Latest / What's Your Problem? / Putting Carbon Back Into the Ground

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Putting Carbon Back Into the Ground · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. So the part we already know is this, we
0:23
Speaker 1: need to stop taking carbon that's stored in the ground
0:25
Speaker 1: and putting it into the air. We need more solar
0:28
Speaker 1: power and wind power and batteries and electric vehicles. But
0:33
Speaker 1: but it's pretty clear at this point that all that
0:37
Speaker 1: is not going to be enough. We are not going
0:39
Speaker 1: to be able to decarbonize fast enough to avoid a
0:42
Speaker 1: really bad climate outcome. At some point we're going to
0:46
Speaker 1: have to figure out how to do more. I'm Jacob
0:53
Speaker 1: Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem, the show where
0:55
Speaker 1: entrepreneurs and engineers talk about how they're going to change
0:58
Speaker 1: the world once they solve a few problems. My guest
1:01
Speaker 1: today is Shaun Kinetic is the co founder and chief
1:04
Speaker 1: scientist at a company called Charm Industrial. Charm is finding
1:09
Speaker 1: climate change in a giant but kind of overlooked corner
1:12
Speaker 1: of the account, agriculture. Shaun's problem is this, how do
1:17
Speaker 1: you put billions of tons of carbon back into the ground.
1:24
Speaker 1: So think about giant industrial farms, fields of corn and
1:31
Speaker 1: wheat and soybeans absorb billions of tons of carbon dioxide
1:35
Speaker 1: from the air every year when they grow. So far,
1:38
Speaker 1: so good, But then once the crops are harvested, the
1:42
Speaker 1: leaves and the stalks decompose, and they send a lot
1:44
Speaker 1: of that carbon back up into the atmosphere. Damn. What
1:49
Speaker 1: Shaun's company, Charm is trying to do is grab that
1:52
Speaker 1: carbon before it goes back into the air. To do that,
1:56
Speaker 1: they go out into the fields after the harvest, chop
1:59
Speaker 1: the leaves and stalks up into tiny pieces, and heat
2:02
Speaker 1: those pieces up super fast to around a thousand degrees fahrenheit.
2:06
Speaker 1: This turns the carbon in the plants into this thick,
2:09
Speaker 1: oily substance called biooil. Then Sean and his colleagues stick
2:14
Speaker 1: that biooil back into the ground where it stays more
2:17
Speaker 1: or less forever. It's a complicated process, and right now
2:22
Speaker 1: the company is trying to build the machinery that will
2:24
Speaker 1: make all this happen. To start with, Sean gave me
2:27
Speaker 1: the dream version of how it's all going to work.
2:30
Speaker 1: A giant piece of farm equipment that will roll onto
2:32
Speaker 1: the field and it will pick up portions of what
2:35
Speaker 1: are left over in the field as agricultural waste, and
2:39
Speaker 1: it will process that into oil and offloaded into a tanker.
2:43
Speaker 1: And our entire built world is designed around moving oil.
2:47
Speaker 1: And so the infrastructure already exists and know how already exists.
2:51
Speaker 1: Once we generate this oil, then we can move that
2:54
Speaker 1: into the network that already exists to get that oil
2:57
Speaker 1: removed from our biosphere. So that's the dream, but Sean
3:02
Speaker 1: and his colleagues have to solve a lot of problems
3:04
Speaker 1: to get there. They don't yet have a machine that
3:06
Speaker 1: can drive around the field on its own. They have
3:08
Speaker 1: a couple big stationary machines designed to sit at the
3:11
Speaker 1: edge of the field, and early this year they shipped
3:14
Speaker 1: those machines out from their headquarters in the Bay Area
3:17
Speaker 1: for their first big test. A lot of things went wrong,
3:19
Speaker 1: but that was kind of the point. It was two
3:22
Speaker 1: semi trailers. One was for biomass preparation. It was just
3:26
Speaker 1: about getting the bales down to the sawdust that we
3:29
Speaker 1: need to feed into the machine effectively, okay. And then
3:31
Speaker 1: the other shipping container was just the machine itself for
3:34
Speaker 1: producing the bioil. And so they were both up on trailers.
