Episode 151: Erin Burns, Executive Director of Carbon180

Apr 5

This week's guest is Erin Burns, Executive Director of Carbon180.

Carbon180 is a climate-focused NGO that partners with policymakers, scientists, and businesses worldwide to build a world that removes more carbon than it emits.

Before Carbon180, Erin focused on energy, environment, labor, and agricultural issues, including staffing for the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Public Lands Subcommittee. While working for Senator Joe Manchin, Erin met Noah Deich. She became increasingly interested in direct air capture and carbon removal. She also worked at Third Way, a DC-based think tank, managing carbon capture and removal, innovation, and other clean energy policy advocacy. Erin joined Carbon180 in 2018 to start the policy office in Washington, DC. Earlier this year, Erin assumed the role of Executive Director, where she works with scientists, entrepreneurs, academics, and policymakers to create and inform federal policy on carbon capture, removal, and use.

Erin is a fantastic guest with vast knowledge across the policy sector, from energy to carbon removal to labor. Erin walks me through her role as Executive Director, her career leading up to Carbon180, and how the carbon removal sector has evolved since 2015. We also discuss numerous examples of federal climate policy, the direct air capture landscape, and how carbon180 drives change. For those looking interested in policy and carbon removal, you can't miss this episode.

Enjoy the show!

You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.

Episode recorded February 12th, 2021.

In Today's episode we cover:

An overview of Carbon180
What carbon removal is, why it matters, and barriers holding it back
Erin’s personal journey and career in climate
Carbon removal market in 2015 and where it is today
How Erin and her colleagues are driving carbon removal policy
Different technological solutions, including Direct Air Capture (DAC)

Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason, here. I am the My Climate Journey show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the, My Climate Journey or MCJ as we call it membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education, but there were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people. That's now mushroomed into more than 1,300 members. There is an application to become a member. It's not an exclusive thing. There's four criteria we screened for determination to tackle the problem of climate change, ambition to work on the most impactful solution areas, optimism that we can make a dent and we're not wasting our time for trying and a collaborative spirit. Beyond that, the more diversity, the better.
There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community, a number of founding teams that have met in there, a number of nonprofits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there, a bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well. At any rate, if you wanna learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co, the website and click to become a member tab at the top. Enjoy the show.
Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Erin Burns, Executive Director at Carbon180. Carbon180 is a new breed of climate focused NGO that partners with policy makers, scientists and businesses around the globe to build a world that removes more carbon than it emits. As executive director, Erin guides the team as they think big to equitably scale carbon removal and address the climate crisis.
She previously worked on energy, labor and co-worker transition issues in the Senate. We have a great discussion in this episode about carbon removal, what it is, why it matters, where it is in its evolution, some of the barriers holding it back, some of the changes that could bring about faster progress and of course, a deep dive into Carbon180, the work that they do and how they are helping to bring about carbon removals deployment faster. Erin, welcome to the show.
Erin Burns: Thank you so much for having me.
Jason Jacobs: I'm so excited that you're here. I, it was pretty early in My Climate Journey that I had Noah come on the show and yeah, things have changed a lot for me since then. And I'm sure they've changed a lot for Carbon180 since then. And they've certainly changed a lot in the marketplace since then. So it's a good time to check back in with you and the Carbon180 theme.
Erin Burns: Yeah, absolutely. It's a really exciting time to be working on carbon removal.
Jason Jacobs: For sure. And I, it's only one of the many things that we touch, but it's an area that we're increasingly interested in and that, you know, we know is important in the climate puzzle. And consistently, Carbon180 comes up as one of the organizations doing the most impactful work in this area. So psyched to have you on and learn more about it and give listeners a chance to learn more about it as well.
Erin Burns: Yes, absolutely.
Jason Jacobs: Well, why don't We take things from the top and I did this with Noah, but just because so much has changed, what's Carbon180?
Erin Burns: Yeah, so Carbon180 is a climate NGO focused entirely on carbon removal. We started back in 2015. So Noah, you mentioned and then Giana on our team who's now our policy director, co-founder of the organization six years ago when people really weren't talking that much about carbon removal. And I think they ended up spending a lot of their time just saying, this is what carbon removal is and here's why you should care about it. And at that time, we, when we started the organization, when they started the organization, we really thought of ourselves as being at the intersection of business policy and science. And that changed a little bit, to your point, the organization has really gone through a bit of an evolution in the past couple of years. I joined in 2018 to start our dedicated policy office in DC.
