Accelerating policy and getting it up and running is like quite key.

We can learn by doing.

There's a space here.

Do we have time to wait and see?

It's probably there.

It says no, like 2050 is not.

that far away and scale up needs to happen quite rapidly.

It's really quite eye -watering when you look at the numbers and the speed at which we need to scale up, we might not reach it.

And so that's why we should just start thinking about what's needed today and start implementing them.

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every week we bring you the top news breakthroughs and insights from the world of carbon management delivered straight to your inbox no fluff no jargon just the essential info you need to stay informed so whether you're a climate professional or just someone who cares make sure you're subscribed visit carbonherald .com and sign up today for our weekly newsletter welcome to the carbon stations podcast where we speak to some of the leading figures in the emerging carbon industry Our guest today is Dr.

Mai Bui, head of climate science at carbon removal marketplace Supercritical.

Mai, thank you so much for joining us today.

It's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Before we get into your work at Supercritical, I was wondering if you could please tell us a little about yourself and what you used to do before getting involved in this space.

Yeah, great.

So I actually started off in sort of the chemical engineering space focused on carbon capture and storage technologies.

have about 14 years of experience working on carbon capture and storage and carbon removals.

And that kind of looked at operating technologies, demonstrating that it works with pilot plants and showing that the technologies can operate in certain ways in certain phases.

And then there was a lot of modelling work and then it kind of transitioned from practical feasibility towards sort of policy development and thinking about real world applications of the technologies.

So over this time, I started working a lot on carbon removals.

And I remember going to a conference back in 2012 where direct air capsulas first proposes this concept.

And it was a conference full of engineers and scientists.

And we thought, this is a very silly idea.

Why would you do this?

It's very low concentrations of carbon dioxide in the air.

And it seems like not very practical.

And so.

Since fast forward to today and we can now see that it's like actually being deployed at large scale.

And so it's one of those technologies and spaces that I've seen a lot of growth and it's happening at like an expedited way that research has never done this level of jumps in technology readiness levels.

history as far as I know so that's why it's quite an exciting space and moving out of research I just thought like I wanted to kind of see this growth happen in the real marketplace in the real world and so that's why I've been more and more involved in sort of the voluntary carbon market in the later parts of my research career and then I made the move to jump over the supercritical about a year ago.

That's fantastic it's actually very rare that we get someone who you know, was kind of involved in the whole carbon management industry right off the bat.

Usually people come from other spaces.

So yeah, that's really cool.

I didn't know your background was in carbon capture.

Actually, I would have probably prepared different questions in that case.

But yeah, moving on to your current role as head of climate science, what does your day to day look like?

And how does your work connect to Supercritical's broader mission?

Yeah.

So with the background in sort of the technology and understanding how it works as the lead of the climate science team at Supercritical, we essentially develop frameworks that assess the quality of the CO2 removal products that go onto our marketplace.

And that's really important because for a lot of buyers, it's like that trust aspect, knowing that what they're buying is a genuine carbon removals.

So that's why we've developed these rigorous assessment frameworks to deliver that understanding on what the key metrics are.

And for customers, they want to know, does the carbon removal science make sense?

Is the delivery risk low?

Are there any social or environmental impacts that they need to be aware of?

And that's essentially what we do in the team.

We do that for existing products that are in operation, but then we also do that for...

early stage projects are looking to develop and trying to get to the high quality bar that a lot of buyers are looking for.

In addition to the day -to -day, I also do a lot of engaging with government and helping with developing policies.

I'm an advisory board member for Pura Earth, so I help develop the standards that go around showing what high -quality CDR looks like in a registry and then also working with government to develop standards that they're using to essentially inform them on what high -quality looks like in a compliance -based market.

I've also helped with SBTI, so the Science -Based Targets Initiative.

to sit around like guardrails for corporates that are setting net zero targets and how they go about setting a target specifically for carbon removals.

Oh, wow.

This is going to be a longer podcast than I expected, probably.

I have so many questions to ask you in that case.

But before all of that, perhaps for those of our listeners who may not be familiar, what makes the company's approach to carbon removal procurement unique?

For every customer or every buyer, they do approach it in a different way.

So one is if they first follow a certain guidance, so they may be looking at following the SBTI guidance on net zero, or they might be following Oxford offsetting principles.