3:37
Speaker 1: Trucks came in, picked them up, we waved them out, okay,
3:40
Speaker 1: and then we met them in Kansas. And so did
3:44
Speaker 1: you in fact get on a plane and like drive
3:46
Speaker 1: out to the farm and watch the truck pull in
3:48
Speaker 1: with your containers full of machinery. We thought we would
3:53
Speaker 1: be there to watch the truck pull in, but it
3:54
Speaker 1: turns out that interstate trucking is way faster than we anticipated,
3:58
Speaker 1: so it got there before we did. You should have
4:01
Speaker 1: just rode a log in the truck, now, it would
4:04
Speaker 1: have been the best way. We Actually, my partner and
4:07
Speaker 1: I were driving out to chase it and we ended
4:10
Speaker 1: up getting stuck by a blizzard in Utah and the
4:14
Speaker 1: truck just went through fine. So it was it was
4:18
Speaker 1: quite the adventure to get there. And then once we
4:20
Speaker 1: got there, it turns out that what we were trying
4:22
Speaker 1: to do with this was learned about the deployment. We
4:24
Speaker 1: were trying to learn about what it takes to operate
4:26
Speaker 1: this machine machine actually on the field edge, away from
4:29
Speaker 1: our machine shop, away from our cat stations, Like what
4:32
Speaker 1: does it take to really be in an RV on
4:35
Speaker 1: the side of the field running this massive thing we
4:39
Speaker 1: had built. We had to bring all of our tools
4:41
Speaker 1: with us, we had to bring all of our spares.
4:43
Speaker 1: We had just an enormous amount of infrastructure that we
4:46
Speaker 1: had put in place to be ready to run. And
4:49
Speaker 1: I mean fundamentally, I think we forgot about winter as
4:51
Speaker 1: a concept, and so that that was the first mistake.
4:54
Speaker 1: We had spent too long in California. Yeah, that's a
4:57
Speaker 1: that's a big problem. We got there and our air
5:01
Speaker 1: compressor was like no, no, no no, it's too cold for
5:03
Speaker 1: me to start, and we're like, oh, so, like it
5:06
Speaker 1: begins with that, and then our nitrogen plan it had
5:11
Speaker 1: basically a water removal system on it that froze solid.
5:14
Speaker 1: We had there's ice building up, we got snow on
5:18
Speaker 1: the machine. We had ingress of water into all different
5:23
Speaker 1: pieces that we hadn't expected after running our prototype basically
5:27
Speaker 1: in the Bay Area, which is namely doesn't have winter.
5:32
Speaker 1: So it was it was these little things that were like,
5:36
Speaker 1: of course we were thinking about this when we were designing.
5:38
Speaker 1: We knew the conditions that would be in Kansas, but
5:41
Speaker 1: when you're there in negative ten degree weather with whipping
5:45
Speaker 1: wind on a machine trying to remove a component, it
5:49
Speaker 1: is just an entirely different experience to be there. And
5:54
Speaker 1: I think that was what we were trying to show
5:55
Speaker 1: our team was it wasn't about getting the first prototype
5:59
Speaker 1: up and running perfectly. It was about doing each step
6:01
Speaker 1: of our process verifying it end to end, and we
6:04
Speaker 1: learned so much in that and so we were Yeah,
6:08
Speaker 1: we were learning every day, and the team was getting
6:11
Speaker 1: back and we were all cooking dinner for each other,
6:12
Speaker 1: and really there was a sense of like camaraderie and
6:16
Speaker 1: adventure I think among the team, and I mean I
6:19
Speaker 1: like the camaraderian adventure. How much of that is like
6:22
Speaker 1: the retrospective warm glow. How much at the time was
6:25
Speaker 1: oh my god, this isn't going to work. The adventure
6:29
Speaker 1: was real in the first I think couple deployments, and
6:33
Speaker 1: then the darkness set in, probably in February and March.
6:39
Speaker 1: There was a tornado nearby. We had all sorts of
6:41
Speaker 1: exciting things happening in Kansas that were, you know, not
6:45
Speaker 1: abnormal for Kansas. Let me ask you a simple question like,
6:49
Speaker 1: and I know, working not working is not entirely binary, right,
6:53
Speaker 1: It's like how efficient is it? How long does it take?
6:55
Speaker 1: But how long did it take for it to work?
6:59
Speaker 1: We were up and running probably about a month after
7:03
Speaker 1: we got to Kansas. We got the machine up and running.
7:06
Speaker 1: It ran its first what we call hot flow, where
7:08
Speaker 1: it was getting material through the machine, and so that
7:11
Speaker 1: that was when it was like, all right, we're here,
7:13
Speaker 1: it's working. Now we have to try to optimize each
7:16
Speaker 1: part of it. And so we were basically every time
7:19
Speaker 1: we would run the machine, we'd be like, Okay, well,
7:21
Speaker 1: here's something that's not working as well as we'd like
7:22
Speaker 1: it to. What can we put in place so that
7:26
Speaker 1: it will run longer for the next time or that
7:27
Speaker 1: we'll run more efficiently the next time, And so we
7:30
Speaker 1: were constantly trying to basically upgrade the machine. That's what
7:35
Speaker 1: my partner Kelly and I at charm do is we
7:38
Speaker 1: lead the sort of rapid iteration of the hardware, and
7:41
Speaker 1: so that's what we were trying to build. In a way,
7:43
Speaker 1: it's like the way people make software, right like you're
7:47
Speaker 1: doing the minimum viable chemical reactor that can sit on
7:51
Speaker 1: a field in Kansas and then trying to iterate, right Like,
7:54
Speaker 1: that's basically what's happening exactly. Kelly and I were at
7:57
Speaker 1: a company called Planet where we were working on the
8:01
Speaker 1: Dove satellite. We had Will Marshall on the show Shout
8:05
Speaker 1: Out Planet, Yeah, shout out to Plant, and I heard
8:09
Speaker 1: All talking about this on the show as well, where
8:11
Speaker 1: he mentioned the sort of like ten to twenty percent
8:13
Speaker 1: target failure rate of the satellite, and so we were
8:16
Speaker 1: constantly trying to get new features in and get new
8:19
Speaker 1: functionality in and always pushing that envelope. This is interesting.
