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Carbon Capture at Rock-Bottom Prices · What's Your Problem?

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin, How did spend in your childhood in Southeast India?
0:23
Speaker 1: Ef fact that we think about climate change.
0:26
Speaker 2: The place where I grew up, you know, just had
0:28
Speaker 2: to have had their path. When things got dry, they
0:31
Speaker 2: got really dry, and when things got wet, they got
0:33
Speaker 2: really wet. You know, the monster's got more and more extreme.
0:37
Speaker 2: The droughts got more and more extreme over time. And
0:40
Speaker 2: it's a pretty normal thing to show up to school
0:42
Speaker 2: one day and your friend just like doesn't come to
0:44
Speaker 2: school for like six months at a time because they're
0:46
Speaker 2: helping their parents recover from a flood that happened in
0:50
Speaker 2: months ago. And it's a pretty common thing for me.
0:54
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't know it was climate change growing up, honestly,
0:57
Speaker 2: Like it was just like a thing that happened.
0:59
Speaker 1: It was just climate.
1:00
Speaker 2: That's what nature was, and things just got worse and
1:03
Speaker 2: worse every year, and that's just how things are. As
1:05
Speaker 2: I grew up and started learning a lot more, and
1:07
Speaker 2: it started connecting the dots. What I realized was that
1:11
Speaker 2: the folks who are facing the worst impacts of climate
1:13
Speaker 2: change are the ones who are least educated about it
1:17
Speaker 2: and then the most vulnerable to it already. And I
1:21
Speaker 2: think That's what I think gives me a lot of
1:24
Speaker 2: motivation and drive that fundamentally, this problem is an unfair
1:28
Speaker 2: one where it's created and where the impacts are most felt.
1:32
Speaker 2: People ask me like, how did you decide to work
1:34
Speaker 2: on climate? How did you decide specifically to work on
1:36
Speaker 2: carbon removal? But for me, it was a no brainer.
1:39
Speaker 2: Of course I'm going to work on this, and of
1:41
Speaker 2: course this is the most scalable way to solve the problem.
1:44
Speaker 2: Being an engineer myself, like building these cost models so forth,
1:48
Speaker 2: it's like it's actually possible. So why didn't we actually
1:50
Speaker 2: go about doing it? It was just a matter of
1:52
Speaker 2: putting together right team and right partners and going on
1:56
Speaker 2: the journey.
2:03
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and this is What's Your Problem? The
2:05
Speaker 1: show where I talk to people who are trying to
2:07
Speaker 1: make technological progress. My guest today is Shashank Samala Sschank
2:12
Speaker 1: is the co founder and CEO of Airloom. Shashank's problem
2:16
Speaker 1: is this, can you use crushed up rocks, specifically limestone,
2:22
Speaker 1: to permanently suck carbon out of the atmosphere? And crucially
2:26
Speaker 1: can you do it for one hundred dollars per ton
2:29
Speaker 1: of carbon? To that end Heirloom has built a pilot
2:33
Speaker 1: plant in California near its headquarters, and is currently working
2:36
Speaker 1: on a much larger plant in Louisiana. By the way,
2:40
Speaker 1: I learned about Shoshank from my conversation a few weeks
2:43
Speaker 1: ago with Nan Ransahoff. If you missed that one and
2:46
Speaker 1: want to hear more about carbon removal, you might want
2:49
Speaker 1: to check that out. Shachank began his career in manufacturing.
2:53
Speaker 1: He wasn't an environmental scientist or a geologist, so to
2:57
Speaker 1: start I asked him about rocks.
3:00
Speaker 2: We love rocks. I've dedicated my life to rocks.
3:03
Speaker 1: When did you discover rocks?
3:05
Speaker 2: When I realized that carbon capture is like the thing
3:08
Speaker 2: to do, Not everyone has realized it yet, but like
3:11
Speaker 2: people will. In that journey, I started just reading papers
3:15
Speaker 2: and books at night, and you know, it was basically,
3:19
Speaker 2: what are the natural things that I already doing this? It's
3:21
Speaker 2: biomass and rocks.
3:23
Speaker 1: Basically plants and rocks.
3:24
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
3:26
Speaker 1: When you start looking at this, it does seem like
3:28
Speaker 1: there's sort of three very crudely kind of modes. Right,
3:32
Speaker 1: people are using fans, plants, and rocks, right, Yeah, Why
3:36
Speaker 1: did you wind up ruling out fans and plants.
3:39
Speaker 2: So that's a great question. I think at the beginning,
3:43
Speaker 2: when I first got started, I wasn't married to any approach.
3:46
Speaker 2: I come from a manufacturing background. I was making electronics
3:49
Speaker 2: for satellites and robots and so forth, and you know,
3:51
Speaker 2: manufacturing is superkin margins and you have to understand where
3:55
Speaker 2: your costs are. And for me, when I first started
3:58
Speaker 2: looking at this problem, it was very clear that at
4:01
Speaker 2: the end of the day, what matters has cost costs
4:03
Speaker 2: pertanos two. You know, it's not like we're designing an
4:06
Speaker 2: amazingly beautiful car for people to drive around. All the
4:10
Speaker 2: matters is how many molecules of CO two in the
4:13
Speaker 2: air are and how cost effectively you remove it, how.
4:16
Speaker 1: Many molecules of CO two per dollar you can get exactly.
4:20
Speaker 2: So I was just so obsessed about, like, you know,
4:23
Speaker 2: what is the absolute simplest way you can solve this problem.
4:26
Speaker 2: And there's a bunch of other folks who are using
4:29
Speaker 2: synthetic ways to you know, using fans and so forth
4:32
Speaker 2: to pull carbon, And I think the best way to
4:36
Speaker 2: approach an engineering problem is just like what is the
4:40
Speaker 2: bare minimum you need and then add complexity from there.
4:43
Speaker 1: So why does this idea of like cheapest absolute bare minimum,
4:47
Speaker 1: why does that lead you to rocks?