And since then, we've really realized that policy is where we should be spending the bulk of our time and resources. So we still work with a lot of the folks in the business community. We work with those scientists and the practitioners on the ground and we use those connections to drive our policy work. We really care that our policy work is rooted in science, that it's equitable and just and then it's having these sort of real-world impacts. But we realize that when we're talking about carbon, when we're talking about scaling this up, we're talking about scaling up really quickly and to do that, you're just gonna need federal policy action.
So for us, that's what we've decided to do. We, we relocated at the middle of last year to be totally DC-based. So we originally started in the Bay Area. And since then, we've been able to really expand our teams. So we have this really enormous policy team. I've mentioned Giana, uh, leads that as our policy director and they're really fantastic just brilliant CDR thinkers, carbon mobile thinkers. But we still have Peter on our team leading our innovation work.
And so it's still a kind of core part of what we do is to make sure that we're, the policy we're developing really does work for entrepreneurs in this space. It's creating more carbon removal companies. It's getting, as I mentioned, I think something that's a little bit unique about Carbon180 is that we really think about measuring our impact, not just in terms of, do we get this policy passed or do we get this federal funding, but are there tons being removed from the atmosphere? So for us, it's really important to kind of retain those connections that we had early on in our founding.
Jason Jacobs: And what about your personal journey. So when you were a little girl growing up, did you say that you hope that you work in carbon removal policy?
Erin Burns: [laughs] Not at all actually. I don't think I had that moment until a few years ago. No, for me. So I'm from Southern West Virginia little town called Canova outside of a town called Canova. And yeah, didn't know anything about carbon removal and I wasn't really focused on climate either. I actually studied cultural anthropology in college. But when I came to DC, I worked in the Senate for Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia being from the state. And in 2015, shortly after Carbon180 was founded, I actually met with Noah. And you take a lot of meetings when you work in the Senate. And there was a policy in that office at the time to really just take, you know, you get a lot of requests. We took a lot of meetings. It was important for us to just talk to anybody who wanted to talk to us.
And I remember Noah came in and he talked to me. At that point, I was working a lot on point source carbon capture policy and in particular, the focus then was really in the power sector. And Noah told me about direct air capture and carbon removal. And I, you know, listened and sounded all legitimate, but I had no idea, you know, uh, this was totally new to me. And I actually asked him to speak to somebody in the carbon capture space I knew really well to just kind of check out like, is this guy legit? Like, what is he saying? Is this really check out? And they got back to me and said, yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like this is, this is a real thing. Not a lot of folks are talking about it. And so we ended up writing an amendment together on carbon removal. One of the early direct air capture policy as it was introduced in the Senate. And since then, we, we actually just really kept in touch.
And I was at a different job a few years ago and I found myself, I kept going to Carbon180 because as I was coming up with policies, you know, I'm a policy person. I'm not a technical expert. I'm not a scientist. I didn't come from the private sector. And so for me, when I was writing policies, it was so helpful to have that connection to the people at Carbon180 to say, you guys are spending day in, day out, not just thinking about carbon removal, but also talking to the people again, who are creating these companies, who are building these technologies, who are implementing soil carbon sequestration practices. Like what are the policy needs here? You know, you can, I think in the policy space, it's easy to say, for example, if you wanna scale direct air capture.
Well, this worked for renewables, let's just erase renewable or erase solar in that policy and add in direct air capture, but that's not necessarily gonna get you the best result. And so I kept coming back to Carbon180 to ask them, you know, to check my policy ideas, to get new policy ideas. And so when they kind of starts aligned and they were interested in going bigger in policy. Saw the opportunity there. And for me, I think I care a lot about carbon removal, but I also care a lot about good climate policy. And I think for me, the team just knew so much about the space and was so ready to make sure that there was actually very good policy, that it was a really exciting opportunity to engage there.
So, and the last thing I'll say is it's funny, carbon removal is getting a lot more attention now. And for us, I think that's always been obviously something that is so obviously really important. But when I was considering the move to Carbon180, somebody asked me why I want to work just on carbon removal because it was such a niche issue. And to me it was, again, clearly not an issue. It was very, you know, carbon removal was so central to the climate question.
I think it's been really exciting for me and for the organization over the past couple of years and really the past year to see that broader recognition that this isn't something that's, this is a part of it. You need really aggressive mitigation. You know, it, it alone is not sufficient, but that it's not a side issue, right? It's really, really central. So for me, it's been not the most direct route to get to policy, let alone carbon removal policy. But it's been, it's been an easy decision for me to work with carb- you know, to work at Carbon180. And it's just been a really exciting time to kind of work on these issues more broadly.
Jason Jacobs: And maybe talk a bit about where carbon removal was and what that landscape looked like in 2015, when you first uncovered it and compare and contrast that to where we are today.