8:24
Speaker 1: So the satellite industry is a model, right, it's the
8:30
Speaker 1: story you're telling. It's the same story that people like
8:32
Speaker 1: like Will Marshall from Planet tells of like coming into
8:35
Speaker 1: this industry that has been slow to evolve, where things
8:39
Speaker 1: are very expensive, they're manufactured to be perfect, and they're
8:43
Speaker 1: super expensive, and you're trying to to do the opposite
8:47
Speaker 1: to make things cheaper and faster and better. Right exactly,
8:52
Speaker 1: we say, all right, before we turn it on again,
8:55
Speaker 1: what are we going to upgrade? What are we going
8:56
Speaker 1: to fix? How are we going to move towards our goals.
8:59
Speaker 1: Let's go back to Kansas for a second. I feel
9:01
Speaker 1: like like I want to sort of finish that story. Right.
9:04
Speaker 1: So you're there, you're iterating, you're fixing, you're building, And
9:09
Speaker 1: so did you infect do the whole process for real
9:13
Speaker 1: with this machine in Kansas? Yeah, we produced bioil with
9:17
Speaker 1: our machine in Kansas, and we took in a cornstover
9:21
Speaker 1: bail and processed it through to bioil. And did we
9:25
Speaker 1: process the entire two million pounds of biomass that we
9:29
Speaker 1: had like staged in the background, and the event that
9:32
Speaker 1: we were running at ten tons per day at full rate,
9:34
Speaker 1: No the machine. I think we operated at peak of
9:37
Speaker 1: about three and a half tons per day. One less
9:40
Speaker 1: detail about what actually happened. There's what'd you do with
9:43
Speaker 1: all the oil you got from the cornstover? We put
9:45
Speaker 1: it back underground where in wells in Kansas? Tell me
9:50
Speaker 1: about the oil that you get out of agricultural waste? Like,
9:53
Speaker 1: what is it like? Is it like the oil it
9:56
Speaker 1: comes out of the ground, Like it is like oil
9:59
Speaker 1: in name only? Unfortunately, you know, if you've ever had
10:02
Speaker 1: fake wood smoke flavoring, that is bioil. It's the exact
10:06
Speaker 1: same stuff. It's used as a mo food additive. That's it.
10:10
Speaker 1: We make liquid smoke under a different brand name, obviously.
10:14
Speaker 1: And can you so it smells kind of nice, maybe
10:18
Speaker 1: a little strong, but like kind of sweet smoky sweet. Mm. Yeah,
10:22
Speaker 1: it smells like a camp fire. I mean that's the
10:24
Speaker 1: smell of it. Can you taste it? Have you tasted it?
10:27
Speaker 1: I wouldn't taste our stuff. It's I mean, basically I
10:32
Speaker 1: actually have lost the taste for fake wood smoke flavor
10:35
Speaker 1: as well. I can taste it in food, and I'm
10:38
Speaker 1: just like, no, I don't want this, so it is um.
10:42
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't want to sugarcoat the like I
10:45
Speaker 1: don't think anyone should go out and drink this stuff
10:46
Speaker 1: in the same way that I don't think people should
10:48
Speaker 1: go and drink and be around crude oil. It is
10:50
Speaker 1: a messy, dirty substance, and so I think that the
10:55
Speaker 1: we we sort of look at charm in the way
10:57
Speaker 1: that it took this, you know, gross oily industry to
11:02
Speaker 1: get us into this mess, and I think it's going
11:04
Speaker 1: to take a little bit of a gross oil industry
11:06
Speaker 1: to get us out. Is it sketchy and jet oil
11:09
Speaker 1: into the ground, It sounds like it could be sketchy.
11:12
Speaker 1: There are absolutely risks with injecting anything underground, and I
11:17
Speaker 1: think that the ways that you mitigate that are through
11:21
Speaker 1: careful analysis. You look at at the confining layers, and
11:26
Speaker 1: you look at formations of previously held oiling gas. The
11:29
Speaker 1: Premium basin held oiling gas for three hundred million years,
11:32
Speaker 1: so there are confining formations where the injection of oil
11:37
Speaker 1: will maintain within that formation or within specific well types
11:41
Speaker 1: that are held there, but most of the hazardous chemicals
11:46
Speaker 1: or anything else that this civilization generates is disposed of
11:49
Speaker 1: in these deep, underground injection wells. It's weird. I'm thinking
11:52
Speaker 1: normally at this part of the interview, I'm like, tell
11:54
Speaker 1: me one problem you're trying to solve. But I feel
11:56
Speaker 1: like you have too many problems, right like we have.