So that will be sort of their decision on how they build a portfolio of carbon removals or how they go about reaching to net zero.

And then the second part they might ask themselves is what is their company and their business values and then aligning themselves to certain projects that meet or align with those values.

So it could be that if they're in aviation, they may look into supporting technologies that also...

built into their net zero portfolio like sustainable aviation fuels.

There's a strong linkage with direct air capture that provides sustainable carbon.

So they'll invest in carbon removals like direct air capture because it also supports another wedge in their net zero pathway.

And so companies will then try to choose CER technologies that align with that business in that sort of way.

Other things that they might also value would be like biodiversity or social co -benefits.

And so they might find certain CDR pathways that also provide those co -benefits that then also align with their company values.

Okay.

Given your work and expertise in this field, what would you say to you personally are some of the most exciting or most promising perhaps carbon removal pathways from a science perspective?

Yeah, I think the most established one that's been around and also more mature as a market is the biochar market.

you know growing there's hundreds of projects all around the world but then it also makes it challenging for buyers to kind of navigate this very fragmented space because when you've got lots of projects to choose from the question is like what does high quality look like in this very um sort of crowded space and i think that will always be ongoing in terms of potential innovations and developments on that area because you've got Different projects happening in different parts of the world.

There's different feed stops.

There's a lot that you can do on that space to improve efficiency and improve on the quality.

The other exciting path is like seeing these bigger infrastructure projects where you can see bioenergy with carbon capture and storage and direct air capture projects, which require large infrastructure.

And they're now in that process of construction and development.

And they're soon to be.

coming online in the near term.

So as soon as like next year to 2030, we'll start seeing these big projects and they are, you know, significantly larger in scale when you compare them to biochar.

And so this will provide us a lot of that scaling up that we've been asking for because we need to ultimately get to 10 gigatons of CO2 removal per annum by 2050.

And we're really just at the sort of smaller scale with a lot of these early stage projects.

and these smaller sort of biochar projects.

But when we start doing these bigger projects, you could be looking at millions of tonnes per project.

So one project for direct air capture, for example, in the US, they're going to provide one million tonnes of CO2 removal per year.

And I think the very early phase projects that are still in development would be like the ocean -based removal options.

So these are...

still developing the MRV, like the monitoring, reporting, verification approaches.

But these will be quite exciting because the potential of doing removals with oceans is significant and large.

So that could be quite exciting.

There's one specific solution I also wanted to ask you about that's kind of being talked about more lately, biochar sludge.

What is it and how is it different from just regular biochar?

Yeah, so traditionally the feedstocks we would use for biochar would be agricultural residues or residues from forestry operations.

And they are sort of easy to deal with.

They're cleaner fuel sources.

And so that's been like the preference for a lot of the projects so far.

But now we're kind of needing to expand and scale.

Sewage sludge, which comes out of like, you know, water treatment and sewage treatment, is a potential feedstock.

quite large in scale because, you know, we deal with a lot of water treatment in communities and just general societies.

And so there's a lot of material that needs to be treated and dealt with.

And so if we were to convert it into biochar, then it actually creates a higher value product that actually provides a lot of co -benefits.

It is challenging to work with as a feedstock because it's quite wet and there's also potential contaminants that might have to be dealt with as part of that.

process of producing biochar but it does have co -benefits in that it also removes contaminants that also are a problem when you're doing a treatment of biochar so for instance like PFAS and other biological contaminants that you normally wouldn't want to put into soil they actually get removed and essentially neutralized as part of the biochar production process.

Since you mentioned that you deal both with policy and also standard setting, you're the ideal person to ask this, but how does regulation play into this?

I know that there's probably differences on how waste feedstocks are treated, for example, in the EU as opposed to the US.

Could you expand on that perhaps?

Yeah, so the regulation barriers is that within the EU, they do prohibit the use of sewage -derived biochar.

for land applications.

And this is part of the fertilizing products regulation.

And so this then means that it can't be used in one of the biggest possible markets.

And so this really needs to kind of be changed in that we need to develop the understanding around showing that it's safe, demonstrating that it's safe, and then hopefully the regulations will update accordingly.

And what about public acceptance?

Not just for this method, but like carbon removal in general.

Where is it today and how critical is it for us to get the general public really on board with the idea that we have to scale CDR?