Erin Burns: Yeah, absolutely. So on the policy side, there had been very little action. There was basically no federal funding for carbon removal at this point. And then you had some, you know, you had people like Klaus Lackner at Arizona State University talking about direct air capture, moving the technology forward. But really you just, you didn't see, there wasn't a lot of recognition at the time. Carbon180 is actually the center for carbon removal. And I think they routinely heard things like center for carbon renewal or, you know, this wasn't even a term that people really, that people heard at all outside of what Carbon180 was doing. And I think then it was so much of an effort to just educate people about, you know, what is carbon removal? Why is it important? There were questions around, you know, how is this gonna be implemented? Is this real?
And so I think at the time, so much of the... It's been such an interesting place. I think a lot of us in the climate policy space here about the, we talk about the success of things like the SunShot program, which was a Department of Energy program to bring down the cost of solar panels. And you hear these stories and we, we use them a lot as examples where you say things like, the expectation was that solar panels would only be profitable or economically feasible in space. And, you know, we had these like wild ideas to get solar down to the, not even the prices we see today and all of these things. And so to, I think what we've been able to see a little bit as carbon removal have that same experience in real time where it was very much a, a science fiction to some people and it was something that was unfamiliar.
And again, maybe a less of an understanding of the sort of need for this at scale and climate. I think that really changed with things like the IPCC 1.5 degree report. But, but that was really, I think back in 2015, back in 2016 when Noah and I were working on that amendment to the energy bill at the time in the Senate. Again, so much of this was just saying, here's why this is worth your time. And an uphill battle, I'll say today with policy makers in Congress and in the new administration, we certainly do not have to convince them the carbon removal's worth their time and instead or, you know, just try to keep up with the interest in this issue and, and the desire for new policies.
Jason Jacobs: And where are we in terms of that landscape today?
Erin Burns: Yeah, so there are a couple of markers that I think are really helpful to just share the sort of scale that we've seen. Carbon removal, that the change in the scale of interest in carbon removal and support for carbon removal. So when we looked at funding in 2018 for direct air capture, there is now I think 11 and a half million dollars ever a federal money spent on direct air capture. And that included funding for things like reports. There's a really big and important National Academies Report. But not, not even all of this was going to things like technological research. So not a lot of funding. At the end of last year, we saw $90 million for carbon removal. We saw the first ever dedicated carbon removal R and D program at the Department of Energy where the vast majority of clean energy R and D happens at the federal government.
And then there was even more funding kind of authorized for future use. Hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress was say, "Hey, we should probably be spending hundreds of millions of dollars on carbon removal over the next few years." And you've seen things like one of the, the big policy efforts that Noah was working on back in 2015 and 2016, 2017 was around a tax incentive that was originally created for point source carbon capture in the power sector primarily. And he was lobbying to get direct air capture included. And now not only do you see direct air capture included, but there are conversations that happen in 2018, which was again, monumental for the technology. But you're having conversations now about, can you do even more? What are the next series of tax incentives for direct air capture? You're seeing more policies come out.
There was one today that was introduced called the SCALE Act that's around scaling up carbon capture and carbon removal and thinking about things like pipelines and saline storage and you're seeing every major climate policy basically or, or package has carbon removal included. We've seen it in things like the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force, the Select Committees report on the climate crisis. You've got the Biden transition website had negative emissions technologies and innovation around those listed right up, um, I think even maybe before renewables was listed. So I think you've just seen it really arrive in that there's a recognition. I mentioned the IPCC report.
So at the end of 2018, really two big things, actually three big things happen in 2018. One is that tax incentive I mentioned got enacted in the beginning of the year in February and that included direct air capture for the first time, which was a huge boost to the technology, not just in terms of project development, but in terms of that sort of awareness from policymakers of saying, this has really arrived, this is something we're working on and it really drew a lot of attention. The other two things that happened were two reports that were released at the end of the year. One was the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change special report on 1.5, which is a real mouthful, but basically looking at like, what do we need to do to stay below 1.5 degrees?
And the takeaway there was really, you need carbon removal. That's how you're gonna get there. And so I think that really put it on the map for people globally, but in the US as well to say, this is a serious climate thing. Like if we're talking about climate action, you need to be talking about carbon removal. And then the other piece of this was that I mentioned there were some federal funding for a report, the National Academies of Science put out a report on negative emissions technologies and said, if you really, you know, we've seen IPCC that says, "Take this seriously." And then the NAS came out and said, "Okay, if you're gonna take this seriously in the US, here's what a research agenda looks like." Like here's the amount of money that we're talking about.