11:59
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's the wonderful thing about startups is you
12:03
Speaker 1: have usually considerably or considerably more problems than people. And
12:09
Speaker 1: I think that's always the space where I enjoy to
12:11
Speaker 1: operate is at a But I feel like you're really
12:14
Speaker 1: I mean, it's true for a lot of stimes, but
12:16
Speaker 1: it's really true for you, right Like, I feel like
12:19
Speaker 1: you guys are so early, and it's so hard what
12:21
Speaker 1: you're trying to do, and it's so physical, and there's
12:23
Speaker 1: so many things that you have to optimize so much
12:27
Speaker 1: more than they are now. No, or am I underestimating
12:30
Speaker 1: you somehow? I think there are solutions in each of
12:33
Speaker 1: these spaces. So there's solutions for char removal, there's solutions
12:36
Speaker 1: for oil condensation, there's solutions at each of the interfaces
12:41
Speaker 1: that we're trying to optimize for. And one of the
12:43
Speaker 1: things that we know from our prototype is that this
12:46
Speaker 1: isn't a scientific problem, right. We don't have to develop
12:50
Speaker 1: anything novel to solve these problems. It's really an engineering
12:54
Speaker 1: problem at each of these interfaces. So I know one
12:57
Speaker 1: of the sort of sub problems you're trying to solve
12:59
Speaker 1: is how do you power your system? And I know
13:02
Speaker 1: you have this idea that you can use the heat
13:05
Speaker 1: that you get from processing the cornstocks or whatever the
13:08
Speaker 1: bioway to actually power most of the work you're doing,
13:12
Speaker 1: which is a super elegant idea, but it seems really hard.
13:15
Speaker 1: That is a It is a hard thing to do,
13:18
Speaker 1: and we're working with some brilliant people in that space
13:22
Speaker 1: who have a solution for it. And so I think
13:24
Speaker 1: one of the great things about this sort of energy
13:28
Speaker 1: renaissance that we're in right now is that we don't
13:33
Speaker 1: see charm as being the one solution to the entirety
13:36
Speaker 1: of the climate problem, right, And so we are trying
13:40
Speaker 1: to work with a couple groups to generate the power
13:42
Speaker 1: off of our machine. Because the number one rule of
13:45
Speaker 1: engineering is don't if you have a group that already
13:50
Speaker 1: is working on this problem and already has a solution
13:52
Speaker 1: in the space work with them to help shape that
13:55
Speaker 1: into the device that you need for your system. And
13:59
Speaker 1: is there in fact somebody who's like, oh, you need
14:01
Speaker 1: to get power from heating biomass. Good news, we figured
14:05
Speaker 1: out how to do that. Is that the case? Not
14:07
Speaker 1: only is that the case, but they're in the Bay
14:09
Speaker 1: Area and they are wonderful people. So they were by
14:12
Speaker 1: the other night for a happy hour and we were
14:14
Speaker 1: just like standing by the machine having a beer saying like,
14:17
Speaker 1: where should we put this port to properly interface to
14:20
Speaker 1: your machine? What is the data that you want from
14:22
Speaker 1: this to ensure that we can test this, and how
14:26
Speaker 1: can we help you move faster so we can as
14:29
Speaker 1: a whole move this industry further along. So that's the
14:34
Speaker 1: technical side of how Charm works, or at least the
14:37
Speaker 1: dream of how it's going to work. But Charm is
14:39
Speaker 1: also a business. It's a company with paying customers. After
14:44
Speaker 1: the break, what exactly does charm sell and who does
14:47
Speaker 1: it sell it to? And now back to my conversation
14:57
Speaker 1: with Sean, So it's interesting to think about even like
15:00
Speaker 1: what do you sell, Like what is the thing you're
15:03
Speaker 1: selling and who are you selling it to? So we
15:05
Speaker 1: sell a permanent carbon removal, which is a effectively a
15:11
Speaker 1: carbon credit for CO two extracted from the atmosphere. There's
15:17
Speaker 1: a few things that are interesting to me there, right.
15:19
Speaker 1: One is, you know, so there's this idea of carbon offsets,
15:23
Speaker 1: and clearly what you were doing if you can figure
15:26
Speaker 1: out how to do it at a reasonable price, right
15:30
Speaker 1: is real. Right, you're taking stuff that would have gone
15:34
Speaker 1: into the atmosphere's carbon dioxide and putting it in the
15:36
Speaker 1: ground approximately forever, for as long as we care about.
