A Sustainable Future: Lisa Braune, Neustark, on Why Not All Carbon Dioxide Removal Technologies are Created Equal

 

Why is the world’s largest single waste stream—demolition concrete—one of the secrets to carbon dioxide removal? Listen to Jason Mitchell discuss with Neustark Head of Carbon Dioxide Removal, Lisa Braune, about what the world’s largest waste stream—demolition concrete—means as a carbon sink; how the private sector and governments are working to support and embed CDR technologies; and why CDR certification is so important in the wake of the recent carbon offsets scrutiny.

Recording date: 15 March 2024

Lisa Braune

Lisa Braune is Neustark Head of Carbon Dioxide Removal. Lisa oversees the certification of Neustark’s climate projects according to recognized standards as well as the sales of CDR certificates.

Neustark has developed a process of mineralisation that permanently stores CO2 in concrete which can be used today. It’s a measurable and verifiable method that can be packaged into carbon credits and bought by companies. These credits provide a ‘transparent, measurable and results-based’ means for companies to reduce their carbon footprint.

 

Episode Transcript

Note: This transcription was generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers and may contain errors. As a part of this process, this transcript has also been edited for clarity.

 

Jason Mitchell:

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast, and I hope everyone is staying well. Among the many, many polarising subjects in the realm of sustainability, carbon dioxide removal or CDR technology has to list as one of the most polarising. Critics site cost, energy, consumption and the fact that most technologies aren't scalable, let alone proven, but that's not entirely true. CDR covers a whole range of different approaches from nature-based to engineered, and I guess for context, the IPCC estimates that an astonishing five to 16 gigatons of CO₂ will need to be removed from the atmosphere annually by 2050. So the public and private sector investment over the last several years shouldn't really come as much of a surprise.

Companies like Alphabet, Meta, Stripe and McKinsey launched the Frontier Fund, $1 billion effort to grow the market for CDR offsets. Elon Musk sponsors $100 million XPRIZE for a CDR solution. And last month the US Department of Energy also announced 100 million of funding for CDR technologies through its Carbon Negative Shots Pilot. The point is this, there is a lot going on in the CDR space, which brings me to Microsoft. There are a few companies I watch who I feel are taking the high quality carbon removal credit space seriously. In fact, Microsoft has gone so far as to target carbon negative by 2030. So when Microsoft announced a six-year off take agreement with a small Swiss startup called Neustark, I took notice.

So it's great to have Lisa Braune from Neustark on the podcast. We talk about what the world's largest waste stream demolition concrete means as a carbon sink, how the private sector and governments are working to support and embed CDR technologies and why CDR certification is so important in the wake of the recent carbon offset scrutiny. Lisa Braune is Head of Carbon Dioxide removal at Neustark. She oversees the certification of Neustark's climate projects according to recognised standards as well as the sales of CDR certificates. Neustark has developed a process of mineralization that permanently stores CO₂ in concrete, which can be used today. It's a measurable and verifiable method that can be packaged into carbon credits and bought by companies. These credits provide a transparent, measurable and results-based means for companies to reduce their carbon footprint. It's great to have you here today and thank you for taking the time.

Lisa Braune:

Hi, Jason. I'm very much looking forward to it.

Jason Mitchell:

Absolutely, thank you. So Lisa, I want to start with establishing some baseline knowledge. So per the new Stark process, carbon dioxide CO₂ is permanently stored in demolition concrete using a natural mineralization technology. It's essentially one of the few technologies that warrants carbon removal with a permanence of thousands to call it millions of years. So how does this technology work in practise and how do you ensure carbon is permanently locked up?

Lisa Braune:

So as you said, Neustark is storing biogenic CO₂, I would say not only in demolition concrete but also in other mineral waste streams. And to do that, we are partnering up with mineral waste recyclers on one side, and then on the other side also with biogenic CO₂ sources such as biomethane facilities, for example. Neustark takes care of the entire value chain. So really from sourcing the CO₂, transporting, but then also storing it at the concrete recyclers. So we are providing the technology to store it in the mineral waste streams. And the technology itself is quite simple. And I would say this is also the beauty of it. So if you want, it's a box where the mineral waste is put in, and then the box is closed and we inject biogenic CO₂ into the box. We have gas flow metres that measure how much CO₂ enters the box and then leaves the box. And this allows us, of course, to very precisely measure how much CO₂ is taken up.