Yeah, it's pretty much like the make or break for a lot of products.

the background and cover caption storage, I think there's a lot of learnings from that where products will get to a certain phase where they get quite developed.

But then that last hurdle, which is like getting those final permits, I essentially get, you know, turned upside down because the general public in those communities just don't accept the technology.

So that's why it's really important to engage with communities as early on as possible to ensure that they understand the benefits that are achieved by certain projects.

that they then get buy -in that they actually do benefit.

And so some of the things that CDR products are doing is, you know, sharing sort of co -benefits.

So for instance, with biochar, using biochar helps improve, you know, productivity of crops.

And so they get, you know, better benefits on that side where they do have enhanced and better food security in those regions.

They get, you know, free fertilizers for some of the products where they just provide the biochar for free.

So it's ensuring that you look at the possible value.

you that you can offer back to communities and also engaging them as soon as possible and as frequently as possible.

Is this something that Supercritical deals with as well?

So it's part of our sort of work with these particular projects is asking them like, what are they doing in terms of community engagement?

And looking at their plan, whether it actually meets requirements of more sort of mature buyers and then what can they do to improve on that.

So we also provide recommendations for projects that are already in operation.

For the early phase projects, we also help develop a plan that works and thinking about how they can kind of develop strategies that help build that trust within those communities.

Okay.

Kind of also brings me to the idea of credibility and trust, as you mentioned, since these are, of course, key components for scaling the market.

How does your background as a scientist shape the way you evaluate projects and communicate this credibility?

So the background in terms of the science is that sort of need for rigor.

And obviously, like you want to make sure that you're assessing this to the highest sort of quality.

There's frameworks that we develop that we ensure like we've got these, you know.

over 100 data points that we will collect to kind of demonstrate the sort of value and the high integrity of these particular projects but then the other side is communicating that and sometimes there's like hardcore science that is involved and that can kind of be lost in the messaging so we try to ensure that what we distill down is like the key points that are needed to be shared with particular buyers and also more widely with the general public so that they understand like from a sort of where you don't have scientific background, like that you actually understand what's happening here and the value and the benefits they get.

So I think it's really the communication piece often has been a key criticism for folks with a science background.

But then now we're kind of doing a lot more to kind of reframe how we do the communication so that it's more understandable from all sorts of likes of people.

I would agree.

Communication is absolutely one of the major, issues I would say probably with carbon removal at large just trying to get the message across in a way that's that resonates with most people and like not just the general public but also like people who are in this business buyers for example like how do you kind of chew this up for them how does your team translate this like complex science into something actionable for companies really so for every sort of assessment that we do we do create a vetting report and there's different layers.

So there's the simplified sort of overarching score that you can provide for a given project, which helps like narrow down sort of specific performance of that particular product to help understand what looks good when you're comparing one product with another.

But then you can also zoom into the detail and you can look across those key dimensions that are of importance to a buyer.

So that would be the delivery risk, the carbon science.

And then the social benefits and then also environmental impacts.

And so there's four breakdowns laws, but then they can even zoom in further and get the more detail of like the actual evidence that backs up each of the claims.

So for instance, if they're making a claim that they are providing economic empowerment to communities, what is the physical measurable evidence that they're providing to show that?

And so we layer on sort of like a sort of overarching, simple sort of performance.

communication of a metric and then that breaks down into further detail if they were to require it so because you've got different stages of understanding from various buyers the mature buyers who want the detail and then the others who are newer to the space who need it to be broken down a bit more in a sort of simple format so they can understand we'll go back to the buyers in just a little bit but something in the meantime that like a question that always piques my interest is how do you go about assessing carbon renewable projects like what criteria matters to you most what do you determine as being the like the highest quality project yeah and it's a great question so the way we approach it is that we've got you know our list of many indicators so this is as i said like 100 data points over 100 data points and for us all of them matter and so if a project was to fail any of the indicators the whole project would fail um because these are sort of like the key things that they must pass.

And if they were to fail anything, the project wouldn't meet the quality requirements that we've set.

Wait, sorry.

All 100 are mandatory points that they must answer to.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's determined by us that they must meet all of these criteria in order to pass because they are essentially non -negotiable type of criteria, essentially.

And so there will be things like additionality and the permanence.