4:49
Speaker 2: Rocks basically have a couple of principles, right, Like, if
4:52
Speaker 2: you start with the idea that you need CO two
4:56
Speaker 2: to be permanently sequestered so you know it doesn't decomposs
5:00
Speaker 2: back into the atmosphere, you need a sponge With rocks,
5:04
Speaker 2: it's the CO two only goes one way and it
5:07
Speaker 2: doesn't respire back you, so it doesn't decompos and they're
5:11
Speaker 2: super cheap. Earth has already spent billions of years creating
5:14
Speaker 2: this sort of crystal instruction in this geochemical mineral that
5:18
Speaker 2: is thirsty for CO two, and it helped balance the
5:21
Speaker 2: CO two in the atmosphere, So it already paid this
5:25
Speaker 2: energy penalty to make this rock that is super abundant
5:28
Speaker 2: and cheap. So the mineral the view using it's you know,
5:31
Speaker 2: thirty to forty bucks a ton, and we can reuse
5:33
Speaker 2: it over and over again. So you know, if you
5:35
Speaker 2: can reuse it s a hundred cycles, you can get
5:38
Speaker 2: the cost per ton for the rock down to twenty
5:41
Speaker 2: thirty cents.
5:42
Speaker 1: So you land on limestone. Right, you haven't said limestone,
5:45
Speaker 1: but you're talking about limes. Ztone, tell me about limestone.
5:48
Speaker 2: Yeah, So limestone is this amazingly beautiful chemical. It's a
5:54
Speaker 2: naturally occurring mineral. There is four percent of the Earth's
5:57
Speaker 2: crust is made up of limestone, and the chemical formula
6:01
Speaker 2: for it is calcium carbonate, and Earth produced a lot
6:04
Speaker 2: of this over you know, billions of years to partly
6:08
Speaker 2: to help balance the CO two in the atmosphere. It's
6:11
Speaker 2: like if you're a rock climber, it's a chalk that is,
6:13
Speaker 2: it's a carbonate limestone. It's it's incredibly abundant, basically looks
6:18
Speaker 2: like white powder.
6:19
Speaker 1: So that's limestone. It has carbon dioxide in it already,
6:22
Speaker 1: so it's already done the thing you want to do
6:25
Speaker 1: Exactly when you're figuring out what's going to be your
6:27
Speaker 1: play for air capture, like how do you get to
6:28
Speaker 1: where you wind up? Like you see that limestone has
6:31
Speaker 1: already done this thing. Limestone already has the carbon, but
6:35
Speaker 1: that's not what you want, Like you want to capture
6:37
Speaker 1: more carbon exactly.
6:38
Speaker 2: I think carbon removal and directory capture. It's all a
6:42
Speaker 2: energy optimization play. Yeah, how do you spend as little
6:46
Speaker 2: energy as possible to remove a bunch of cooto molecules
6:50
Speaker 2: from the air, and you know, and there's a lot
6:54
Speaker 2: of different directions, a lot of different philosophies on how
6:56
Speaker 2: you approach this problem. And our thesis was, you need
7:01
Speaker 2: a sponge to remove the CO two, and there's an
7:03
Speaker 2: energy that goes into capturing the YOU two, and there's
7:07
Speaker 2: an energy that goes into releasing that CO two so
7:11
Speaker 2: that we can capture more CO two with that sponge.
7:14
Speaker 1: Right, you got to capture the CO two from the air,
7:17
Speaker 1: and then you've got to do something with it to
7:19
Speaker 1: basically stick it in the ground for ten thousand years exactly.
7:22
Speaker 1: So it's a two step process. There's capture and storage. Right.
7:26
Speaker 1: All the different angles are doing some version of that, right,
7:30
Speaker 1: those two step process exactly.
7:32
Speaker 2: It's a capture and a release, capture and regeneration. And
7:36
Speaker 2: the whole play is how do you minimize energy in
7:39
Speaker 2: both of those steps.
7:40
Speaker 1: Yeah, because the energy basically winds up being cost, right,
7:44
Speaker 1: like the cost the key input ends up being energy.
7:47
Speaker 2: Exactly right, exactly right. It's you know, whether it's in
7:50
Speaker 2: the form of capital equipment, whether it's in the form
7:53
Speaker 2: of literal electrons going in, it's energy. At the end
7:57
Speaker 2: of the day. Is the thing to optimize around, and
8:01
Speaker 2: so for us when we looked around, that was not
8:04
Speaker 2: a PhD in material science when I started this, right, like,
8:06
Speaker 2: I come from a manufacturing background, and I literally just
8:09
Speaker 2: like picked up my chemistry books from high school and
8:12
Speaker 2: reread them to you know, first getting started and basically like,
8:17
Speaker 2: if this is the framework and you're trying to optimize
8:21
Speaker 2: energy on both sides, first you start with the capture step. Okay,
8:24
Speaker 2: well what already does this naturally? Right? And there's a
8:27
Speaker 2: bunch of carbonates, calcin carbonate, machnicin carbonate, and so forth.
8:31
Speaker 2: And we ended up with calcin carbonate limestone because it
8:34
Speaker 2: needs the lowest amount of energy to capture CO two, okay,
8:39
Speaker 2: just thermodynamically, and it's thermodynamically favored. It's so thirsty for
8:44
Speaker 2: COO two, Like if you figure out a way to
8:47
Speaker 2: break it to release that COO two and you put
8:50
Speaker 2: that on your desk, it just starts gobbling up COO
8:52
Speaker 2: two molecules whether you like it or not.
8:54
Speaker 1: So it's very energy favorable for step one exactly capture,
8:58
Speaker 1: but it doesn't want to release it once it has
9:00
Speaker 1: it right as you put it out. There's two steps.
9:02
Speaker 2: There's two steps.
9:03
Speaker 1: Now you've got this limestone full of carbon, but you
9:05
Speaker 1: got to get it to release it. And it does
9:07
Speaker 1: seem like for you that's the hard part. That's certainly
9:10
Speaker 1: the energy intensive part.
9:12
Speaker 2: That is certainly the energy intensive part. Not just for us,
9:14
Speaker 2: it's actually basically everyone else.
9:17
Speaker 1: Oh you mean, for all of the carbon capture and removal.
9:20
Speaker 1: It's actually the release is the hard part.