15:41
Speaker 1: There are other kinds of carbon offsets that seem more
15:45
Speaker 1: slippery to me, right, Like I have a tree in
15:47
Speaker 1: my backyard, if you give me a one hundred bucks,
15:49
Speaker 1: I won't cut it down, right, Like, which is I
15:52
Speaker 1: mean a little bit of a parody. But there there
15:54
Speaker 1: is this universe of carbon offsets that have been kind
15:57
Speaker 1: of like that, Right, it's like a hostage situation. I
16:01
Speaker 1: would hate for something to happen to this forest in
16:04
Speaker 1: my backyard, yeah, exactly. And it's like there are and
16:07
Speaker 1: I don't want to undercut. Like they're the amazing work
16:10
Speaker 1: that some groups are doing for like habitat restoration, and
16:14
Speaker 1: you know, the co benefits of having these these forestry
16:17
Speaker 1: projects and there are like, there are people doing good
16:20
Speaker 1: work in the space, but there are also an enormous
16:23
Speaker 1: amount of groups that get credits for you know, the
16:28
Speaker 1: hunting lodge. The forest on the hunting Lodge is one
16:31
Speaker 1: that popped up recently. And like to be clear, a
16:34
Speaker 1: forest that nobody was going to cut down, right, somebody's saying,
16:37
Speaker 1: give us money and we won't cut it down, exactly,
16:39
Speaker 1: A forest that was not at risk. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
16:43
Speaker 1: And there are in the same vein. I have friends
16:46
Speaker 1: who are farmers and they get messages that say, we
16:50
Speaker 1: are interested in selling carbon credits from your farm. You
16:53
Speaker 1: may not have to change anything you're doing right now. Yeah,
16:56
Speaker 1: And that is just fascinating from a from a market standpoint.
17:02
Speaker 1: And so I think that what Charm really tries to
17:06
Speaker 1: set ourselves apart on is that our carbon remove is permanent.
17:09
Speaker 1: It's permanent, and it's pretty clearly stuff that carbon that
17:13
Speaker 1: would go into the atmosphere in the absence of you
17:17
Speaker 1: sticking it into your machine and turning it into oil
17:19
Speaker 1: and stick it in the ground, right, And it is
17:21
Speaker 1: extremely easy to measure. So we can measure every carbon
17:25
Speaker 1: atom within that tote of bioil, and we can measure
17:29
Speaker 1: exactly how much mass was injected into the well. We
17:33
Speaker 1: have a measurable pathway. I think I heard it was
17:36
Speaker 1: maybe your co founder say in an interview, like, what
17:39
Speaker 1: we're actually selling at some level is measurement, measurement and verification.
17:45
Speaker 1: Is that kind of certainty that companies are paying us for.
17:47
Speaker 1: I mean, that's like, that's very interesting to me. It's
17:50
Speaker 1: a little abstract, but I find it really compelling. Absolutely.
17:53
Speaker 1: One of the reasons why Peter was interested in starting
17:56
Speaker 1: charm with Us was this idea. Yeah, my co founder, Peter,
18:00
Speaker 1: he previously ran an organization called Segment, and at Segment
18:04
Speaker 1: he was trying to find a way to purchase carbon removals.
18:09
Speaker 1: And he is a character who will dig in on
18:14
Speaker 1: a problem if he starts to see something a little
18:16
Speaker 1: bit strange. And so he started going deeper and deeper
18:18
Speaker 1: into these carbon removal projects and was just like, none
18:21
Speaker 1: of these seem additional, none of these seem sure they
18:25
Speaker 1: have a gold star from this, none of them seem
18:29
Speaker 1: a totally legitiate to play organization. Yeah, and so he's like,
18:33
Speaker 1: where's the permanent carbon removal? Because the extraction of oil
18:37
Speaker 1: and burning it is a permanent carbon addition. Currently, Yeah,
18:41
Speaker 1: we are one of a handful of companies that are
18:43
Speaker 1: actually offering a permanent removal and that's sort of what
18:46
Speaker 1: separates Charm in the industry. So, I mean, it's obviously
18:51
Speaker 1: more compelling than somebody who says, I won't chop down
18:54
Speaker 1: this tree. It's also at this point just absurdly more expensive. Right.
18:59
Speaker 1: It typically doesn't cost much to not chop down a tree.
19:04
Speaker 1: It costs a lot now to do what you're doing. Right,
19:07
Speaker 1: How much does it cost now and what you need
19:10
Speaker 1: to get to for it to be you know, realistic
19:13
Speaker 1: at scale? It costs Charm just about six hundred dollars
19:19
Speaker 1: per ton of CO two equivalent removed from the atmosphere,
19:24
Speaker 1: and that is the current price to remove carbon permanently.