And I'll say, you know, when we first saw the amounts of money, tens of millions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars in later years. So immediately off the bat, something like $60 million a year was recommended. And again, this was basically going from no federal money. We thought this is an uphill battle or this is, you know, we get that it's important, we get that, that that's what's needed, but that felt politically like a very big hill to climb. But that's exactly what happened. We got $68 million the next year in federal funding for, for negative emissions technologies. And so I think it's just been this total sea change from going from here's what, you know, we have to explain what carbon removal is. No, we're not saying carbon renewal to people really understanding not only is it important, but it's something that we should be thinking about how to incentivize today.
Jason Jacobs: And you mentioned that over the course of the Carbon180 journey that you went from, maybe having your hands in more areas like innovation and policy to being more of a dedicated policy focused today, how much of that had to do with where you felt the highest impact things were in the market and how much of that just had to do more internally with your own skill sets, competence, funders, things like that?
Erin Burns: Yeah, that's a great question. I think it was a little bit of both. So for us, obviously, private sector innovation is critical. And so for us, we had to look at and say, what is the existing landscape, where are places, you know, and what can we, where can we have the most impact? Where are we most effective? And so we had to sort of recalibrate, you know, what we were doing internally. So we have, and we'll continue to work with the private sector. We will continue... I mentioned Peter and our team leads our innovation work. I think for us, it was something where we saw this opportunity that was unique at this moment for policy. We do think, you know, it is essential when we talk to companies who are working on things like direct air capture. If we talk to folks who are on the ground thinking about how to implement land-based carbon removal practices, we just hear from them, you do need policy.
You know, when we think about, so for example, Carbon Engineering is working on the first really enormous direct air capture plan and the plan is a million tons a year. And this plan for Texas. This is happening because of policy and that's happening because of those tax incentives I mentioned, it's happening because of state level policies in California. And so for us, we really saw it's really important for us to engage with the private sector. But as an NGO, as people who have those ties, we can actually have a little more impact or maybe a lot more impact really and a lot more impact if we're thinking about how to take that experience, to take those connections and turn them into policy recommendations and advocate for those.
So I think that for us, it sort of watching over the past few years how both the policy landscape has changed, how the private sector landscape has changed and to see the interaction between the two of those. And I think too, it's something where, you know, we're a growing team. For while, we were relatively small, but we are excited to keep adding more folks on our team that we were able to see, for example, Noah's advocacy around that tax incentive to include direct air capture. And I'm telling you, like at the time, I don't know anybody else who was really asking for direct air capture to be included. I think it was like basically Noah and Giana coming to DC to say like, you need to do this. And a couple of members like Senator Whitehouse getting on board with this idea that like through that alone, you were able to see a mega ton size plant be planned, right?
You've gone from projects that are tens of thousands or hundreds of tons a year to a million tons a year, a million tons a year. And so I think having that experience over the past few years and being able to see that like actually the right mixture for us of working with the private sector and with entrepreneurs in this space and policy was to kind of maybe 10% innovation, 90% policy. And that was where we actually even had a big value add for the innovation community and for entrepreneurs. I think the other thing for us is, you know, when we think about this space, we wanna make sure, I don't know. When I think about how policy works for example, a lot of times the very big actors are companies who are relatively established. These are companies that have the resources to come and talk to policy makers in DC and make sure that policies are working for them. And that's great. We wanna those companies to do really well.
But we also care about a lot of companies in this space and a lot of practitioners and making sure that you do get policies and incentivize like early stage companies that we think about companies like Opus 12. And we talked to Atasha there a lot and she's can tell you the story of how she was able to access different pieces of the federal infrastructure and by the Department of Energy resources and how that really helped their success. And so I think for us, it was another thing where having viewed again, that sort of interaction between the private sector and policy, another really important role for us to play was to connect with those entrepreneurs, to connect with those startups, to connect with those initiatives that might be three engineers who don't have a policy person, who don't have the resources to hire a lobbyist in DC.
And to say, I know you only have a little bit of time to talk about policy, but like, can we walk you through this? Can you tell us like, what is your wishlist? Like, how could this be helpful to you? And to really understand what is gonna help catalyze this broader sector, you know, to talk to farmers on the ground, to talk to the scientists and researchers at the universities we work with and be able to translate that into policy recommendations and to policy advocacy. So I think for us, it really, it turned out not just sort of that we can, our internal expertise and our internal, you know, as an organization that we thought we can have the biggest impact here. But we actually, I think, see that it's most helpful for the private sector and for the, the entrepreneurs in this space if we are spending most of our time on policy.
Jason Jacobs: So then if you're looking to drive carbon removal policy, when it comes to how to spend your week or your month or your quarter or your year individually and as a team, how do you figure out what aspects to prioritize and then how do you figure out tactically what to do to drive those forward?