9:22
Speaker 2: The release is the most energy intensive part. And when
9:25
Speaker 2: we first picked limestone, we liked the way of releasing
9:29
Speaker 2: CO two in the second step because cement industry already
9:33
Speaker 2: does this, cement and lime industry. They take limestone, they
9:37
Speaker 2: break it into calcium oxide CO two put the cootwo
9:40
Speaker 2: into the air, but they take the calcium oxide, put
9:43
Speaker 2: a bunch of other stuff to it, and turn it
9:44
Speaker 2: into cement.
9:45
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, like let's just pause there,
9:48
Speaker 1: because this is a giant global industry that in fact
9:50
Speaker 1: is a huge emitter for this reason, right fact, the
9:53
Speaker 1: key input to cement is limestone. And the basic thing
9:56
Speaker 1: you do when you're making cement is you put limestone
9:59
Speaker 1: in a kiln, make it very hot, and you just
10:02
Speaker 1: burn off the CO two and then you're left with lime,
10:05
Speaker 1: which is whatever, it's calcium oxide something. Yeah, So there
10:09
Speaker 1: is a question I have there, which is like, there's
10:12
Speaker 1: already a giant global industry of people doing this. Yes,
10:15
Speaker 1: would it not be more efficient to just capture that
10:19
Speaker 1: CO two that they're already releasing literally today in great
10:22
Speaker 1: quantities and stick that in the ground.
10:24
Speaker 2: We should absolutely do that, And there's many companies already
10:28
Speaker 2: doing that as well. And that's that's called points source capture,
10:31
Speaker 2: So where you're essentially avoiding emissions from a cement plant
10:35
Speaker 2: or national gas power plan fitting the CO two into.
10:38
Speaker 1: The air, and then you get to sell the cement, right.
10:40
Speaker 1: I feel like the economics there are much more favorable.
10:45
Speaker 2: Well, you're selling cement, but it's actually an added cost
10:49
Speaker 2: to capture that CO two.
10:50
Speaker 1: Right, sure, So I mean ideally you could sell the
10:52
Speaker 1: cement and sell the carbon capture and removal.
10:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a different technical method. It's it's points source capture,
10:58
Speaker 2: and there's a bunch of folks already working on it.
11:01
Speaker 2: What we're focused on is removing COEO two that's already
11:04
Speaker 2: in the air.
11:05
Speaker 1: Are you assuming that like in X years ten or something,
11:09
Speaker 1: everybody making cement's going to do that? Anyways? And you
11:12
Speaker 1: want to do a marginal benefit.
11:14
Speaker 2: So if you look across four thousands CEM in plants
11:16
Speaker 2: that already exist on the planet, there's a bunch of
11:19
Speaker 2: other infrastructure that needs to be in place for points
11:22
Speaker 2: source capture to happen. There's a bunch of cemen plants
11:25
Speaker 2: that are close to where energy is cheap and underground
11:29
Speaker 2: storage is available, where they can do points source capture,
11:32
Speaker 2: and we should absolutely do it. But there's also many
11:34
Speaker 2: many cimon plants, thousands of cimon plants that are not
11:38
Speaker 2: near where a COE to underground storage is available or
11:41
Speaker 2: energy is not available. To actually capture that CO two
11:44
Speaker 2: from from the flue gas that it would be very expensive.
11:48
Speaker 2: You would have to transport that CO two hundreds of
11:50
Speaker 2: miles away and that costs a lot of money, and
11:53
Speaker 2: effectively it becomes a cost benefit analysis where it could
11:57
Speaker 2: actually be cheaper to remove the CO two than putting
11:59
Speaker 2: a point source capture on top of it.
12:01
Speaker 1: So okay, so that's why not do it with cement
12:04
Speaker 1: or not just do it with cement exactly. So you
12:07
Speaker 1: have this idea, what are the obvious problems with it?
12:11
Speaker 1: When you come up with the idea, what are the like, oh,
12:13
Speaker 1: here's why it's going to be difficult.
12:15
Speaker 2: Here's why it's going to be difficult. So I think
12:18
Speaker 2: at the beginning, you know, when before the start started,
12:21
Speaker 2: and I think people knew that rocks can capture CO two,
12:25
Speaker 2: but the problem was it was too slow. You know, geochemically, naturally,
12:31
Speaker 2: it would take maybe six months or a year to
12:34
Speaker 2: fully saturate itself with CO two in the air. So
12:37
Speaker 2: if you put that on your desk, it would take
12:38
Speaker 2: that long. And if you put that into a cost model,
12:41
Speaker 2: you pretty quickly realize that there's just no way this
12:44
Speaker 2: can get to one hundred bucks a ton long term.
12:46
Speaker 1: Just because you've got to have like essentially a factory,
12:49
Speaker 1: and all that's happening at your factory is rock is
12:52
Speaker 1: sitting there for a year exactly.
12:54
Speaker 2: You need gobs and gobs of limestone, yea, And I
12:58
Speaker 2: mean think of you know, thousands of scure kilometers to
13:01
Speaker 2: capture you.
13:01
Speaker 1: Know, not gonna work.
13:02
Speaker 2: It's not gonna work. So, you know, it was pretty
13:05
Speaker 2: clear from the beginning that this thing needs to be
13:09
Speaker 2: at least ten times faster, if not more. And at
13:12
Speaker 2: the beginning, we're not sure whether this is even possible.
13:15
Speaker 2: And you know, we just had a few scientists just
13:18
Speaker 2: playing around with a few different things, and they figured
13:21
Speaker 2: out how to basically give it superpowers to pull carbon
13:25
Speaker 2: from the air faster. And over the last been seven years,
13:29
Speaker 2: where you know, we started at six months, and we
13:31
Speaker 2: first went to you know, three months, and then you know,
13:34
Speaker 2: it went down to a month, and then it went
13:36
Speaker 2: down to two weeks and five days and four days.
13:38
Speaker 2: We're way down below that today. And what's been interesting
13:43
Speaker 2: is people will always ask me, why is this so
13:46
Speaker 2: important for you to cycle time? And it's so important
13:49
Speaker 2: because the difference between ten days and five days is
13:53
Speaker 2: for the same amount of capital equipment, I can get
13:56
Speaker 2: two x to through put right, and the costs come
13:59
Speaker 2: down just dramatically. So that's been our biggest lever and
14:03
Speaker 2: it's been amazing. Every twelve to eighteen months we figured
14:07
Speaker 2: out a way to make it about two ks faster.
