightning round.
• 21:18
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 21:19
  Speaker 1: It's going to be way more all over the place
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: than the rest of the interview, but it's gonna be fun.
• 21:24
  Speaker 2: Okay, Is it correct.
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: That you got a patent in nineteen eighty three for
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: an electric field detector.
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: Oh myself, Yes, I did. Yes.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Was there anything you learned inventing that electric field detector
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: in the process of inventing it or patenting it or
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: whatever that was helpful to you when you went to
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: work in industry.
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: Oh? Absolutely. You know, when you're sitting in engineering school,
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: you think the problem is solving the technical problem. When
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: you invent something, you realize the problem is getting it
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: to market.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Huh, same problem you have now, same problem you have.
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: Now.
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: What's one thing I should do if I go to
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: Chile where you grew up.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, go skiing. I'm a skier.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: Huh. If I want to go skiing in August, that's
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: the place to go.
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: I should go to chill That's the best place to go.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: That's one thing I should do if I go to
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: British Columbia, where you live and work.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Now, oh, you should also come skiing here. I'm a
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: boring guy, you know, this is paradise.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: If I want to ski in January, I go to BC.
• 22:21
  Speaker 1: If I want to ski in August, I'll go to Chula.
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: When you were the CEO of an aerospace company, you
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: started writing books on the side and not like typical
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: CEO type books, right, tell me about those books.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: You know, I studied physics engineering fixes in school, and
• 22:36
  Speaker 2: when we worked with NASA for years. One of the
• 22:40
  Speaker 2: other things we did with we also built the robotic
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: arm on.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: The Shuttle on the Space Shuttle.
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: The Space shuttle on the Space Shuttle, so we built
• 22:47
  Speaker 2: a robotic arm called the Canada Arm. One was on
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: the Shuttle, the Shuttle arm that was instrumental in fixing
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: the Hubble telescope. So I interacted directly with a Hubble
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: team and kind of kept track of all the advances
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: in cosmology. And I came to the realization that after
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: having left school thirty odd years, we still had a
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: lot of questions to answer. And I had seen some
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: allusion to those questions in the Jewish literature related to
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: my religion, and you know, when I had a bit
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: of time, I went to work on whether one could
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: draw us something from each tide to get to a
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: better answer of what all the stuff looks like. So
• 23:32
  Speaker 2: didn't intend to do much, accept a little bit of research,
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: and I talked to a few people and they said, well,
• 23:37
  Speaker 2: you should really write this up. And about four or
• 23:39
  Speaker 2: five six books later, still doing that, but taking a
• 23:42
  Speaker 2: pause in the last.
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: Year, and I mean the basic theme is reconciling the
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Old Testament of the Bible with modern cosmology. Is that
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: the basic project.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in the sense that we're both looking at the
• 23:55
  Speaker 2: same world, so we need to be we need to
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: be describing it the same because we know it's real
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: out there. And if we do that, then we can
• 24:02
  Speaker 2: go peel back to how how each of those bodies
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: or knowledge gets to that answer and see if we
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: can learn about how it all came came to happen
• 24:13
  Speaker 2: and put those things together.
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: If everything goes well, going back to carbon engineering, if
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: everything goes well, what's a problem you'll be trying to
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: solve in say five years.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: How to build dozens of plants a month, or not
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: build them in a month, but have them come out
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: of the production line. Yeah, so start a dozen and
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: finish a dozen two years later, and then the next
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: month another doesn't and finish a dozen.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: In that universe. Direct air capture is becoming a massive industry.
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: It's these giant industrial direct air capture plants are springing
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: up every month, every week all around the world. That's
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: what you're hoping for, and you're hoping that will happen
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: in five years, Like is that possible? Like that seems
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: like a lot from one.
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it will look it will look like a bit
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: like a solar farms do. Right. Yeah, they're springing out everywhere,
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: all the solar panels. So just have little bigger buildings
• 25:08
  Speaker 2: with on top and capturing carbon problem in the same
• 25:12
  Speaker 2: places because we need the solar power to power them
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: and so on. Right, But it's exactly what it will
• 25:17
  Speaker 2: look like, and we will have to have them springing
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: up everywhere to clean this carbon problem out.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Dan Friedman is the CEO of Carbon Engineering. Today's show
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: was produced by Edith Russello. It was edited by Sarah
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: Nix and Robert Smith and engineered by Amanda k Wong.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein. You can find me on Twitter at
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: Jacob Goldstein, or you can email us at problem at
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Cushkin dot FM. We'll be back next week with another
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: episode of What's Your Problem.