19:29
Speaker 1: I just give me some feeling for how much a
19:32
Speaker 1: ton of carbon is. How much carbon does one American
19:36
Speaker 1: emit in a year? You know, it's about fifteen tons
19:41
Speaker 1: per us like average person per year, fifteen per person
19:46
Speaker 1: per year, and your cost right now is six hundred
19:49
Speaker 1: per per ton per ton. So it's way too expensive
19:54
Speaker 1: for now. What you do like, it's it's it's not
19:57
Speaker 1: gonna go anywhere at that price, right, but like, presumably
20:02
Speaker 1: part of your iterative thing is making it much cheaper
20:06
Speaker 1: really fast, which is a thing iteration and technol oology
20:09
Speaker 1: is good at right. It kind of invented that move exactly.
20:14
Speaker 1: I think that it's a fair criticism to say it's
20:16
Speaker 1: extremely expensive because it is, and that is just the
20:19
Speaker 1: cost to deliver it right now. And so the major
20:22
Speaker 1: price points in that cost are things like the cost
20:26
Speaker 1: of bailing and moving that biomass to the side of
20:29
Speaker 1: the field and all of the labor associated with that,
20:31
Speaker 1: the transport of biomass, the fertilizer replacement. If you're removing
20:37
Speaker 1: that biomass from the field and you're not leaving back
20:39
Speaker 1: those nutrients, the farmers still need to replace that. So
20:42
Speaker 1: it's six hundred dollars a ton. Now it's too expensive.
20:45
Speaker 1: What do you want to get it too in the
20:47
Speaker 1: medium term? What you have a number in your mind, Yeah,
20:50
Speaker 1: the medium term, we need to get it below three
20:53
Speaker 1: hundred dollars per ton, give or take, which is which
20:57
Speaker 1: gets us into the non voluntary markets. It's the cap
21:00
Speaker 1: and trade in the US, like the way the US
21:01
Speaker 1: has decided to so people people in places like California
21:05
Speaker 1: and Europe are actually paying three hundred dollars per ton
21:09
Speaker 1: now but under various laws. Yeah, so when you think
21:15
Speaker 1: about cutting your price in half, are there a few
21:18
Speaker 1: key steps? I think the big thing in the near
21:22
Speaker 1: term is reducing the amount of operators and the amount
21:27
Speaker 1: of infrastructure needed for these sites. So the big thing
21:31
Speaker 1: that we've done from the start a Charm is focused
21:33
Speaker 1: on automation, and so we're trying to say from the start,
21:36
Speaker 1: what is everything that we need instrumented on this machine
21:40
Speaker 1: to be able to control itself, to be able to
21:42
Speaker 1: monitor these processes. And in the same way that you
21:45
Speaker 1: take a satellite and put it into a safe mode,
21:47
Speaker 1: if something goes wrong with this machine, it enters a
21:50
Speaker 1: safe state. So, I mean, I know it's like a
21:52
Speaker 1: super prototype of basically how many people do you need
21:54
Speaker 1: to run it? Now? Currently it takes two operators. We
21:59
Speaker 1: really do three because we have someone whose job is
22:01
Speaker 1: just to look at data that's streaming off the machine
22:04
Speaker 1: and sort of keep an eye on, sort of over
22:08
Speaker 1: the shoulder. Want to get it from three down to one?
22:11
Speaker 1: I mean, is that the basic idea I think we
22:13
Speaker 1: want to get it down to less than one is
22:14
Speaker 1: the dream, And so you have maybe a person monitoring
22:18
Speaker 1: five or ten of these machines, and your model for
22:21
Speaker 1: that is already there. In like modern farm equipment, right,
22:24
Speaker 1: there are these giant machines called combines that are highly
22:28
Speaker 1: automated and that show up at harvest time every year. Yeah.
22:31
Speaker 1: And so when you look at the way that these
22:33
Speaker 1: combines are currently used in the field, is a farmer
22:37
Speaker 1: doesn't own one of these pieces of equipment there are
22:38
Speaker 1: a million dollars plus, but instead there's a group that
22:42
Speaker 1: comes through with ten of them every harvest time and
22:44
Speaker 1: is just moving from the south to the north, going through,
22:48
Speaker 1: following the harvest and removing the you know, processing the field.
22:53
Speaker 1: And so I mean combines, to be clear, are just
22:55
Speaker 1: machines that harvest wheat, corn, that kind of thing, right,
22:59
Speaker 1: It's just asting piece of equipment. Yeah, and so we
23:04
Speaker 1: are harvesting oil from the field effectively. So we're following
23:07
Speaker 1: that harvest and it aligns well with the current way
23:11
Speaker 1: that the market is moving to have these sort of
23:14
Speaker 1: fleets of contract harvesting operations. And so we see ourselves
23:18
Speaker 1: either partnering with or following one of those harvest operations.
