CDR Innovator Interview - CUR8 and Rethinking Removals

'Unbound Showcase' is a globe-spanning series of interviews with pioneers of carbon dioxide removal (CDR). We're questioning innovators, business leaders, policymakers, academics, buyers, and investors taking on the challenge of our lifetime—gigaton-scale carbon removal from the earth's atmosphere.

Today's interview is with Gabrielle Walker , Co-Founder of CUR8 and Rethinking Removals . CUR8 is on a mission to remove 1 billion tonnes of carbon annually by combining financial and scientific expertise to build high-quality and diverse carbon removal portfolios. This will enable companies to invest in carbon impact and reach net zero with confidence.?

Rethinking Removals is a collaborative not-for-profit organisation supporting the exponential growth of the carbon removal industry so it can have a climate impact and identify what needs to be implemented or unblocked to accelerate progress.

"What is CUR8?"

Gabrielle Walker - CUR8 is a market maker for carbon removals. We aim to facilitate removing a billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere because that's the scale the world needs, and we want to make an outstanding contribution. We bring financial and scientific expertise and a fundamental understanding of the market to determine what it will take to get to that level. We're currently operating as a broker, doing very detailed due diligence on projects and de-risking them for clients. We're also helping clients who are buyers to figure out exactly why and what they should be buying, over what time scale, what kind of cost and budgets they need. But that’s just the start. We're doing that to learn the market, and identify the big levers that will unleash this industry. We're looking particularly at carbon finance and software products to speed up due diligence, track portfolios, and manage long-term offtakes and net zero plans. The bottom line is that we want to be enablers of this transition in whatever way we can.

"What was the inspiration that led to your carbon removal business?"?

Gabrielle Walker - We're in our second year now, having launched in September 2022. There were two primary reasons why I wanted to found CUR8. One was that I tried to offset my emissions, which was incredibly hard. It wasn't hard to get a rough calculation of what those emissions might be, but I was looking at all the different places where I could buy offsets, and I ended up buying a whole bunch of different offsets but it didn't make me feel good. It made me feel queasy. I thought: if it's that hard for me to understand the right thing to do, it's going to be hard for other people, too.

The second reason is that I give a lot of keynotes, and I was talking to corporates, and they were saying, "Okay, I understand we're going to need carbon removal. So what do we do?" And I told them, "You need to work this out, you need to de-risk it, you need to identify the projects, do due diligence on them, make a business plan." They were looking at me like they had no idea how to start, and I realised I didn't have a good answer for them. So I decided to make one.

Then I met the very brilliant Marta Krupinska , my co-founder, and Mark Stevenson , our other co-founder, and we all realised we could bring something beneficial to the table. Mark has been working on net zero for a long time, and Marta is a serial entrepreneur who wasn't in the climate space at the time but knows exactly how to create and build a company. We decided to see whether there was something in this. Not only did we identify that there was, but the business is now going like a rocket. It's astonishing how fast we're moving, and it's also fascinating because this is the most exciting and dynamic area of climate change I've ever encountered. (And I've been working in climate change for 30 years!)

"Can you share that 'aha' breakthrough in your business' journey that left you especially excited about its potential?"

Gabrielle Walker - We have two main categories of clients. One is big corporates trying to move with volume and address their net zero commitments. That's been powerful because even though the rule-setters are not yet clear enough about the need to act now, forward-thinking companies are quickly realising that this is the way they need to go. They’ve started to notice that prices are going up and supply is going to be scarce, so securing supply and prices and understanding how to get a business model in play is going to be very important. I'm delighted at the quickness of the shifts that many corporates are making into understanding that carbon removal will be in their future, and that's what they need to do about it. And they’re also willing to get creative. One example I'd highlight is our work on innovative financing with British Airways and Standard Chartered , where we worked with the supplier UNDO at the end of last year. We made a first-of-a-kind financial instrument that showed how to use a long-term offtake to collateralise debt financing. Everybody was talking about how offtakes were needed to secure project/debt financing, but nobody else was proving that it could actually work. So we did it. And now we can build on that and start to scale. And having companies of that calibre wanting to continue to partner with us on this is very exciting.