Jason Mitchell:

That's great actually, I've got some follow-up questions. What does a closed system technology that enables precise measurement of stored CO₂ and concrete actually mean? And can you talk about how this CO₂ is measured? And I guess as a third and when Neustark talks about the fact that mineralization and demolished concrete is both commercially and ecologically viable, how do you actually measure the ecological viability of the technology?

Lisa Braune:

So the whole measurement, reporting and verification we call it in the industry, MRV is a very, very important topic for the credibility of CO₂ certificates. So in the end, corporates or private people as well that buy a CO₂ certificate, they really want to be sure that this one tonne of CO₂ was really reduced or removed. And of course we have a broad variety of different solution to achieve CO₂ reduction and removal. And with some of them it's very straightforward on how to measure the climate impact, and with others it's much more complicated.

So with some of the solutions, you are basing the measurement of the climate impact on many different assumptions. Whereas for others, like the one from Neustark, you can measure it straightforward. So as I said, we're operating in this closed system so we can measure with gas flow metres that are super precise, how much CO₂ enters the system and exits the system. And then additionally, we also have to measure what are the emissions that arise along our value chain. So for liquefying the CO₂ transporting it, but also storing it. So what are the emissions that arise due to this energy consumption that we have? We account for all these emissions, we subtract them from the amount of CO₂ stored and only really the net climate impact is then sold to buyers as CDR certificates.

Jason Mitchell:

That's super interesting. So many people are familiar with carbon capture, but I guess for context, why is the limestone concrete process so important and effective? CO₂ in my mind is a molecule that doesn't really react with much, which makes it kind of difficult to capture. Biologically speaking, CO₂ binds with proteins, but what does that mean on an industrial basis? There's this idea that at least with regard to CCS, there's really no free lunch when it comes to CO₂.

Lisa Braune:

So CO₂ can be stored in different kind of ways. So either it can be stored in different geological formation, either in depleted oil and gas fields, or also by injecting it into a geological formation that has a mineral such as an Iceland with basalt that reacts very good with CO₂. And additionally to this geological storage solution, mineral waste streams can offer a very secure way of storing the CO₂. And this is also a bit the story of why Neustark was founded. Our two co-founders saw this huge waste stream, so demolition concrete is worldwide the biggest waste stream and thought, "Why are we not using this giant waste stream as a durable or permanent storage medium for CO₂?" Because the cement in the waste in the demolition concrete reacts very easily with the CO₂.

Jason Mitchell:

Yeah, maybe for context, it is actually worth, because I've heard you speak about the scale of annual production or by-product of demolition concrete, something like a billion tonnes. Can you talk a little bit more about the opportunity?

Lisa Braune:

So today, approximately one to 2 billion tonnes of waste concrete are produced every year globally speaking, and this waste stream is expected to grow significantly in the upcoming years. Reason for that is that after the second World War, we started building much more with concrete. So if we assume that these buildings have a lifetime of 50 to 100 years, it is expected that the amount of waste concrete will double every 10 years.

Jason Mitchell:

So CCUS or carbon capture, utilisation, storage is obviously a little bit different from CCS or carbon capture storage, in that it has the added process of using the carbon, which it captures. So first, how widely used is this in industrial processes like concrete plastics or biofuels? And I guess second, I understand that decarbonization means many different things and different technologies, but does a tension exist between CCUS and CCS in terms of capturing clients, funders or even policymaker's attention?

Lisa Braune:

So I think we have to distinguish here between CCUS, CCS, and then additionally also CCU. So most of the plastics or biofuels that come out of CCU processes are rather as I said, CCU than CCUS. Meaning that if at the end of life of this product, so for example if the plastic after 10 years is thrown away, the CO₂ that is stored in it will be re-emitted. So also for fuels that are based on CO₂, as soon as you burn the fuel, the CO₂ will be re-emitted. So it's really no form of CO₂ storage.

CCUS is possible for the example of concrete because when you store CO₂ in waste concrete or also concrete, this storage medium has the same durability as geological storage. So we are talking here again of several thousands to million years that the CO₂ can be stored and it's just an additional storage medium to CCS. I think it's also important to mention the distinct, the difference between CDR and CCS. So usually when we talk about CCS, we are talking about fossil-based point sources or geogenic-based point sources, giving you examples such as cement facilities or steel facilities. Whereas when we talk about CDR or carbon dioxide removal, we are always talking about capturing CO₂ either directly or indirectly from the atmosphere. So if the CO₂ is captured at a biogenic CO₂ source, this will be CDR and not CCS.