Erin Burns: Yeah, so we spent a lot of time planning around this. So for us, I think that's at a high level, a couple of things. One again, you know, I keep mentioning this, but you know, we talked to the companies. We talked to the entrepreneurs in this space. We talked to the researchers. We try to talk to... You know, our first step is sort of doing that and luckily, we've been doing this for a long time. So I think it's pretty quick for us now. But to really understand what are your needs in this space. I think the next step for us and how we think about spending our time is to do something similar in the policy space to understand what is the sort of opportunity, what is the policy landscape. If we think about, for example, we've had an administration change in DC, the last administration, not interested in climate. This administration, very interested in climate.
So we're thinking about that policy landscape to say, what is possible here. And then we think about, I think for us, it's really important to understand how all of these pieces work together. And by that I mean, for us, we think about how do you create this policy development and this advocacy system that is reinforcing and that builds broader support. So for example, something that might be helpful to have $200 million for a direct air capture this year. You don't get there if you don't start with things like smaller amounts of funding that you think about policies that are gonna build interest and support in this that are going to make those connections for policymakers. So when we think about our time, I think it's really important. Again, we think about this, not just in terms of do we get our policy pieces done, but are these connected to getting tons removed from the atmosphere?
And so I think for example, this year, there are a couple of opportunities where we wanna really spend our time. So one is you do have a new administration who's interested, not just in climate change, but has signaled interest in carbon removal as well. And so one big opportunity we see is actually around the procurement of things like low carbon concrete or using capture carbon dioxide and the production of concrete. And this is something that the administration could do. This is something that could have really significant climate impacts. And importantly, it's also something where you can build a little more momentum for this and you've seen congressional interest in procurement. But we know it's helpful for the companies. And so for us, I think it's really important when we're thinking about how to spend our time to map out.
You know, we think about, okay, this congressional calendar this year, what are those opportunities where we're gonna have policy? What are we hearing from practitioners about what's actually going to help them? And then how do we break that down where we make sure that we're building the momentum needed to get to these big policies that we're getting those easier when's nothing, I don't think anything in DC policy is super easy, but easier when's to build that momentum and that education. And how do we make sure that we're going back as we're thinking about again, how to spend our months or weeks or days and checking in to say, okay, we got this policy when, but is that actually helping these practitioners? Is that actually removing ton?
So I think it's a really exciting challenge for us to as we grow. I mentioned, we've added several new policy staff. This year, we've got... Actually, we're hiring for three senior policy advisors across a couple of our policy verticals. So I think it's been a really... You know, I mentioned, it's an exciting time to work on carbon removal broadly. But I think as an organization, it's just been this really fun time to think about, you know, how we can use those sort of connections and how we spent our time to actually get that policy and, and carbon removal impact.
Jason Jacobs: And when it comes to things like direct air capture, I know that there are a number of different solutions technologically that are being worked on or that people are maybe dreaming up today that, that aren't being worked on yet, but maybe soon. How much do you spend time assessing the merits and the pros and the cons of those different approaches versus just trying to push the category more horizontally forward with policy that, that fits across that umbrella of technology solutions?
Erin Burns: Yeah, I think that's really a fantastic question and one that we really grapple with where... So I think first of all say, I think I'm policy. I think, so we think a lot about what is good and effective policy. And one of the things that's important for me I think is that a lot of times this is policy is, is non-prescriptive in some senses as possible when we're thinking about technology de- development. So for example, I've mentioned this tax incentive, it's called the 45Q tax incentive, 45Q is a reference, the actual tax code. And part of the reason that those updates I mentioned in 2018 had to be made were not just to include direct air capture, were actually to make some changes for point source carbon capture as well. And I think what you want and we're thinking about things like updates of 45Q is you don't wanna have to go back and update things like that because you didn't because you're overly prescriptive for example about the kinds of technologies that are included in it.
And so we want to provide some of that flexibility so that if in five years or 10 years or two years there is a significant change in technology or in the field, we don't need to go back through that legislative process. A 45Q changes took about seven years of policy advocacy. That's across the board, not for Carbon180. We obviously, we were founded in 2015 not 2011. But it took almost a decade of advocacy to get that change. And so I think for us, one of the things we wanna see is more flexibility and being a little bit less prescriptive and policy where possible. I think that's similar for example when we're thinking about building up carbon removal R and D capacity at the Department of Energy is how do we give the department some flexibility? But for us, I think there are some really important guard rails that we wanna think about. So, and sometimes those are in carbon removal policy, sometimes those are a larger policy.