You know, on the social impact side, it would be, you know, if they're making claims around like economic empowerment, are they?

producing those evidence points that are needed.

Delivery risks, it could be looking at the track record of the projects, looking at how they operate their site, have they got the right sort of procedures in place to show that they can safely operate and that they can operate for the given amount of time that they've promised to customers.

Okay, understood.

Do you work with ratings?

Do you have your own kind of internal way of rating projects?

Yeah, so we've got our own sort of IP of how we do our vetting work and our own sort of rating system.

But we also communicate to buyers where a rating does exist with a credit rating agency that this also is another report that they could refer to.

Often for buyers, it's gathering as much evidence that they can for a given product to show that it is high quality.

So rating agencies have that role of like, here is another.

independent assessment that's been done by another rating agency, and we make that apparent for buyers.

So every rating agency does use a different sort of rating system, but ultimately, yeah, that's why it's important to just communicate that these ratings do exist to our buyers.

Got it.

With so many types of carbon removal out there, from biochar and deck and ocean to mineralization, how does Supercritical approach building a balanced portfolio of all these solutions?

Yeah, I think as I mentioned earlier, talking to certain companies and seeing what aligns with them.

So certainly some customers will be very strongly aligned with a specific sector.

So for instance, if they're construction.

They'll want to support, you know, mineralization technologies because they'll see the clear value where a product is created that goes into construction materials to improve sustainability of their practices.

So we'll help guide them through that journey by first asking like what matters to them and then finding the right suppliers or pathways that meet those sort of values and those requirements.

And so we really work closely with them to try to understand what their needs are and then build a portfolio around that.

But alongside that, it's the vetting and the assessment work that we do on the background to show that here's the due diligence done for this product to show that it meets your high quality requirements around delivery risks, environmental, social impacts, as well as like the science makes sense.

So it's all sort of goes hand in hand.

It's like building quality into the things that they need based on their company values.

Okay, thank you.

And so in a broader sense, I would say back to the buyers, are you noticing that they're becoming more sophisticated or demanding in different ways as to what they're looking for?

Like, are you already seeing these kind of early signs of a maturing market?

Yeah, no, it's definitely, as I said, like different stages of understanding where there's new buyers who are coming in to test the waters a little bit to see what's out there.

And they're making these sort of like initial purchases to kind of see what the process looks like.

And how from that learning, how they might then develop more established and bigger portfolios.

And then you've got the mature buyers who might ask for like specific characteristics where they want to help support growth in a certain country or they want to catalyze new industries or new projects.

And so they're looking for maybe like early stage projects.

So the demands will vary depending on what type of buyer you're looking at.

But these are sort of some of the examples or some of the requests that some buyers might have where they're really kind of looking for something that's interesting and new, maybe hasn't attracted a lot of investment yet.

And so they can see investing in that new pathway could help establish this new technology that doesn't yet exist.

in a significant degree yet.

So we're certainly seeing those trends, but then you've also got on the other end of the spectrum, those who just want something that they know works, that's high quality and so they're buying from more established products because they feel those are the safer options.

So it just depends on the buyer and those are sort of the two sort of extremes, like ones that want to catalyze and some that want to buy safe and they know that works.

What about on the supply side?

Have you noticed any kind of changes in behavior on like the project developer side over there?

Maybe the past year even because the market has been developing pretty quickly.

Yeah, so when I first kind of got into the sort of the VCM world was back in 2021 when Pure Earth was like the main registry.

Probably the only one that was doing like engineered CDR in those early stages.

And since then, you've got new market players coming in that offer registry services like, you know, isometric.

There's one called Rainbow, you know, Vera, Gold Standard.

They're also doing removals as well.

And so for suppliers, the question is like, which one of these registries should we be choosing?

Each registry has their own standard that they will have developed.

And so some of which...

kind of differ slightly from each other so the question is like which one is the high quality registry we should go with and so for suppliers it's been kind of tricky probably to navigate through this kind of growing fragmented space on registry side um and then that will then probably lead on to confusion around that.

But then buyers will also have their preferences where they'll say certain registries for them are seen as higher quality.

So for suppliers, it's just trying to keep ahead of the curve on what quality registries they should be working with, what are the general best practices that they should be following to ensure that they meet these quality bars that are being set.

pretty much evolving as well.