Jason Mitchell:

Yeah, those are really important and helpful distinctions. I guess I kind of wanted to turn to a recent announcement. So Neustark announced a partnership with Microsoft to deliver 27,600 tonnes of carbon removal credits over the course of six years to support Microsoft's commitment of becoming carbon negative by 2030. In my mind Microsoft as an interesting reputation of pursuing specifically high quality credits or offsets. In fact, I remember hearing that around it might've been 2019 or 2020, Microsoft essentially went out and bought 1.3 million tonnes of the 1.5 million tonnes of high quality credits within the market. And I guess I'm trying to understand what the implications of this mean for Neustark and is Microsoft in your mind, in Neustark's mind, an outlier or do you see other companies pursuing this type of objective?

Lisa Braune:

I would say the deal with Microsoft was of course a big, big accelerator for us. As you mentioned, Microsoft is perceived as a very credible buyer in the CDR market. They have a very, very good understanding of the CDR market, of the different technologies. They're really a pioneer in this field. So having Microsoft as one of your buyers is of course one part of the due diligence process that many companies run through when they buy CDR. It just really gives us credibility and of course we can also benefit from Microsoft brand, which is really, really amazing. On one side to gather CDR certificate buyers, but then on the other side of course also to convince investors to partner up with us. So this was definitely an accelerator. I would say Microsoft is still, and you can also see that if you go for example to CDR.fyi, that tracks all CDR purchases that have been conducted so far,. You can see that Microsoft is still clearly the front-runner in the field also because they have shot such ambitious net-zero targets.

However, we see that there are more and more companies that also incorporate CDR in their net-zero targets. Obviously also, if you look for example at the science-based target initiative, which is the biggest voluntary initiative for science-based net-zero targets of companies also there it's clearly stated that companies should reduce by 90% their emissions and the remaining 10% should be neutralised by carbon dioxide removal. So essentially every company that has a net-zero claim will sooner or later need to procure CDR. And we see that more and more companies are doing that and also more and more companies are doing that in a very big manner. So besides Microsoft, there are players such as JP Morgan for example, that perceived or performed very large CDR deals in the last years.

Jason Mitchell:

Yeah. And absolutely congratulations on the Microsoft deal. So Neustark set a target to remove 1 million tonnes of CO₂ by 2030. Can you give us some context for the scale of this? I guess I'm thinking about the state of carbon dioxide removal report, which notes that only 0.1% of CO₂ removal is currently from novel CDR methods, while 99.9% comes from conventional management of land, essentially I guess impermanent nature-based solutions.

Lisa Braune:

The industry is definitely still very nascent. I think the science is clear. We will need large amount of carbon dioxide removal. Based on IPCC report we expect that we will need approximately between six to 10 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide removal by 2050, so really large amounts. So putting that into perspective, of course these 1 million tonnes are still only a drop in the ocean. However, we will not stop there. This is our 2030 target and obviously we will ramp up this capacity to several hundred millions of tonnes by 2050. But it's clear there is not the one solution that will deliver these six to 10 billion tonnes, but instead we will need a broad variety of different solution to achieve this ambitious targets. And again, the industry is very nascent and we need a lot of support, be it from the public sector, from buyers through ramp up this industry such that we then have this capacity by 2050.

Jason Mitchell:

Neustark has 14 CO₂ storage plants in operation and is expanding with the development of new storage facilities, specifically in Austria and Germany and other countries that are unannounced. Can you talk about how feasible it'll be to scale up this complex technology?

Lisa Braune:

So these 14 CO₂ capture and storage sites that we have already in operation have a total CO₂ storage capacity of approximately 5,000 tonnes of CDR per year. That being said, we are only at the very beginning. So this is still only our second year of commercialisation phase or rolling out our technology and already today we have 14 CO₂ capture and storage site and operation. And additionally to that we have 30 more capture and storage sites, which are already contracted and which will go into operation in various countries across Europe in the upcoming months. So we will be present in six European countries somewhere mid this year.

Jason Mitchell:

Is there any view in terms of the run rate of capacity by the end of let's say 2024, 2025?

Lisa Braune:

By 2024, we want to have a CDR capacity somewhere between six to 10,000 tonnes of CDR. And then 2025, this should be of course increased immensely, so the target there is somewhere between 25,000 to 30,000 tonnes of CDR. So ramping up the capacity every year to then essentially achieve this 1 million tonne target by 2030.