So one thing that has been a big part of our policy work recently is, or over the past couple of years since we started our dedicated DC office and policy shop is, is environmental justice. And to make sure that the impacts of carbon removal deployment are good for communities, are good for frontline communities that they are used to redress harms and not to perpetuate harm. So I think for us, we think about how to build in while we want to have that flexibility for new technologies to emerge and to not have to go back and make changes because we were, you know, something you had this innovative breakthrough or you have a different kind of approach and you're like, you know, I'll give you actually one other quick example. Sometimes we'll get asked about and 45Q it says, it doesn't say carbon dioxide, it say carbon oxides it's because one of the companies uses carbon oxide instead of carbon dioxide.
You wanna make sure again, anymore, you know, you don't have to spend a bunch of time going back to make that change. But it is really important for us to understand how we're, you know, to put those guardrails in to say, we wanna make sure that the best of our ability that these are implemented and deployed in ways these practices around carbon removal, these technologies in carbon removal in a way that is equitable, that is just, that is creating new, new jobs, that is, that are hosted in communities that actually want them, that are not having, you know, you can either, again, just technologies and practices, they can have positive impacts for communities, they can have negative impacts and the policy that's gonna incentivize their deployment that's going to regulate their deployment, it's gonna have a really big role to play in that.
So it's important for us to think about this. You know, we've talked a lot about things like incentives and R and D, but it's also, and something we're focusing on more this year, it's also important to think about the regulations and the space and the infrastructure that's gonna be built up to scale this deployment and thinking about things like really great robust community engagement and including environmental justice organizations and the development of these policies. And in carbon removal, to care, not just about the CO2 impacts and if you're reducing emissions, but also what else are you doing? What are the other impacts of these technologies and practices?
And so for us, it's always a balance between allowing that future flexibility by making sure that there are really strong guard rails to, to make sure that carbon removal is a part of not just the sort of climate solution, but the larger questions around environmental justice and economic justice and transition for fossil communities and impacts for frontline communities. So that's for us to balance. So we're always thinking about striking.
Jason Jacobs: And when you look at the different kinds of technological solutions and approaches, where is technology in general on the maturity scale and also how do you envision that plays out? Will it be kind of long tail where there's a number of different approaches, each one that's carrying a little bit of the weight or do you think there are gonna be clear winners?
Erin Burns: That's a great question. The short question, honestly, I don't know. And maybe that's just 'cause I'm a policy person or maybe that's because, you know, it's hard to predict. I will say, I think. So the technology, do you have commercial plants today? We have something called our DAC MAPP with two Ps. It's an acronym on our website that maps out the projects and the actors in this space. And we do have a handful of companies who have these projects going. I mentioned Carbon Engineering has their planned plant that'll be a million tons a year. But you also have several plants from Climeworks operating right now and at a smaller scale. So you do have these technologies available today. You do have commercial projects going forward. But I think when we think about, you know, and I think this is common across sort of clean energy and climate policy, we want this really robust pipeline of technology.
So we wanna make sure that if something came out from the Department of Energy's Office of Science, a funding opportunity announcement came out from them for innovative direct air capture approaches. And the Office of Science typically works at a lower technology readiness level at, uh, a lower TRL and is thinking about how those early stage companies can come up. And last year, the Office of Fossil Energy, which despite its aim is really focused on carbon capture. And they put out a different funding opportunity announcement. We saw, you know, we knew that these kind of three big companies out there, but we saw a ton of awards go to or a lot of the awards go to projects that were new tasks, that were new to this field. And so I think one of the things that we're hoping to see is through that, you know, increase in federal support coming through the Department of Energy.
You're actually gonna see more companies come in, more projects come in. And so you're going to have, you know, not just one or two or three companies that are doing this in the US or even globally, but you're gonna see, you know, dozens of companies coming out. I think you've also already seen that we work with, um, what we call carbon tech riches, where you take the capture carbon dioxide and create goods and materials out of it. We actually seen that happen a little bit in that space. Actually really dozens of those carbon tech companies across the United States who are doing really innovative things at different scales. And so I think we could see something similar in the carbon removal and the direct air capture space, where you've got a lot of really cool innovative approaches.
I'll mention too. We've been talking internally a lot about what the future of direct air capture might look like and, you know, whether that will be something where it's similar to, you know, things like nuclear fossil power generation that are these really enormous plants or something that's maybe more distributed. And you can look at these really innovative applications of direct air capture using like building scale direct air capture and HVAC systems. And, and so I think the, one of the really engaging things about this space is that it's not yet clear how that will work out and that there's a big opportunity to think about, again, not just scaling this in ways that'll meet climate goals, but also scaling it in ways that are gonna be really great for people and for communities.