14:09
Speaker 2: I think that's where a lot of optimism comes from
14:12
Speaker 2: for cost reduction.
14:14
Speaker 1: Is there one particular improvement that would be interesting to
14:17
Speaker 1: talk about, one particular thing you figured out or your
14:20
Speaker 1: team figured out to go faster.
14:22
Speaker 2: There's about fifteen to twenty different parameters internally, you know,
14:25
Speaker 2: there's like particle size, particle size distribution, the porosity of
14:29
Speaker 2: the particle, the surface area of each particle.
14:32
Speaker 1: So these are just physical traits. You sort of mash
14:34
Speaker 1: up the rock in different ways, grind it up one
14:36
Speaker 1: way or grind it up another way.
14:37
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we actually grind it up only once at
14:39
Speaker 2: the beginning, when we first get the feed stock from
14:41
Speaker 2: the mine. But how you run the process, you know
14:45
Speaker 2: what temperature and what residents time you have in the oven.
14:49
Speaker 2: You know, it's sort of like when you're baking cookies
14:50
Speaker 2: in an oven, right, Like there's a few levers you have,
14:53
Speaker 2: and it actually turns out they have a big implication
14:56
Speaker 2: on how the physical properties of these things are.
15:00
Speaker 1: But it's not chemical. You're not like adding chemical inputs.
15:03
Speaker 1: You're just monking with the limestone in different ways to
15:06
Speaker 1: get you know, a magnitude of it's.
15:11
Speaker 2: Pretty insane, Like it's the science is a lot more complicated.
15:15
Speaker 2: But there's a specific parameter space that the nature really
15:19
Speaker 2: loves limestone to be in, and we're constantly experimenting with
15:24
Speaker 2: how you get into that tight space.
15:28
Speaker 1: When you say nature loves that, you mean that makes
15:30
Speaker 1: it particularly eager to absorb carbon dioxide.
15:34
Speaker 2: Exactly Yeah, humidity. For example, we love humidity. It actually
15:38
Speaker 2: forms a thin layer of water on top of lime
15:42
Speaker 2: and it makes it even more thirsty for COO two,
15:45
Speaker 2: And all these things kind of work together. And our
15:47
Speaker 2: technology is all about how do you keep this rock
15:51
Speaker 2: in that tight space so we can capture you know,
15:54
Speaker 2: CO two about one hundred times faster.
15:56
Speaker 1: That tight possibility space, that tight space of possible, and.
15:59
Speaker 2: As cheaply as possible. Right, Like, we're not adding chemicals,
16:01
Speaker 2: we're not adding catalysts, just a bunch of rocks sitting
16:04
Speaker 2: on trace.
16:06
Speaker 1: Let's talk about the facility. So you built this facility
16:08
Speaker 1: in Tracy, California, right east of San Francisco. That's sort
16:12
Speaker 1: of a pilot plant. Let's talk about that as a
16:15
Speaker 1: way to understand the process. What does it look like
16:17
Speaker 1: if I drive up there? Like, how big is it?
16:19
Speaker 1: What does it look like?
16:20
Speaker 2: So you drive up there and the first thing you
16:23
Speaker 2: see is that there's a big box and the box
16:28
Speaker 2: is basically, you know, it's a semi open building.
16:32
Speaker 1: Like the size of Costco or something. When you say
16:35
Speaker 1: big box, like how big are you talking?
16:36
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's this specific one is probably a quarter size
16:40
Speaker 2: of a Costco. And once you go in, you will
16:44
Speaker 2: see these tall stocks of trays. Imagine very large baking trays,
16:50
Speaker 2: stock multiple stories.
16:51
Speaker 1: How many stories? How tall?
16:52
Speaker 2: So this specific one is about forty feet tall, a
16:55
Speaker 2: couple hundred trays stacked all the way to the top.
16:57
Speaker 2: And if you come closer to each tray, you'll start
17:00
Speaker 2: seeing kind of like a large white cookie crumbled sitting
17:06
Speaker 2: on a tray, and.
17:07
Speaker 1: It looks like it's just sitting there, but actually it's
17:09
Speaker 1: absorbing carbon dioxide out of the air exactly.
17:12
Speaker 2: And what's cool is when you so you start out with,
17:17
Speaker 2: you know, a bunch of white powder, and there's a
17:19
Speaker 2: small amount of water that basically makes it cohesive, and
17:22
Speaker 2: over time it's actually growing, just like growing like a cookie, right,
17:26
Speaker 2: And as it's growing, it forms all these cracks and
17:29
Speaker 2: it crumbles and so forth, and all that extra mass
17:32
Speaker 2: is COO two. The only thing that captures is CO
17:35
Speaker 2: two from the air.
17:37
Speaker 1: And so at this point, how long does that process take?
17:40
Speaker 1: It takes a day or something.
17:41
Speaker 2: It takes a few days. The ones upcoming are much faster,
17:45
Speaker 2: So I'll keep that under the rest.
17:48
Speaker 1: So then you have your big cookie full of carbon dioxide.
17:52
Speaker 1: What do you do with it?
17:54
Speaker 2: After a few days. We don't wait until one hundred
17:57
Speaker 2: percent saturation. We wait until eighty five ninety percent, and
17:59
Speaker 2: then we bring it over to a hot kiln. And
18:03
Speaker 2: this kiln is running. You know, it's electric, it's renewable
18:07
Speaker 2: energy powered, so.
18:08
Speaker 1: It's super high, right, what is it like, nine hundred
18:10
Speaker 1: degrees celsius or exactly right? Wildly hot? Yeah. Yeah.
18:14
Speaker 2: Basically, you're exposing this material for ten to fifteen seconds
18:19
Speaker 2: to very high temperature, and it's decomposing. It's releasing the
18:25
Speaker 2: CO two that it captured from the air, and now
18:28
Speaker 2: you essentially have high purity CO two coming out of
18:31
Speaker 2: the kiln. We compress it and in the case of
18:34
Speaker 2: the Tracy facility, we store it in concrete, but in
18:38
Speaker 2: the future facilities it's either going underground or it's used
18:42
Speaker 2: for synthetic fuels and so forth. The line that comes
18:45
Speaker 2: off of it, it's ready to capture more CO two.