Jason Mitchell:

Absolutely, yeah, it really is ramping up. I guess I kind of want to talk about government support, which seems to be increasing for CDR. I'm based in London, but I'm thinking in December 2023, the UK government set out the CCUS vision, which aims to create kind of a competitive carbon capture utilisation storage market by 2035. The UK government's talked about a 20 billion pound investment into the market and an aim to add 5 billion pounds to the UK economy by 2050. If you pull out what will be the biggest challenges you think we face in the process of expanding in the CCUS market? Is it space for carbon capture plants? Is it a competent trained workforce? Is it continued financing or investments?

Lisa Braune:

I can only speak for us what we are perceiving as biggest challenges to achieve this ambitious scale up plan that we have. And I would say I can break it down to three main key success factors. On one side, its definitely investment that you also mentioned yourself. So we need external investment, both private but also public to help scale at speed. Then on the other side, we also need strategic partnerships such as the one that we have with Holcim. Holcim is one of the biggest construction manufacturing companies in the world, and such as strategic partnerships helps us immensely in the rollout of our technology.

And with that, it comes also along about the second factor that I see, which is the storage capacity. So as I mentioned, we are partnering up with mineral waste recyclers and we have to incentivize them so that they partner up with us together. I can then later on go a bit more into detail how we do that, but we really need the construction industry to be open-minded and also seize the opportunity to partner up with us because together we can then really make a measurable impact. And then the last thing is of course, people. At the end, those two challenges and many more can only be addressed by working with the best people and if we get to fully utilise this potential.

Jason Mitchell:

AlliedOffsets reports a total of $4.3 billion invested in CDR across 90 investments and $1.7 billion in 2023 alone. The increasing trend in investment is contrary to the overall decline in climate tech investment in 2023, unfortunately. However, despite this, CDR only consists of 5.3% of all climate tech investments. I guess to the point that we just talked about, what are the gating factors here in terms of driving more investment? To what extent do you see private sector capital driving the expansion of this technology versus government funding? And sort of last, where will the majority of future funding come from?

Lisa Braune:

So the CDR industry, again is still very nascent and it has experienced significant growth only in the past two years. And this growth was primarily driven by the voluntary carbon market. So companies, corporates buying carbon dioxide removal certificates voluntarily for their net-zero targets. And since we are currently ourselves in a funding round, we can talk from our experience. So what we see is that some investors still express scepticism regarding the stability of this voluntary carbon market. And since the CDR market is up until today, essentially relying on this market, they are also expressing scepticism about the growth trajectory of the CDR market.

I think what we do is we are taking a macro perspective of this and as the scientific consensus is clear that we need six to 10 gigatons of CDR to achieve our 2050 net-zero target as a world. So if the world is really serious about achieving our climate objective, it's clear that we need to fund these technologies in different ways. I would say. There will still need funding from the private sector, but then also from the public sector. And this is a change that we are seeing not only in UK, but also in other countries. So for example, the procurement programmes of the US and also of Switzerland by the way, or also the carbon removal certification framework that is currently established in the EU. So the focus is more and more on this industry and I'm very optimistic that there will be funding to support really the growth of this industry.

Jason Mitchell:

Neustark's methodology for tech-based carbon removal represents the first, call it gold standard CDR approval. There's obviously been significant attention, and I'd even say scrutiny to the carbon credit verification area, given the criticism that players like Vera have received. How important is it to have effective frameworks and certification to ensure CO₂ removal is obviously high quality and reliable, rewards decarbonization, and helps scale up the technology. And I guess also, how does certification help increase investment into Neustark?

Lisa Braune:

I would say it's very, very important to really ensure transparency and credibility of the CO₂ certificates. This is also why Neustark started or decided very early on in the process, it was in 2021 where we decided that we will establish a methodology on the gold standard. And for such a young company, this was really a big decision because you need a lot of resources to establish such a methodology. And that's why we are also very proud that we were the first and are still the only carbon dioxide or tech carbon dioxide removal provider that has a methodology on the gold standard.

I think currently the voluntary carbon market is very unregulated, so you will find various different methodologies to quantify the climate impact of different climate projects. And I think we really have to go into a standardisation, so a standardised way of really assessing the quality of certificates, be it a CO₂ reduction certificate or a carbon dioxide removal certificate. And this is also why this carbon dioxide removal certification framework of the European Union is so important, that we have a standard standardised way of quantifying the climate impact of carbon dioxide removals within Europe.