We also work with marquee clients. For example, we worked on the world's first carbon-removed concerts at the O2 Arena for the 1975, and we've removed the residual emissions for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, the London Marathon and Royal Ascot . Some of these are one-off events, but they send a strong message to the world. Especially with the 1975, it turned out that lots of our clients were mad keen fans, and were asking "who else can we get in the music space?". So, by having fantastic spokespeople like that for removals, you can ask: what a hundred tonnes of carbon removal looks like? And the answer is “fifteen thousand people having a great time”.? It's not big scale, but it's big impact and influence, and that's exciting.

On top of that, there’s the strength of the narrative. I get a very powerful reaction whenever I talk to people about what I do. They say things like “I didn’t know we could do that!” Much of the climate story revolves around how we have to work desperately to stop the problem from getting worse. When I tell people that we can also build something that can clean up our mess, that's a wildly different story and one that they immediately want to get behind. That's another reason why this kind of narrative plays well: we all need this hope.

These kinds of things made me realise that this market could get very big very quickly, and that’s very exciting.

"What have you found the best way of garnering investor or buyer attention?"

Gabrielle Walker - My colleague, Dominique Airey , our Chief Commercial Officer, has an interesting way of describing the market. Most people say it's demand-constrained; she says it's demand-suppressed. In other words, there is lots of demand out there, but at the moment it’s not being realised. Everyone who's set a net zero target is beginning to understand that at least 10% of it will have to involve removals and they will have to build up to that. But so far, few of them are acting. What's interesting to me is what's suppressing that demand. So, it's not how you generate the demand but how you remove the blockers.

Some blockers are narrative or policy-related, and some are related to MRV and standards - it's systematically unblocking all of them that will unleash this market. I’ve spoken to many Chief Sustainability Officers who told me the specific questions their CFOs have before they can release a budget to buy removals. The first question is: “is anyone telling us to do this?” That’s where the policy and the voluntary rules play an important role. The second: “Who else is doing it?”. There’s safety in numbers, and working with the early buyers can help bring in more from the same sectors. And then there’s questions about what’s the business model. That's where some of our innovative approaches come in. For example, The O2 Arena put 90p on everyone's ticket, and the London Marathon added a ‘climate levy’ on the price of foreign tickets as they were the ones that generated the most emissions. In both cases that paid for the removals - and spread the narrative message simultaneously.

And then there's another question: is there a business for us in it? If this is going to get as big as we all think it needs to be, which is a trillion-dollar market, each company should ask: where can we play in this new market? Some companies might be able to supply renewable energy to removals projects. Others might supply machines or equipment. Do they have land that they can use for biochar spreading or enhanced rock weathering? Are there removals that can take place within their own value chains? On top of that, we need much better standards, methodologies, and protocols, and there's such intense work going on this year that I think that's really coming fast.

"How are you choosing suppliers and ensuring they have a future in the industry?"

Gabrielle Walker - We have a very rigorous due diligence approach to choosing our suppliers - which is vitally necessary in the absence of universally accepted protocols and standards in this rapidly emerging field. Our DD process is designed to be a bullet catcher. We’ve engaged with more than 400 suppliers and assessed them on aspects such as integrity, risk, scalability and beyond carbon attributes. Only a very few make it through this process.?

Aspects like integrity and risk are table stakes. But I think it’s also very important to focus on whether they have a path to operational scale. We want to ensure that our clients' money goes towards scaling the most promising projects, not just the best techniques. The aspects beyond carbon are also a key part of our assessment. Ensuring that there are co-benefits for nature and that local people have agency and a stake in the projects are two important ways to ensure not just that the projects contribute but that they are likely to sustain.

And then, as I’ve said before the biggest thing that will get these brilliant entrepreneurial companies springing up all over the place to get to the scale and pace we need is money in their pockets.? That's where the innovative financing comes in. We're very focused on getting carbon financing in play, and the objective is supplier liquidity. They have plans, paths to scale, and plausible scale routes to enable them. Now, how do they get the money to get that done?

So, first, choose the ones with the paths to scale; second, get the money in their hands. Putting those two things together is what will really light the spark.???

"What's the biggest challenge your suppliers are facing in 2024, and what do you think is required to solve it?"