18:48
Speaker 2: So we're sending it back into the tray, expose it
18:52
Speaker 2: to the air, capture more CO two, Wait a few days,
18:55
Speaker 2: put it back in the kilnt and the cycle repeats
18:58
Speaker 2: over and over and over again.
19:00
Speaker 1: Heating get kiln to nine hundred degrees See is wildly
19:03
Speaker 1: energy intensive, right, And obviously for your project, you're not
19:06
Speaker 1: going to burn fossil fuel to do that. But is
19:08
Speaker 1: that in terms of the cost of the whole thing,
19:11
Speaker 1: Is that the expensive part?
19:13
Speaker 2: That's the expensive part, Yes, And I think the one
19:15
Speaker 2: thing to realize is that the cement industry does this
19:20
Speaker 2: incredibly efficiently. Obviously they use cold natural gas and so forth,
19:24
Speaker 2: and you know, they've had decades of learning around how
19:27
Speaker 2: to do this efficiently so that you know, there's all
19:30
Speaker 2: sorts of heat exchange and heat recovery, and what we're
19:33
Speaker 2: doing right now is basically learning from that industry to
19:36
Speaker 2: incorporate that heat recovery so that the energy is as
19:40
Speaker 2: low as possible. I often think about, you know, what
19:43
Speaker 2: is the energy that's required for us to hit one
19:46
Speaker 2: hundred dollars per ton And we will talk about why
19:48
Speaker 2: hundred dollars per ton in a minute for that project,
19:51
Speaker 2: about two mega wat hours pertennaco two And if we
19:57
Speaker 2: adopted everything the cement industry alreadopted like, we could be
20:01
Speaker 2: a lot lower than two mega what hours. So you're
20:04
Speaker 2: not breaking physics in terms of the energy required to
20:08
Speaker 2: get to that. So you know, for us, the main
20:10
Speaker 2: goal is to make it as energy efficient as possible,
20:14
Speaker 2: recover heat, reuse the heat, and so forth, so that
20:18
Speaker 2: you're not losing that heat to the atmosphere.
20:20
Speaker 1: So you're saying you just have to be as efficient
20:22
Speaker 1: as a industrial cement plant.
20:24
Speaker 2: Is that what you're saying exactly?
20:26
Speaker 1: I feel like it's harder than that.
20:28
Speaker 2: Sound Well, it's harder because folks have not done this
20:32
Speaker 2: yet for an electric kiln.
20:34
Speaker 1: I see, there's a reason fossil fuel is awesome, right, Like,
20:38
Speaker 1: it's incredibly efficient way to generate heat. It has one
20:42
Speaker 1: notable downside which you're trying to fix. How many mega
20:46
Speaker 1: wade hours per ton does it take you? Now?
20:49
Speaker 2: It takes us maybe I want to say three ish
20:52
Speaker 2: mega white hours.
20:53
Speaker 1: Okay, you got to get a third out of that.
20:54
Speaker 2: Yeah, A lot of it is just heat recovery, right,
20:57
Speaker 2: Like how the cement kilns have done it is they have,
21:00
Speaker 2: you know, multiple decades of experience just figuring out how
21:04
Speaker 2: to reuse the heat. And for us just doing that
21:07
Speaker 2: with an electrical system with fossil fuel, you know, what
21:11
Speaker 2: you're doing is you're spending a bunch of energy burning
21:13
Speaker 2: that fuel that you don't get back with electrical it's renewable, right,
21:19
Speaker 2: Like once you put in the energy, you can actually
21:21
Speaker 2: use those electrical heating elements over and over again, so
21:24
Speaker 2: overall thermal efficiency is actually higher. So that's actually what
21:28
Speaker 2: makes me so excited that like we're getting closer and
21:30
Speaker 2: closer to what's actually possible.
21:36
Speaker 1: We'll be back in just a minute. Tell me what
21:49
Speaker 1: you're working on in Louisiana.
21:52
Speaker 2: We're building Project Cypress and this is a director capture
21:57
Speaker 2: hub that is funded by the Department of Energy and
22:02
Speaker 2: US along with our partner Client Works and BTEL. We're
22:06
Speaker 2: building a hub.
22:08
Speaker 1: Clim Works is fans, right, using fans to do air capture.
22:11
Speaker 1: They've they've been working in Iceland, right. And Battel is
22:16
Speaker 1: like a big what are they like an oil field
22:18
Speaker 1: services coming to their big like industrial firm. Am I
22:20
Speaker 1: thinking of the right company.
22:21
Speaker 2: Battel is a engineering and procurement and their government contractor
22:26
Speaker 2: they're the hub owner and they're the ones interfacing with
22:30
Speaker 2: the government because this is a public private partnership.
22:33
Speaker 1: So how big is the thing you're building there, Like,
22:35
Speaker 1: what's it going to look like?
22:37
Speaker 2: It's multiple phases and it's going to scale up to
22:41
Speaker 2: about a megaton one million tons of CO two removed
22:45
Speaker 2: over the multiple phases of the project.
22:47
Speaker 1: What you said about a million tons per year, right,
22:49
Speaker 1: that's per year, and so that's like a big natural
22:53
Speaker 1: gas power plant. That's about what that is, right, order
22:55
Speaker 1: of magnitude.
22:56
Speaker 2: In terms of coog omitted, it's about it's a very
22:59
Speaker 2: large national gas.
23:00
Speaker 1: Power maybe two maybe two x. Or are there something
23:04
Speaker 1: like a thousand of those in the country five hundred
23:07
Speaker 1: one thousand.
23:09
Speaker 2: Right now, depending on you. Yeah, at least a thousand
23:12
Speaker 2: across the world. There's yeah, multiple thousands.
23:16
Speaker 1: When I was sort of figuring out that math, I
23:19
Speaker 1: was praying for the interview, like I got disheartened, to
23:22
Speaker 1: be honest, Like I was like, Oh, here's the great,
23:25
Speaker 1: big one, and the government is supporting it and putting
23:28
Speaker 1: in hundreds of millions of dollars. Right, that's the order
23:30
Speaker 1: of magnitude for this project. And it's like, oh my god,
23:32
Speaker 1: it's just like one two little power plants and there's
23:35
Speaker 1: like a thousand of them. I don't know, it just
23:38
Speaker 1: felt so small when I did that math. Do you
23:42
Speaker 1: feel that way?