Jason Mitchell:

I'm wondering, is it accurate to say that companies who buy carbon credits with Neustark are offsetting their own carbon emissions through funding the technology implementation of the biogas companies? If it is in the end, look, there are still the emissions being produced by the purchasing company, which aren't really accounted for. So to what extent is it the responsibility of the biogas companies and concrete recycling companies to offset their own emissions? Maybe it's a semantic thing, but how can we call this carbon negative when the process is removing carbon before it reaches the atmosphere, rather than removing carbon already in the atmosphere?

Lisa Braune:

I see different questions within this one. I will start with the last one that you had. Why is it called carbon negative? And there it's very important that we look at the source of the CO₂. So is it geogenic or fossil or is it biogenic? And in our case, we use only biogenic CO₂. So the CO₂ was originally captured from the atmosphere by photosynthesis from plants, and we are now storing this CO₂ durably for thousands of years in mineral waste stream. And this is why we are talking about carbon negative emissions.

To your first questions, sooner or later, every company will need be it a biogas facility, a concrete producer, concrete recycler, or a big corporate. Every company will need to have net-zero targets and also to achieve these net-zero targets. Currently, we see that the CDR industry is mainly supported by companies in the tech and finance industry that want to position themselves as pioneers and really want to take their net-zero commitment seriously. So currently we have collaboration agreements with the concrete recycler and also with the biogenic CO₂ sources that we are partnering with that the carbon dioxide removals that are produced from this process belong to Neustark, so that we can sell it then to companies such as Microsoft. And like this, we can avoid any kind of double counting so that not the biogas facility or the concrete recycler are accounting for the CDR certificate, but that it really belongs to Microsoft and that they can claim this certificate for themselves.

Jason Mitchell:

Yeah. Thanks for helpfully disaggregating that question of mine, and maybe I got a little bit too ahead of myself. But I guess to come back a little bit, Neustark's process depends on biogas production as a source of CO₂. And I'm wondering just to start off, what are the risks around this and how does Neustark manage them? Which aspects of the technology can be utilised in processes other than biogas production?

Lisa Braune:

Today we are partnering up only with already existing biomethane facilities, so biomethane facilities that were before Neustark, just emitting the biogenic CO₂ into the atmosphere as a waste flow. By capturing now this CO₂ waste stream and storing it in concrete, we can very effectively and with very low energy demand create negative emissions. Of course, with biogenic CO₂ sources, you always have to make sure that the biomass is sourced sustainably. So the sources that we are operating today, they are only using biogenic waste stream for the production of biomethane. Our process can work with any kind of CO₂ molecule. So in the future of course, we can also start storing fossil CO₂ or also CO₂ captured directly from the atmosphere through direct air capture. So any of this is possible. Just now to start with our process, we saw it's the easiest way to partner up with biomethane facilities where the CO₂ is available in a very high concentration and we only need to liquefy it and then store it.

Jason Mitchell:

What about China? Obviously China is the largest producer of biogas with I think over 100,000 biogas plants, obviously followed by Germany with more than 10,000 plants. But with regard to China, are there any plans to expand into China and how can the operation in such a complex technology be scaled up there?

Lisa Braune:

I would say not in the near term. So how we are deciding of where we want to expand, it's mainly based on the amount of waste concrete that we are seeing in different countries and we see that there is a large amount in Europe, and then there is a further large amount in North America. So for the next one to three years, we are mainly focusing on expanding our operation within Europe and then also within North America. That being said, I don't know, maybe in five years we will then also go more and more to China and other countries in Asia.

Jason Mitchell:

To what extent do we need to focus on reducing carbon emissions alongside carbon removal? To go back to that state of carbon dioxide removal report, it suggests that the gap between proposed levels of carbon dioxide removal and what is needed to meet the Paris temperature goal will also require a reduction in carbon emissions. What role do you see Neustark having in educating, I guess more generally about the reduction in emissions even beyond carbon removal?

Lisa Braune:

Well, as a leading player in the nascent and fast-growing CDR scene, we are definitely seeing a responsibility in educating industry players. So we are really putting a lot of effort in educating, be it in direct conversation with potential buyers, but then also through our LinkedIn channel for example. For us it's very important that we always highlight that CDR should not be used instead of CO₂ reduction. First and foremost, we have to reduce our emissions to the max. Every company should first and foremost reduce their emission to the max and only the rest... So again, referring to science-based target initiative, the rest would be then the remaining 10% should be removed with qualitatively high carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere.