Do you work with suppliers?

Can you consult them on these things, like if I'm a project developer?

Can I come to Supercritical and be like, okay, can you help me figure out how to get registered, how to have my project rated?

Is that something that you can help them with or should they be fully and totally ready before they come to you?

Yeah, that's where we do work with products of different stages.

So we've had products that are early phase that require a little bit of assistance to kind of figure out where to go, what's the next stage, what the next stages are.

And so we do work with early phase products.

also establish projects that we vet.

And so part of the vetting work is figuring out key recommendations that we can provide back to the projects.

That's the advantage with Supercritical is our supply team works super closely with these suppliers to get the data that we need to do the due diligence, but then also communicate to them like how they could have further improved if they want to improve this or once they get the results back from the vetting.

And so often we do see projects.

over time that have been on our platform improve in their vetting score because they've learned from the first few rounds of vetting that these are the key changes they need to do to help improve over time.

With our early stage projects, we do have a couple that we work with that we bring through that process to help understand like what quality looks like, what they need to do from the very get go to ensure that the project does meet quality standards.

Are you noticing any preference in carbon project developers like for specific?

types of carbon removal pathways?

So for product developers, I think it comes down to their track record.

So it's the folks who kind of do a particular pathway because they've got a background in that space.

So if they're someone that works in sort of like the agricultural sector, they might go on to do biochar.

Then you also got some others who don't have a background.

in the science and they are just coming in to invest and develop a project.

And so then they then have to bring in expertise.

So I think what they do keep an eye on is like trends in the market.

And so when you look at CDR .FYI, you can see all the transactions or the purchases that are happening.

So you can kind of predict what pathways potentially are of interest right now in the market and then from their developed projects around that.

But then, yeah.

the types of people who develop projects can vary from one non -background, like people with non -scientific backgrounds and then those who do have the background in it.

And so they are very much the right place person to do that project.

Got it.

Taking things broader still, how much does policy and policy frameworks and government incentives influence your work, but also the market at large, as far as you can tell?

Yeah, so with policy, It's quite important to kind of have around this to show that in particular regions that there's strong support for climate and that net zero is on the agenda because ultimately you won't need carbon removals unless there's a net zero target.

And so I think policy is very crucial on that front.

And alongside that, policies that help provide support could be financial incentives or...

Other mechanisms like in the UK, they've got business models that they have created to help support the CDR industry growth.

You do see that some types of pathways might rely more on policy support and government incentives more than others.

So, for example, those that use carbon capture and storage infrastructure like the BEX projects and direct air capture, they do rely more on government financial support to help.

that initial seeding of the infrastructure that it would need to do their large -scale project.

So you definitely see that in the US, in Denmark, in the UK, these bigger scale like bioenergy with CCS and DAC projects, like they are needing government funding and incentives to help bring their projects online.

But as the market transitions and matures, the hope is, I guess, that they are then financially viable and sustainable enough that they can then support.

themselves as a sector without the need for public and government intervention.

Okay.

Even so, though, I think that we're pretty much all agreed that we're going to need policy in order for the market to really scale that convergence of the voluntary and compliance markets that everybody's been talking about for the past few years.

We're already seeing it happen.

But to make things really move faster, what signals would you like to see from policymakers?

The sort of speed at which policy is developed needs to be accelerated, I would say, because ultimately there's a lot of suppliers and product developers who are waiting for these strong signals from government to show that let's pull the trigger on investing because the longer we kind of wait to sort of build out the right incentives and the policy means that they are holding off on their decisions.

And it takes time to develop projects.

It's not that it can happen overnight.

So there are projects that are ready to make decisions, but they just don't quite see the right political environment to maybe invest in yet.

And so there is a pause being made on certain decisions to pull the trigger on building and developing a project.

So I think accelerating policy and getting it up and running is quite key.

We can learn by doing.

There's a space here.

Do we have time to wait?

I can see it's probably there.

It says no.

2050 is not that far away and scale up needs to happen quite rapidly.

It's really quite eye -watering when you look at the numbers and the speed at which we need to scale up, we might not reach it.

And so that's why we should just start thinking about what's needed today and start implementing them.

But the question is like, how do we do that though?

Like I understood that we have to be faster, but how, it's a double -edged sword.