23:43
Speaker 2: Like how does it play for you if you just
23:46
Speaker 2: take a step back and think about the climate problem? Right?
23:48
Speaker 2: Like it's you know, if you're emitting fifty billion tons
23:51
Speaker 2: of CO two into the air every year, you know, agriculture, automotive, shipping, airplanes,
23:58
Speaker 2: all sorts of things are emitting SEO two oil and gas.
24:00
Speaker 1: Plants fifty billion, fifty thousand million, we're talking about one
24:05
Speaker 1: million and then this is fifty thousand million.
24:07
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know us about one hundred hundred and
24:10
Speaker 2: fifty years of infrastructure. So, you know, I think when
24:15
Speaker 2: we think about building a carbon and mobile industry, that
24:18
Speaker 2: is essentially reversing that and removing that. You know, right now,
24:23
Speaker 2: what we're focused on is creating a blueprint, creating a
24:26
Speaker 2: template that we can emulate. We can if you make
24:29
Speaker 2: this so cheap, right, if you make this so cheap
24:32
Speaker 2: such that it's an economic no brainer and it uses
24:36
Speaker 2: materials that are very abundant and scalable, and you can
24:39
Speaker 2: emulate this all across the world, then I think making
24:42
Speaker 2: this a blueprint and showing that it is scalable, that's
24:45
Speaker 2: really the first goal of what we're trying to do.
24:48
Speaker 2: And this is not dissimilar to the first utility solar
24:52
Speaker 2: plant that was built in two thousand and nine twenty
24:54
Speaker 2: ten in the US where it took us multiple years
24:57
Speaker 2: and lots of government subsidies. But once we build that,
25:00
Speaker 2: now we're building them every week.
25:03
Speaker 1: Yeah, solar is a good model of like an incredibly
25:05
Speaker 1: fast ramp, right. And it is amazing when you look
25:08
Speaker 1: at those estimates from like big credible government organizations over
25:12
Speaker 1: the last fifteen years of how big is solar going
25:15
Speaker 1: to be? Like every year they underestimate what's going to
25:17
Speaker 1: happen the next year. Right, The line keeps getting steeper,
25:20
Speaker 1: So I guess that's a good model. Right, And that
25:23
Speaker 1: is a model of just like it just got so cheap, right,
25:26
Speaker 1: because it's so simple.
25:27
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just so simple. There's so many things we
25:30
Speaker 2: can learn from solar. One is the cost floor and
25:33
Speaker 2: the abundance of materials that went into making these solar
25:35
Speaker 2: panels and silicon basically sand is the raw material for
25:40
Speaker 2: making those solar panels. And the cost floor for the
25:43
Speaker 2: solar panel is so cheap that the more you make them,
25:45
Speaker 2: the cheaper it got. And the second thing that we
25:47
Speaker 2: can learn from it is the adoption really started taking
25:51
Speaker 2: off in ways that humans found it very hard to predict.
25:56
Speaker 2: Is grid parity. Once the cost became as cheap or
26:01
Speaker 2: cheaper than the cost of electricity from other sources in
26:04
Speaker 2: the grid. It was an economic no brainer to all
26:08
Speaker 2: of his deploy because it was always the cheapest thing
26:11
Speaker 2: for us. How do you translate that into a director
26:14
Speaker 2: capture one, you know, use abandoned materials, use cheap materials.
26:18
Speaker 2: Whereas you the more you deploy, the more you learn,
26:20
Speaker 2: the cheaper it gets. So if you're doing that with
26:22
Speaker 2: limestone and you're seeing those learning rates every year, And
26:26
Speaker 2: the second thing is, you know what is that cost?
26:28
Speaker 2: Where does that real adoption come in? And you know,
26:32
Speaker 2: for us, we think that's probably around two fifty three
26:35
Speaker 2: hundred dollars per ton. And that's where it really starts
26:39
Speaker 2: to say, okay, like removing carbon starts to be an
26:43
Speaker 2: economically cheaper thing to do than say other types of
26:47
Speaker 2: hard to decarbonized methods. And that's when you start turning
26:50
Speaker 2: the flywheel to further reduce the costs down to one
26:53
Speaker 2: hundred dollars per ton.
26:54
Speaker 1: I mean, there is a problem that you have that
26:57
Speaker 1: director capture has that solar doesn't, right, which is people
27:00
Speaker 1: are paying for electric power already, and if I pay
27:03
Speaker 1: for electricity, I get electricity. And there is this basic
27:09
Speaker 1: public goods problem with direct air capture, which is I
27:12
Speaker 1: pay for direct air capture, everybody gets the benefit of it,
27:15
Speaker 1: and I get literally like one five billionth of the
27:18
Speaker 1: benefit of it. Right, So that is a profound problem.
27:22
Speaker 1: How does that look to you? How are we going
27:24
Speaker 1: to deal with that one?
27:25
Speaker 2: So the way to think about public goods generally, and
27:29
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, there needs to be
27:31
Speaker 2: a price on carbon in some way, shape or another,
27:33
Speaker 2: and different economies approach the problem differently.
27:36
Speaker 1: A price on carbon imposed by the gum Like the
27:39
Speaker 1: government has to pass a law that says if you emit,
27:42
Speaker 1: you have to pay a tax, or there's a cap
27:44
Speaker 1: and trade or something exactly.
27:46
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're seeing this. United Kingdom's emissions trading scheme
27:52
Speaker 2: just started to incorporate carbon removal into their cap and
27:56
Speaker 2: trade scheme.
27:58
Speaker 1: Is that good for you? Does that mean companies in
28:00
Speaker 1: the UK can come to you and pay you to
28:02
Speaker 1: stick carbon in the ground and get the credit they need.
28:05
Speaker 2: That's a direction that they're going. So economies across the
28:08
Speaker 2: world are coming up with schemes where carbon removal is
28:11
Speaker 2: integrated into how they think about broader climate mitigation. Carbon
28:17
Speaker 2: will be priced one wayship or another. And for us,
28:20
Speaker 2: what that means is that while those markets are coming
28:24
Speaker 2: online and getting more robust, or do we get off
28:27
Speaker 2: the ground. And you know that's where Frontier and Microsoft.
28:30
Speaker 2: You know, these folks have been incredibly catalytic.