Gabrielle Walker — The major challenge all our suppliers face is that there are not enough buyers/offtakes. They need this to prove there will be a future market and hence to secure financing they need to scale now. The other thing is standardising what hoops they need to jump through to be able to participate. Every registry has a different approach, and every procurement process from every buyer has a different approach, so for the small suppliers, it can be a real burden. Those are the main two things to highlight. But basically, the biggest one is getting the money in their pockets, then winding them up and setting them off.

"What, from an industry perspective, should we be aware of in the next 18 months to see the scale necessary to hit 2030 targets? It's just 24 business quarters away."?

Gabrielle Walker — The biggest need is to get the capital flowing to the people on the ground with the shovels – which means above all we need to unlock demand. As I said about the CFO questions, in the next 18 months, we need much more clarity from rule-setters and policymakers on why companies should buy carbon removals. There are refreshes of the SBTi’s net zero standard coming up as well as a new ISO standard on net zero and I’m hoping for more clarity on this from other parts of the voluntary carbon market too.

It also needs policy development. I think the EUCRCF , which came out this year, will be the global gold standard because individual countries within the EU are going to be looking to adopt it rather than having to develop their own certification framework. And other parts of the world are going to be asking, 'Is it working for them?' and be ready to copy the EU’s homework.

I think one of the challenges we're facing in this area is that policymakers, regulators, and many of the voluntary rule-setters are still solving problems from five years ago and not figuring out how we can build the solutions we need in the next ten years.?

It's also going to be a big year for international trading of removals credits through article 6.4 of the Paris agreement. Negotiations on the rules around this failed at the last COP, and this really has to succeed at COP29 in Baku in November. That will unlock a big International Market in removals.

We also need better definitions around things like durable/permanent removals or residual emissions. Few people have paid attention to these questions, and answering some of them will be essential over the next 18 months.?

Perhaps most importantly, I think the one thing that would help is quitting the civil wars/ circular firing squads that are currently out there. There's a lot of “my technique and not yours”; there's a lot of “nature versus tech”, Enhanced Rock Weathering versus Direct Air Capture. This kind of tug of war might get a short-term benefit for one side or the other. But if getting one of these removal techniques to scale means we don't get the others, we all lose. We need to get to a place where everyone understands that this will scale faster if we have a united voice and a united front.?

Similarly, I think there's a big fear among people trying to protect nature who are afraid that more removals means less attention and money going into nature. This is a big year for seeing what it can look like when we simultaneously focus on reductions, removals, and nature all together in one coordinated piece. I think that's one of the biggest things that could solve this suppressed demand because if we could get a consistent, clear message about what good looks like across the whole climate space, that would take away a lot of the fears that corporates currently have.???

"CUR8 works closely with its sister NGO, Rethinking Removals. Can you explain the synergy between these organisations and how it strengthens CUR8's impact?"

Gabrielle Walker - I usually say this is that Rethinking Removals helps keep CUR8 honest, and CUR8 helps keep Rethinking Removals real.?

Basically, Rethinking Removals is focused on the non-commercial side of the problem—how to get policymakers and rule setters to incorporate carbon removals in a way that unlocks demand and answers the needs of suppliers and enablers. This is pre-competitive and non-commercial. CUR8 participates in one of Rethinking Removals’ initiatives, the Doers Club, and so do many other companies, including some of CUR8's competitors.?

The Doers Club aims to break free from circular firing squads and have a much more united voice because it's in all of our interests to build this industry. The Club is restricted to 30 members and contains only suppliers who have a route to scale, buyers, aggregators, and enablers. It’s a microcosm of entrepreneurial energy and acts as a ground-truthing forum for what’s truly needed to scale the industry.?

We're in a space where the eagerness for collaboration, connection, alignment, and providing this groundswell for fixing the climate space is more significant than I've ever seen. Rethinking Removals capitalises on that and connects removals to the entire climate ecosystem to develop this sector equitably, respectfully, and effectively at the scale we need.

Unbound Summits' mission focuses on connections, new insights, and unbound CDR opportunities. Learn more about CUR8's unique approach to supporting CDR innovation at www.cur8.earth . Discover how Rethinking Removals is reshaping the perception of carbon removals among potential buyers at www.rethinkingremovals.org .