You have...

the need for faster implementation and faster deployment on the one hand on the other hand you also have to be stay true to like methodologies and standards and all of this and all all of these things take time to develop and you know in order for it all to work so how do we strike that perfect balance I think the the Things that need to happen are happening in the background.

And I'd say like we're figuring out ways to do it faster.

I would say the VCM sort of laid the groundwork on, you know, methodologies for biochar, methodologies for DAC and all of these different pathways.

And if governments want to kind of accelerate it, they could take those as an initial template and improve on those rather than reinventing the wheel.

There's aspects of like we could take what exists and then improve on it rather than trying to reinvent something completely new and different.

That would be much more slower if we were to reinvent the wheel.

So I think that's one way to help accelerate.

And then two, just like making it known, like even the general public making it known that climate is something that's important to them and that it should be put up as a priority on the agenda for policy and for government.

And so then.

government would then know that they need to start accelerating plans around this.

So having a net zero target is one thing, but the supporting policy that helps us get to net zero is the key missing part.

And so I would say certainly in some countries, it's happening faster than others.

So that policy that's needed to help develop the CDR market and compliance market is happening maybe more quickly in the EU, in the UK.

But then in other countries, there's a bit of a wait and see.

But what they are doing, which is positive, is looking and helping learn from like taking, you know, lessons from other countries to learn from that.

And the hope is like because someone else has done it, it's then provided them confidence that they can do it as well.

So would you say that this is perhaps the biggest challenge holding back carbon removal today?

Or what is really the biggest challenge holding back carbon removal?

I think right now the market, if you look at the data, is really kind of growing because of one of the biggest buyers in the world.

As we know, Microsoft is the one that is essentially scaling the market.

So in order to kind of get the scale up, we need more buyers in the market.

And on the voluntary side, it's kind of...

getting companies on board and they need to kind of see these right market policy signals.

If they see the policy signals that say CDR is important for net zero, they would then be more confident in making the decisions to then do the big bets on CDR, just like how Microsoft had done.

I think when the corporates and the voluntary market grow as a result, that will then establish this sort of CDR supply that might then eventually...

transition over to supply for compliance -based markets.

I think compliance -based markets are also in development, but waiting to 2030 might be too late.

So right now we're relying a lot on the voluntary sort of initiatives to kind of push that growth and that scale up.

And so what we need to see is more interest from more buyers from, you know.

that are not just Microsoft, right?

And so that's, I think, the next bit that needs to happen and we need to see happen.

Yeah, speaking of which, many are warning of this very real impending of a dramatic shortage of carbon credits on the market.

What's your take on this?

How do you see this happening?

How do you see us potentially avoiding or overcoming it?

The shortage on credits, like, hard to say because ultimately there's growth.

We need to see growth in demand in order to...

to then experience a shortage.

Right now, there are big projects that are happening and they will potentially come online.

But if, let's say, we need more supply and more buyers come on board, they need to start going out and also supporting new projects.

So one key thing that helps the market grow is providing, you know, off -takes.

And so big projects require time that...

There's interest in their particular product with an offtake from a buyer.

And so they can't sort of make investment decisions until the offtake exists.

So there's this sort of chicken egg situation where there's products that are waiting to get investment, but they need buyers to be interested and signing offtakes.

And so this sort of matching up with the right buyer needs to kind of start happening.

And I guess that's something that we do.

and marketplaces do, which is matching up buyers with the right projects and creating sort of that sort of linkage so that these projects can kind of make these decisions to then support and scale up.

And so I think that's the sort of bit that is happening, but maybe it's not happening fast enough, but that's, yeah.

So for now, would you say it's more of a balance as far as supply and demand goes?

For the supply and demand, I think it's quite balanced.

It's for now, but...

If, let's say, policy decisions are made kind of quite late and then we rapidly need to have massive supply that just doesn't exist, then we'll start seeing this bottleneck.

We do see it in some of the sort of systems like Corsair, for example, when you're delaying decisions on certain like...

things like approving methodologies or products that come onto your system, it then means that the supply is then constrained.

And then that means that it's hard for buyers to meet their demand and their targets.

So that's where it still hasn't yet happened, that constraint in supply, but it will happen if we don't act fast enough to ensure that that supply is growing at the rate that's needed.