28:32
Speaker 1: Basically companies, companies that are paying for director capture now exactly.
28:38
Speaker 2: I often compare them to you know what Germany did
28:42
Speaker 2: to solar in two thousand and six. You know, they essentially,
28:45
Speaker 2: you know, catalyzed the demand and helped bring down the cost.
28:50
Speaker 1: They created a subsidy, right, the government created a big
28:52
Speaker 1: subsidy that was sort of the birth of the modern
28:54
Speaker 1: solar power movement.
28:55
Speaker 2: Exactly.
28:56
Speaker 1: Tell me about what's happening politically in the US for
28:59
Speaker 1: a director capture.
29:00
Speaker 2: Director capture is an interesting one politically because we've generally
29:05
Speaker 2: found pretty good bipartisan support for it. I think the
29:09
Speaker 2: best way to put is forty five Q. Forty five
29:11
Speaker 2: Q is a tax credit. It's one hundred and eighty
29:14
Speaker 2: dollars per ton that the government payss for every time
29:17
Speaker 2: a CO two vise a questor underground.
29:19
Speaker 1: Which is a lot. That's a really significant subsidy.
29:23
Speaker 2: Essentially, it's huge, it's essentially the US putting a price
29:27
Speaker 2: on carbon for director capture. Right, So before the IRA
29:32
Speaker 2: it was fifty and IRA increased to one eighty. And
29:35
Speaker 2: the most recent one, Big Beautiful Bill has preserved it
29:39
Speaker 2: and it actually enhanced it.
29:42
Speaker 1: That is surprising, I think on a certain level. Right.
29:45
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly many of the sort of energy transition
29:49
Speaker 1: climate change subsidies from the IRA were reduced or eliminated
29:53
Speaker 1: in the Big Beautiful Bill and the bill that just passed.
29:56
Speaker 1: Why did director capture subsidies survive when others got eliminated?
30:02
Speaker 2: I think generally the way to think about DAK is
30:06
Speaker 2: you're producing COEOTO molecules from the air and you can
30:11
Speaker 2: use THEOTO molecules support underground for removals, or you can
30:15
Speaker 2: use THEOTO molecules to make synthetic fuels for ships and planes.
30:21
Speaker 1: You can also use them to get more oil out
30:23
Speaker 1: of the ground. Right, this is the thing some people
30:25
Speaker 1: do with them.
30:26
Speaker 2: This is a thing that some people do. Yeah. So
30:29
Speaker 2: I think what the technology is a platform. What it
30:34
Speaker 2: gave for boths in the aisle are it's both a
30:37
Speaker 2: climate and mitigation tool, and it contributes to us being
30:41
Speaker 2: able to produce a lot more energy.
30:43
Speaker 1: Uh, huh.
30:44
Speaker 2: You know, in this case, you know synthetic fuels like
30:46
Speaker 2: clean energy, so you.
30:47
Speaker 1: Can tell the sort of energy dominance story. It's kind
30:50
Speaker 1: of a drill baby, drill story if you want it
30:52
Speaker 1: to be well.
30:53
Speaker 2: In this case, I think there are ways to make
30:55
Speaker 2: low carbon synthetic fuels. And as you know, you've signed
30:59
Speaker 2: a partnership with United.
31:01
Speaker 1: Well talk about that with United Airlines. So talk about
31:03
Speaker 1: that partnership.
31:04
Speaker 2: It's a strategic partnership where they're both investor in the
31:06
Speaker 2: company and an off take agreement for the future. It's
31:10
Speaker 2: five hundred thousand tons of CO two that they have
31:13
Speaker 2: an option to either choose to store underground or utilize
31:18
Speaker 2: it to make low carbon synthetic fuels, sustainable aviation fuels
31:23
Speaker 2: to run their planes.
31:25
Speaker 1: And so in that ladder universe, it's sort of turning
31:28
Speaker 1: airplane fuel into a circular economy. Like they fly the
31:31
Speaker 1: plane and that emits CO two and then you capture
31:33
Speaker 1: CO two and turn it into more fuel. That's the
31:35
Speaker 1: model there. I mean, the political valance of director capture
31:38
Speaker 1: is really interesting. An oil company owns the biggest director
31:41
Speaker 1: capture facility in the US, right, and then on this
31:44
Speaker 1: sort of relatively far left, you have director capture skepticism, right,
31:49
Speaker 1: People who are like it just will give people permission
31:52
Speaker 1: to keep burning fossil fuels and not transition fast enough.
31:57
Speaker 2: As you know, the problem is just so so massive
32:01
Speaker 2: that I think the argument of this will only continue
32:06
Speaker 2: what we're doing. It's hard to see much of many
32:08
Speaker 2: lakes to it because at the end of the day,
32:09
Speaker 2: we need to reduce as much as possible, Like you know,
32:12
Speaker 2: first we need to reduce emissions in all sorts of
32:15
Speaker 2: different things, and anything that we cannot reduce we should remove.
32:19
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, the slower we reduce, the slower we decarbonize,
32:25
Speaker 2: the bigger and the bigger gap that we have. Yeah,
32:28
Speaker 2: that we're you know, the removal gap just gets bigger
32:31
Speaker 2: and bigger. And that's what's happening right now.
32:34
Speaker 1: Why did you get into the director capture business?
32:37
Speaker 2: I think a couple of reasons. One is the size
32:41
Speaker 2: of the problem was so massive, and the number of
32:44
Speaker 2: people working on it as rigorously and with the right
32:48
Speaker 2: approach that I thought was right was just limited. When
32:52
Speaker 2: first Guards started.
32:53
Speaker 1: You looked at what people were doing in carbon removal,
32:55
Speaker 1: and what did you think.
32:56
Speaker 2: I thought either they were not as scalable or they
32:59
Speaker 2: would be too expensive.
33:01
Speaker 1: You thought you could do better.
33:03
Speaker 2: I could do better. So I mean, at the end
33:07
Speaker 2: of the day, like hopefully there will be fifty hundred companies,
33:10
Speaker 2: massive companies, just like there's fifty two hundred basket of
33:13
Speaker 2: oil and companies that remove carbon. Each have a different approach.