Jason Jacobs: And when I look at this industry, it seems like if you want to put the carbon in the ground and permanence and things like that that essentially the primary way to do that today is for the government to pay for it, is, is that the best chance that we have long-term for getting large quantities of carbon pulled out of the air and, and stored or will there ever be a market for this in a way that requires less what feels like handouts from the government?
Erin Burns: Yeah, so I would say, I think for us in the near term, the funding from the federal government is really important. I mentioned that tax incentive, California policies, I think it's a really good use of federal money. I mean, we're talking about, you know, I think it does get framed sometimes as handouts, but we're talking about what is the role of government and what's a good use of federal funding. And I think, you know, people will talk about the price of acting on climate, but I think we've seen a lot of pushback to that to say, actually, it's one, cheaper to do this than to deal with the impacts of climate change. This is a better use of federal policy and federal funding.
But I also think again, that this is something where and I think we've seen this really catalyzed by things like the Green New Deal where people have been thinking about climate, acting on climate and climate policy, not as a sort of punitive thing that we have to do that is in conflict with economic growth, but instead an opportunity to not just create economic growth, but to rethink our economy to make sure it works for people more broadly. You know, I'll use my State of West Virginia. We have a very nuanced view of coal in West Virginia. I think sometimes it gets flattened too. Everybody in West Virginia loves coal. And I think instead we have this really, we have this really long history. We understand that it's brought some economic growth to the state.
A lot of that, the value of that was actually shipped out of West Virginia and wasn't maintained by the state who had such a central role in the labor movement for us. And unions are a really big part of our history and our present in West Virginia. But it also brought like health impacts for those communities, for our communities. It brought serious changes to our landscape. It, it had all of these really nuanced impacts. And so for me, when I think about things like, you know, what is the role of the federal government incentivizing climate action and incentivizing carbon removal I kinda think there's opportunities to say, instead of thinking about this as something that's harmful for an economy like West Virginia's that has historically relied on fossil production, it's how do you actually use policy and incentivize carbon removal and places like that to drive economic growth and diversification?
So that's partially an answer to your question. I just, just wanted to push back a little bit on the handouts framing. But I, you know, look, this is not something that it doesn't generate electricity, carbon, direct air capture doesn't, you know, it costs money to run a direct air capture plant. And so to some degree you have to, to pay for this. I do think in the near term that's gonna be, I think, we think about three things. One is federal policy to drive down the cost. And I think that's really important thing because right now this is hundreds of dollars per ton, but there are reports. There's one report that came out in May of 2019 from the Rhodium Group and it's called Capturing Leadership. But looking at with existing direct air capture technologies today. So not even talking about those maybe innovative or purchase that we talked about a little bit ago, just the technologies that exist today. How low could you bring the costs?
You know, right now, if it's a few hundred dollars per ton, what is, we know that when you build more projects of any technology basically and certainly in the clean energy space, you learn a lot and that learning drives down the cost. And so just so that learning by doing what kind of cost reduction could you see in direct air capture and by their analysis, you could see it come down to this sort of like 50 to $60 per ton range just for innovation, I'm sorry, just through learning by doing alone and not just that sort of innovative technology. So just that sort of experience. And so that's a very different world than five or $600 per ton if you're talking about $50 per ton. So I do think there's an opportunity for the government to invest right now to bring down those costs.
But the other two things that I think are really interesting right now are one, the carbon tech market that I mentioned. This is, you know, you can see things like building materials. So you're using capture carbon dioxide too in the production of building materials that are gonna be lower carbon that are going to replace higher intensity, higher carbon intensity incumbents. You can think about for things like aviation fields. This is not gonna permanently sequester CO2, but aviation is really hard to decarbonize and we know how to make aviation fuel out of capture carbon dioxide that's gonna be lower emissions. It's also gonna provide a revenue source for things like direct air captures so you can get more impact for that money. And so that carbon tech market is really interesting. And we put out a report a couple of years ago, a market sizing report looking at the total available market for carbon tech goods and found that in the US alone, there's about a $1 trillion total available market for carbon tech.
So the vast majority, when we look at climate models of carbon dioxide that you're gonna capture is gonna need to be stored permanently underground. But there is a big opportunity in carbon tech goods. The final piece of this, I mentioned the Carbon Engineering plant is actually, there's more action happening in corporate offsets. Offsets are a really tricky thing. We have a blog kind of about our views on, on offsets and sort of like our experience with them. But the Carbon Engineering plant that I mentioned that's a million tons, planned to be a million tons a year was originally planned for half a million tons and doubled in size because of the opportunity around corporate offsets and companies and the tech space like Stripe and Shopify and others saying we actually have really high quality offsets.