So one of which is, you know.

If we know net zero has to happen by 2050, are we ensuring that people are building their portfolios now and starting to secure the supply with these offtakes or with these early sort of stage sort of investments so that that market will grow to where it needs to be in 2050?

But if you delay your decision to purchase CDR till 2050, at that point, it may be too late.

And so that's why.

You know, SPTI, for example, have talked about, you know, doing interim targets for CDR because it's not just a wait till 2050 and buy everything then.

It's a let's build up that capacity today.

And so maybe you want to start doing your purchase of CDR today so you can start stimulating that growth and supply so that by 2050, it will exist when it's needed.

And for kind of a crystal ball gazing moment, what's your thoughts on the future of carbon removal?

What's your personal opinion?

How do you see the space developing in the coming, maybe the next five years or four years leading up to 2030?

Yeah, I think one thing that I've mentioned is this sort of fragmentation of sort of standards that...

exist across different registries and now even across, you know, compliance -based markets where governments are developing their own standard.

And that fragmentation does lead to sort of like a bit of like concern around like which ones should we trust.

And so the idea hopefully in the future is like we start kind of consolidating this into one single standard that's harmonized in a way that like everyone can trust this one standard.

It's like following the latest science.

And I think the likes of, you know.

let's say the ISO, International Standards Organization, for instance, might have an important role there where they could be that sort of overarching global body that then says, here is your standard for biochar, here is your standard for air capture.

So that would be like a really nice way to try to harmonize how we do standards.

The other aspect is like that demonstrating that you kind of trust certain projects and the quality.

And so we're still kind of figuring out how we do this.

Like, is it...

following sort of the labeling system where we use VCMI or ICVCM, like there's these existing bodies that kind of provide these stamps of approvals to show that these are high quality, you know, registries, high quality credits.

Do we follow that and continue down that route?

It still needs some sort of harmonization and thought around how we do that.

But I think in the future, that should be like the ultimate goal is trying to figure out how we label this high quality and then harmonizing our standards.

And then that way, you know, even if registries exist, they then can just use the ISO standard, for instance, rather than doing this fragmented approach.

Yeah.

Do you think that like different carbon removal approaches at some point would like that there should be like this fungibility?

There's been talk about that kind of recently in the industry.

Should like a ton of carbon removed via biochar, say, be the same as a ton of carbon removed via direct or capture?

Yeah, that's it's a tricky one because they do differ in permanence.

And ultimately for us, it's about providing benefit to prevent climate change.

Right.

And so The carbon has to stay out of the atmosphere for a certain amount of time for it to provide that value to help reverse the impacts of climate change.

And so, you know, it's not like to like if you were to compare something that has 20 -year permanence versus something that has 1 ,000 -year permanence.

And so...

That's where some aspect of fungibility is needed.

And so I guess some of the bodies like EU, for example, they've talked about conversion factors or some sort of like permanence equivalence factor that then enables you to say this many tons of a bio chart is equivalent to this many tons of a direct air capture or nature -based, they have lower permanence.

So how many tons of nature -based would you need to be equivalent to?

a ton of you know bex or bioenergy ccs so that's where that work is still very much like early phase is that some recent papers that talk about certain equations you can use but there isn't consensus on what the right approach is and i think first we need consensus on that before we can actually implement something like that that then enables us to go light for like this is how we equate these excellent Now, I have one final question for you before we wrap up.

And that is, what is Supercritical's plans ahead?

Like for the next weeks, months, what can you share with us already?

Or hint at at least.

I think we'll be definitely doing a lot more on sort of like thought leadership and thinking about new areas that require sort of thinking around, you know.

how might the buy trial market evolve or how might engineered CDR evolve.

So you'll probably be seeing a few more of these reports that are being published.

And then also on our platform as well, like providing these like market insights on how that market will evolve and help guide buyers also how to navigate this space where we're now sort of transitioning from a voluntary market system, potentially to compliance markets.

And what does that mean for you as a buyer?

I think that's still.

unclear, but there is some movement happening and just being aware of what these changes could be to help better inform how you develop your portfolio.

Excellent.

Mai, thank you so much for being here today.

It was a pleasure to get to pick your brain today and have you on the podcast.

It was really, really wonderful to speak to you.

Thank you.

Thanks, Violet.

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