23:23
Speaker 1: Who are your customers? Our first customers were Stripe, Shopify, Microsoft,
23:29
Speaker 1: it's companies that are trying to catalyze this industry. There
23:35
Speaker 1: was this basically an advanced market commitment right from a
23:39
Speaker 1: group of companies led by Stripe, where they basically said
23:43
Speaker 1: we're going to spend a billion dollars on carbon removal
23:47
Speaker 1: Frontier Fund. Yeah, the Frontier Fund. We think overall it's
23:50
Speaker 1: a huge thing for the industry because there's so many
23:53
Speaker 1: technologies in the carbon removal space that get to either
23:57
Speaker 1: a pilot plant or like a slightly larger scale, and
24:00
Speaker 1: then they need to scale up to be productive. And
24:03
Speaker 1: so people build something on a lab bench and then
24:05
Speaker 1: they try to build the two hundred million dollar plant
24:08
Speaker 1: and they can't raise funding for that. And what the
24:12
Speaker 1: industry has done in the interim is that groups like
24:15
Speaker 1: Stripe and Microsoft, Shopify, the Frontier Fund, have gone out
24:19
Speaker 1: and said we will guarantee off takes from these facilities.
24:23
Speaker 1: And so now people looking at building a two hundred
24:25
Speaker 1: million dollar plant can actually raise debt financing by saying
24:29
Speaker 1: we have guaranteed off takes over the next ten years.
24:31
Speaker 1: And before these advanced market commitments existed, if you went
24:35
Speaker 1: to a bank or you went to an investor, and
24:37
Speaker 1: you're like, hey, I need two hundred million dollars to
24:39
Speaker 1: build this plant. They're like, cool, who's going to buy it?
24:41
Speaker 1: And it's like, well, a bunch of people bought some
24:43
Speaker 1: stuff last year, and it's like, he is I'm going
24:45
Speaker 1: to buy anything next year? And you're like, I don't know,
24:47
Speaker 1: and so you can't. That's not I mean, you know,
24:50
Speaker 1: to throw it back to economics, that is not a
24:53
Speaker 1: standard investing structure that would make sense. I mean I
24:56
Speaker 1: get ultimately that we need to both reduce emission and
25:02
Speaker 1: pull carbon out of the atmosphere. It does seem like
25:07
Speaker 1: in the interim, getting better at pulling carbon out of
25:11
Speaker 1: the atmosphere could reduce the sense of urgency with respect
25:16
Speaker 1: to lowering emissions. Right, I'm sure this is the thing
25:18
Speaker 1: you think about, Like, what do you think about it?
25:23
Speaker 1: I think that our built world is engineered around fossil
25:30
Speaker 1: fuels currently, and so there is no rapid cutover. I
25:34
Speaker 1: think that it is a yes, and we're not going
25:37
Speaker 1: to overnight convert all aircraft into running on renewable fuels.
25:42
Speaker 1: We're not going to be able to upgrade all aircraft
25:45
Speaker 1: to hydrogen in the next few years, but that will
25:50
Speaker 1: happen on the horizon, and it will happen through incentives,
25:52
Speaker 1: and it will happen through through regulatory as well as
25:56
Speaker 1: pushing these markets. And so I think that Charm is
26:01
Speaker 1: not in the business to extend the sort of life
26:06
Speaker 1: of oil and gas assets. What we are doing is
26:09
Speaker 1: extracting carbon from the atmosphere, and we're trying to do
26:12
Speaker 1: it as fast as we can and get to a
26:14
Speaker 1: scale that once we are already past an oil economy
26:20
Speaker 1: that is running our little civilization on this blue marble,
26:24
Speaker 1: we need a way to be extracting carbon from the
26:27
Speaker 1: atmosphere quickly, and that is what we're trying to build.
26:30
Speaker 1: And so I see the sort of carbon credit markets
26:36
Speaker 1: as a tool that allows us to scale versus something
26:38
Speaker 1: that allows that industry to perpetuate. In a minute, we'll
26:46
Speaker 1: close the show with the lightning round. Sean spent two
26:49
Speaker 1: years living in Antarctica. I got a few questions for him.
27:00
Speaker 1: Now back to the show. Let's do a lightning round.
27:03
Speaker 1: Let's do a bunch of questions. Some of them are
27:06
Speaker 1: going to be about Antarctica, but not all of them.
27:13
Speaker 1: We'll put the Antarctica. Antarctica will be its own continent,
27:16
Speaker 1: within the lining round. In your Twitter bio, you call
27:20
Speaker 1: yourself a hardware hacker. I'm curious, are there like household
27:25
Speaker 1: objects that you've hacked. I actually I turned a microwave
27:30
Speaker 1: into a puzzle for a friend's wedding recently. It had
27:33
Speaker 1: a car horn in it and it looked like a
27:35
Speaker 1: marcrowave from the outside. But he's someone who hates buzzers,
27:39
Speaker 1: and so it was a sort of he loves puzzles,
27:41
Speaker 1: he hates buzzers. I thought it was a great little thing,
27:43
Speaker 1: what one thing I should do if I ever find
27:45
Speaker 1: myself in Augusta, Kansas. I think the barbecue in Kansas
27:51
Speaker 1: is great. I wouldn't turn anyone away from that. Do
27:55
Speaker 1: you have like a guilty carbon footprint pleasure? Yeah? I
28:00
Speaker 1: enjoy I think I enjoy traveling. I enjoy meeting people
28:04
Speaker 1: in different places. I spent two years at the South Pole,
28:08
Speaker 1: which ran on diesel, and still trying to offset that one.