Jason Mitchell:

You've talked in the past a little bit about the importance of partnering with construction companies, but how are the companies Neustark partners with involved in this actual process? And what I mean is that biogas plants partner with Neustark, allowing them to capture the CO₂ from their operations, but to what extent do the biogas companies themselves invest in the technology or at least fund the development of the infrastructure for it to take place? Does the concrete recycling plant, for instance, invest in the technology?

Lisa Braune:

So we see two cases today that we have focusing first on the biogenic CO₂ source, what we have to put in place there is a liquefaction facility. These liquefaction facility can either be funded by Neustark or then by the biogenic CO₂ sources. And today we see really two cases. Some of the CO₂ sources want to buy the liquefaction facility themselves. In that case, we then buy the liquid CO₂ from the biogenic CO₂ sources, and others prefer that Neustark is financing the liquefaction facility, on the CO₂ sink side or the minimal waste recycler side, our business model works today as follows, that we are selling the storage facility to the concrete recycler and we are then paying a reimbursement fee for each tonne of CO₂ that they are storing. And this incentivizes the concrete recycler to store as much CO₂ as possible. And on the other side, he can then also pay back the capital costs of this storage facility. And once he has paid back the plant, every money that comes in is an additional business case for them.

Jason Mitchell:

I want to finish with two perhaps more technical questions. Neustark talks about its work examining other related paths of storing CO₂, for example, in concrete residual water or concrete slurry and other waste materials. Can you talk about how that's progressing? How much more effective could it be in storing CO₂?

Lisa Braune:

Essentially any kind of minimal waste stream can store CO₂ and our main focus will remain on demolition concrete because this is just worldwide, the biggest waste stream. However, there are other sink materials we call them that can store significant amounts of CO₂. So one of them is for example, slags and ashes. So residues after a burning process. For example, residues from a wastewater incineration plant or a steel manufacturing facility. And we have already first partners contracted where the operation at these slags facility will start in this year. Additionally, to slags and ashes, we are also looking at slurry at concrete producers, what are slurries? So when a concrete mixing truck comes back from a manufacturing side, the concrete mixing truck often still contains concrete and this is then washed out and the slurry is then holds in a big reservoir. And this slurry, since it's also containing cement, can store also significant amount of CO₂. So I have also first projects running under this case a storage case, and all of these mineral waste stream will help us to achieve even better our ambitious carbon dioxide removal targets.

Jason Mitchell:

Got it. And I guess the final, final question is what are the industry benchmarks and where are the constraints in terms of minimising grey emissions? What's necessary to drive grey emissions sustainably below that 10% level? Is it a technological problem or an economies of scale issue?

Lisa Braune:

If we look at the life cycle assessment of our entire value chain, and with value chain, I mean from liquefying the CO₂, transporting the CO₂ to storing the CO₂, we see that the liquefaction plant is the step in the value chain that emits the most CO₂ equivalent. And this is just simply based on its high electricity consumption. Essentially the carbon footprint of the electricity source for this liquefaction plant matters a lot. Under the gold standard methodology, we are using the country mix of the side where the liquefaction facility is operating.

So in Switzerland, we have a very good carbon footprint of the electricity mix, meaning that the emissions are lower there. In Germany, they are higher. Since in Germany there's still more coal power based electricity. However, as the economy gets greener, and as we move more and more away from fossil electricity sources, the overall carbon footprint of the liquefaction facility gets better of course. Then additionally, of course, the transportation of the CO₂ is also a emission factor in our value chain, but there I see a very big competitive advantage to, for example, geological storage sites. So what we really see is that our solution is a great alternative to geological storage for all the CO₂ sources that are located far away from geological storage sites, because for them, we can minimise the transportation, which minimises the emissions of transportation. But then of course, also the cost of transportation.

Jason Mitchell:

Understand, thanks. So it's been fascinating to discuss what carbon dioxide removal or CDR represents in the effort to strengthen climate mitigation, how the private sector and governments are working to support and embed CDR technologies and why CDR certification is so important in the wake of the recent carbon offset scrutiny. So I'd really like to thank you for your time and insights. I'm Jason Mitchell, Head of Responsible Investment Research at Man Group, here today with Lisa Braune, Head of Carbon Dioxide Removal at Neustark. Many thanks for joining us on a sustainable future, and I hope you'll join us on our next podcast episode. Lisa, thank you so much.

Lisa Braune:

Thank you, Jason.

Jason Mitchell:

I'm Jason Mitchell, thanks for joining us. Special thanks to our guests and of course, everyone that helped produce this show. To check out more episodes of this podcast, please visit us at man.com/ri-podcast.