Offsets where we know that that carbon is being sequestered, that we can measure it, that we can verify it, that we aren't worried about, you're gonna have to worry less about things like land use impacts and impacts of vulnerable communities to these projects. And so there's a near term opportunity to also think about how the offset market, the robust, you know, robust offsets and commitments from companies, like I mentioned, can help get some of these early projects off the ground to be in early consumer of these, of these companies.
Again, for an early consumer, customer for these companies. Again, look, you know, the vast majority of this does need to be stored underground. It is gonna cost money, There isn't, you know, you're not producing a good out of it other than the sort of like avoiding these awful impacts of climate change, but not a material getting the same way. So you are gonna need to see some continued federal support for it. I think we just think that's a really good use of federal policy.
Jason Jacobs: And if you could wave your magic wand, what's the most impactful policy move that you think the government could do?
Erin Burns: That's a great question. I feel like one that I am bad at answering because I spend too much of my time on policy. And when I give you like the... I, I will say, I'll answer your question, but I'll first say, I think for me, when we think about policy, we think about how do you make really durable policy? And to me, a lot of that is not a single policy. Things like a carbon tax or clean energy standard to be really impactful. But I think for me, a lot of times, it's sort of these overlapping small and medium-sized policies that really reinforce each other.
But I will say, if I could wave my magic wand on this, I would say in the near term, maybe really, uh, really significant funding at the federal level. I think let's just catalyze a bunch of companies, a bunch of practices. Like let's start working on this right now. There are other things that need to be addressed around the regulatory, infrastructure and regulatory issues. I think that procurement can be a really important level. But really, I think just like a serious amount of federal investment in this space is probably the most important and impactful thing in the next year or so.
Jason Jacobs: Great, and is there anything I didn't ask that I should have or any parting words for listeners?
Erin Burns: I will say really quickly, I've, we've talked a lot about the technological carbon removal and that is what I've worked in the both side and actually kind of moved to that end. But we do work on land-based carbon removal, things like soil carbon sequestration, reforestation, afforestation, land management practices and some of them were kind of frontier solutions. All of these are really important. You know, technological carbon removal is super important, but really it's gonna take a portfolio of things, a portfolio of carbon removal solutions to move this forward. And so that's something that we spend a lot of time with policy makers talking about that.
We'd spend a lot of time again, making sure this is having real world impacts. I do wanna just emphasize, we touched on this sort of, we have an environmental justice initiative and we touched on this a little bit, but I do think it's gonna be really important, not just from a kind of moral perspective, but a policy durability, political durability perspective to center questions of equity and justice as we scale up all climate work, but certainly in carbon removal. And so that's something that is priority for us and something that we are looking forward to doing more of this year.
Jason Jacobs: And last question is just what kinds of people would it be helpful for you to hear from and how can people that are interested in the work you're doing help?
Erin Burns: Yeah, absolutely. So personal reach out. We're really easy to reach. My email is just erin@carbon180.org. We're not that big. We're growing. We're not that big. So we're always, we wanna talk to people who are interested in the space. We have two newsletters that we put out that you can subscribe to on our website, one that's general, carbon removal and one that's more policy focused. We put out materials pretty regularly. But you know, I think for us, it's great to hear from really anybody and everybody is interested in carbon removal. But I think, you know, selfishly from my perspective, people who are interested in investing in the space, people who are interested in starting companies in this space, Peter and our team, I mentioned before on our innovation work runs our entrepreneur and residence program. We have these really fantastic EIRs. Again, please check out our website and take a look at the work that they're doing. It's really amazing.
Who are thinking about, you know, the future of carbon removal. And I think it's just really great to hear from people who want to play a role in it as we think about, you know, we, I talked about policy innovation work. One of the things that we try to do a lot of is field building because a challenge is this is nascent. It's scaling up so quickly. Like we need people who really love working on carbon. We really want to be a part of this, a part of this sort of sector and, and this work. And so I think, you know, if you are interested in this, we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear... We'd love to, to get new people that are interested in this. I also, I, I mentioned this before, but we're, we're hiring. We've got senior policy positions. We're gonna keep growing our policy team. So yeah, if, if you're interested as in any way, you wanna talk, we're always happy to.
Jason Jacobs: Great. Well, Erin, thanks so much for coming on the show and for the important work that you're doing and best of luck to you and the Carbon180 team.
Erin Burns: Thanks so much. It was great to talk to you.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co not .com. Someday, we'll get the .com, but right now .co. You can also find me on Twitter @jjacobs22, where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers may be say that. Thank you.