33:17
Speaker 2: And I think what attracted me to director capture also
33:20
Speaker 2: is just the level of impact you can have. I
33:23
Speaker 2: mean technically, you know, because the abundance of limestone is
33:26
Speaker 2: so hi, the impact is infinitively scalable. Right, There's not
33:30
Speaker 2: many solutions you can say you can scale it up
33:33
Speaker 2: to hundreds of gigatons.
33:36
Speaker 1: Hundreds of gigatons would be carbon negative as a world
33:40
Speaker 1: if it were.
33:40
Speaker 2: That big, right, right, And we need to do that
33:43
Speaker 2: this century. First, the goal is to get to net
33:45
Speaker 2: zero as a society, hopefully by twenty fifty. Yeah, and
33:48
Speaker 2: IPCC predicts that from twenty fifty to twenty one hundred
33:51
Speaker 2: we are in the negative territory.
33:53
Speaker 1: So we're net negative, sucking more carbon dioxide out of
33:56
Speaker 1: the air than we are emitting. Yeah, do you think
33:59
Speaker 1: that'll happen? Yeah?
34:00
Speaker 2: I mean I think I take my cues from solar
34:02
Speaker 2: and wind.
34:03
Speaker 1: You want solar more than wind, right, yeah.
34:05
Speaker 2: Yeah, you want solar more than wind for sure. I
34:07
Speaker 2: think once you get to a cost that is societally
34:13
Speaker 2: acceptable and affordable, it will take a life of its
34:16
Speaker 2: own in terms of its scale. And obviously you want
34:19
Speaker 2: the you know, carbon markets, compliance markets to incorporate the
34:23
Speaker 2: price of carbon across the world as well. But I
34:25
Speaker 2: think there's a flywheel there as well. You know, as
34:27
Speaker 2: you deploy more, it gets cheaper. And I think that
34:31
Speaker 2: it will happen because you know, there is a future
34:35
Speaker 2: that we can create, a future of abundance where you know,
34:38
Speaker 2: we can have all the intelligence we want, we can have,
34:41
Speaker 2: you know, all the things that we want, and we
34:43
Speaker 2: can take care of the planet provided that it is affordable.
34:47
Speaker 2: That's why this one hundred dollars per ten I think
34:48
Speaker 2: is so important. Where I do think at that point,
34:51
Speaker 2: the closer we get there, the faster it scales up.
34:56
Speaker 1: We'll be back in a minute with the liking round. Okay,
35:10
Speaker 1: I want to ask you some lightning round questions. Now,
35:14
Speaker 1: what was one thing that was really striking to you
35:17
Speaker 1: when you were in eighth grade and you moved from
35:21
Speaker 1: Southeast India to Maine.
35:25
Speaker 2: Man, so many things. Let me think about that for
35:27
Speaker 2: a sec. Yeah, there was a lot of culture shock,
35:33
Speaker 2: academic shock, language shock for a twelve year old kid
35:37
Speaker 2: to be dropped into bangor Maine coming from India. It
35:42
Speaker 2: was very interesting. To make it simple, but I think,
35:44
Speaker 2: you know, one thing that I found, which I'm actually
35:47
Speaker 2: grateful for, the way that the education system in India
35:51
Speaker 2: grew up was very much like memory based. I think
35:55
Speaker 2: what I really appreciated moving to the US at that
35:59
Speaker 2: age is sort of that flip in to thinking of
36:02
Speaker 2: being a lot more analytical, a lot more vigorous, which
36:04
Speaker 2: I just found a lot more natural.
36:07
Speaker 1: I heard you say in another interview that companies fail
36:10
Speaker 1: because they stop having difficult conversations, and so I'm curious,
36:14
Speaker 1: what is a recent difficult conversation that you had at work? Yeah.
36:18
Speaker 2: You know, one of our main principles is radical honesty.
36:21
Speaker 2: It's one of our three main principles, and for so
36:24
Speaker 2: many reasons, it's the right thing to do. Right. It's
36:26
Speaker 2: you know, pursuing physics, pursuing truth, pursuing merit, and you know,
36:30
Speaker 2: how do you create a culture where it's vulnerable and
36:33
Speaker 2: open and safe to have honest and difficult conversations and
36:37
Speaker 2: once you get it, it's it's really amazing. For example,
36:40
Speaker 2: yesterday I was given feedback by one of my reports
36:44
Speaker 2: around asking a individual contributor for their time working on
36:48
Speaker 2: a project without working with the manager on exactly the
36:52
Speaker 2: scope of it.
36:53
Speaker 1: So somebody who was like, hey, don't ask this person
36:55
Speaker 1: to do this thing without asking their manager if they
36:57
Speaker 1: have time in surance?
36:58
Speaker 2: Right, pretty straightforward, right, you know, because the manager has
37:01
Speaker 2: understanding of the fool and doing the scope and a
37:04
Speaker 2: lot of the times, like this type of feedback is like, ah,
37:07
Speaker 2: I don't know if this is worth talking to the
37:08
Speaker 2: CEO out right, but like this person fall safe enough
37:12
Speaker 2: to share with me, and I was so proud of
37:13
Speaker 2: it that it's like, man, thank you for sharing this.
37:16
Speaker 2: I could have just spent an extra minute thinking about
37:19
Speaker 2: how to approach that conversation and then this person fell
37:21
Speaker 2: safe enough to do it. And one thing I'd tell
37:23
Speaker 2: other founders is, you know there isn't inherently that power dynamic.
37:27
Speaker 2: You know, the emperor has no clothes, right, Like, how
37:30
Speaker 2: do you create a culture, how do you create a
37:32
Speaker 2: bi directional feedback loop between leaders and folks working on
37:37
Speaker 2: the problem at the core every day.
37:46
Speaker 1: Shashank Samala is the co founder and CEO of Airloom.
37:51
Speaker 1: Please email us at problem at pushkin dot fm. We
37:55
Speaker 1: are always looking for new guests for the show. Today's
37:59
Speaker 1: show was produced by Trinomanino and Gabriel Hunter Chang. It
38:03
Speaker 1: was edited by Alexander Garretton and engineered by Sarah Bruguerrett.
38:07
Speaker 1: I'm Jacob Goldstein and we'll be back next week with
38:09
Speaker 1: another episode of What's Your Problem
38:21
Speaker 2: MHM.