28:13
Speaker 1: So so let's let's do a little lightning round within
28:18
Speaker 1: the lightning round about your two years at the South Pole,
28:21
Speaker 1: because it's amazing, Like, what, by the way, what were
28:25
Speaker 1: you doing there? When were you there? I went down
28:27
Speaker 1: eighteen to shovel snow, and you came back at twenty
28:32
Speaker 1: tired exactly. No, No, I went down at eighteen. I was,
28:37
Speaker 1: you know, ostensibly to shovel snow, but I ended up
28:39
Speaker 1: working with the Ice Cube Neutrino Observatory on their deployments,
28:43
Speaker 1: and I was just hanging out in the calm shop
28:46
Speaker 1: during the summer, like fixing electrical things. That's been my
28:50
Speaker 1: It's in that communication shop, in the radio shop. And
28:55
Speaker 1: the person who was supposed to win her over for
28:58
Speaker 1: the communications role was deemed not physically qualified, and they
29:01
Speaker 1: kind of turned to me and they're like, hey, you
29:02
Speaker 1: have a pulse and like to fix things. You want
29:04
Speaker 1: to stay on as the senior communications technician for the
29:07
Speaker 1: south Pole, for the winch Sure for the winter. The
29:11
Speaker 1: last plane leaves in February and the first one doesn't
29:13
Speaker 1: come back until November. Let's do a little overrated or underrated,
29:17
Speaker 1: overrated or underrated? Six months of darkness? Underrated, underrated. It's
29:25
Speaker 1: better than I think. When you walk outside, it's not
29:28
Speaker 1: just dark, but the auroras are directly overhead, so you
29:33
Speaker 1: can be walking under starlight and then all of a
29:35
Speaker 1: sudden everything turns green and purple and you look up
29:38
Speaker 1: and they're just ribbons of light dancing across the sky,
29:41
Speaker 1: and it is unbelievably beautiful. It still one of the
29:45
Speaker 1: most beautiful places I've ever been, underrated or overrated. Six
29:49
Speaker 1: months of sunlight overrated, we call it. We call it
29:55
Speaker 1: the hell star down there because you walk outside and
29:58
Speaker 1: it's just always up. So you're walking. Yeah, yeah, it's
30:04
Speaker 1: you go out to the bathroom in the middle of
30:06
Speaker 1: the night, right and it's you know, one, two in
30:09
Speaker 1: the morning, and there's just a sun blaring down on you.
30:13
Speaker 1: Because in the summer you stay out at summer camp,
30:15
Speaker 1: which is a bunch of tents effectively, and so with
30:18
Speaker 1: no bathroom in the tent, so you have to walk
30:20
Speaker 1: over to the bathroom site and it is as cold
30:25
Speaker 1: and as bright, and yeah, I don't know, I never
30:28
Speaker 1: I think it's overrated. Good interesting sunshine overall, not overrated,
30:34
Speaker 1: but six months definitely overrated. How do you feel about ice?
30:40
Speaker 1: I love the sound it makes when you walk on it,
30:42
Speaker 1: and the way that the I think you would you
30:46
Speaker 1: would have a great time down there with a mic.
30:48
Speaker 1: It is the sound of the ice crystals blowing across
30:53
Speaker 1: the the polar plateau is unreal and you're at about
30:59
Speaker 1: ten thousand feet on top of a two mile thick
31:02
Speaker 1: glacier that's moving thirty three feet a year, and so
31:06
Speaker 1: it doesn't snow. At this outpole, we get less than
31:08
Speaker 1: a million of precipitation a year. It's drier than the
31:11
Speaker 1: Atacama Desert, and so the only snow that's coming in
31:15
Speaker 1: are these like little ice crystals that are broken down
31:18
Speaker 1: snowflakes that have been blowing for hundreds of miles across
31:21
Speaker 1: the vast openness of the Seventh Continent. That's cool, That's
31:25
Speaker 1: really cool. Sean Kinnetic is the co founder and chief
31:35
Speaker 1: scientist at Charm Industrial. Today's show was edited by Robert Smith,
31:40
Speaker 1: produced by Edith Russolo, and engineered by Amanda k Wong.
31:45
Speaker 1: I'd love to know what you think of the show,
31:47
Speaker 1: and in particular, I have one request. Send us one
31:50
Speaker 1: thing you'd like us to change about the show, one
31:53
Speaker 1: way we could make the show better. You can email
31:55
Speaker 1: us at problem at Pushkin dot fm, or you can
31:58
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter at Jacob Goldstein. We'll be back
32:02
Speaker 1: next week with another episode of What's Your Problem.