Something You Should Know - Bonus Episode: Why We Must Defeat Climate Change and How to Do It

Episode Date: July 20, 2022

The earth is getting warmer and the consequences of that have already begun to impact us all. Today, 6 out of 10 Americans describe themselves as “alarmed” or “concerned” about climate change, according to one recent study. Climate change is a huge global problem and there is likely not going to be a single solution.  Joining me to explain and help us all understand the problem and the solutions to climate change is Christoph Gebald. He is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Climeworks. Listen as Christoph explains the causes of climate change and how reducing our carbon footprint will not be enough to defeat it. We also have to remove CO2 from the air – which is exactly what Climeworks does.  If you want to understand the problem better and discover what you can do to help fight climate change, listen and enjoy my conversation with Christoph Gebald. • This special episode is sponsored by Climeworks  Climeworks is the leader in direct air capture technology. They make it simple for you to join the fight against climate change. Go to https://actnow.climeworks.com/SomethingYouShouldKnow to start removing CO2 from the air today. Make sure to use code SYSK20 and Climeworks will cover 20% of your first installment. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode of Something You Should Know is sponsored by Climeworks. Climeworks is the leader in direct air capture technology, and they make it simple for you to join the fight against climate change. Head to actnow.climeworks.com slash somethingyoushouldknow to start removing CO2 from the air today. Make sure to use code SYSK20, and Climeworks will cover 20% of your first installment. Today on this special episode of Something You Should Know, the topic is climate change. And it's a big topic. Year on year, we're adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. If we want to

achieve climate targets and avoid catastrophic climate change, we have to get this number to zero. Join me as I discuss climate change with Christof Giebald, founder of Climeworks, a company with exciting technology to reduce CO2 in the air. How? We are turning atmospheric CO2 into stone in the underground in Iceland. It's a great story that I think will fascinate and inspire you. As a vision of our company, we have to inspire a billion people to remove CO2 from the air. And we are absolutely convinced that if we achieve that, we will leave the world in a better place than we found it.

All this today on a special episode of Something You Should Know. Something you should know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts. And practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi. You've probably heard the old saying, everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. Well, you could sort of say that about climate change today. Everybody talks about it. A lot of people are very concerned about it.

In fact, 6 out of 10 Americans say they are alarmed or concerned about climate change, according to a study published by the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Yet, climate change is one of those problems that it just doesn't seem like one person can have much of an impact. That's why I want you to meet Christoph Giebald. Christoph is co-founder and co-CEO of a company called Climeworks that is tackling climate change head-on. And he joins me today to explain the problems of climate change, as well as the solutions, and what we can all do to help. Hi Christoph, welcome. Hi Michael. So everyone has heard about climate change.

We know the Earth is heating up. But fundamentally, what does that mean? What is that doing to the planet? Climate change essentially creates two problems. The one is that the atmosphere around up the CO2, the carbon dioxide we're pumping in the atmosphere. And with that, they're becoming more acid over time. And that changes the whole ecosystem of the oceans, which in itself is a huge problem.

And when you trace these things back, what is the cause? What is the source of climate change? The biggest contributor to climate change is the emission of carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. And that in turn goes back to the burning of fossil fuels, those being coal, natural gas, and oil that we're using to essentially power our lives, like we use it for flying airplanes, for driving our cars, but also for making products like the computer in our hand or the desk in front of us, much is made out of plastics or the clothing we are wearing. Such fossil products, they're everywhere. And once they're burned, they're releasing carbon dioxide. That creates climate change.

So help me and everyone else understand the scope of the problem. How much CO2 are we putting into the air? Is it increasing? Are we slowing down the increase? Put this in perspective for me. Currently, as of 2022, year on year, we're adding more CO2 to the atmosphere. Since industrialization began, we added 2 trillion or 2,000 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere. We roughly have 400 billion tons left until the bathtub, so to say, is overflowing until we have so much CO2 in the air that we are blowing the 1.5 degree climate target. So we essentially have five to seven years left to tilt the curve and don't explode the budget that we have remaining.

But at the moment, still adding substantial amounts year on year more CO2 to the atmosphere. Often in the conversation about climate change, people hear about their carbon footprint. Can you explain what that is and why we're talking about it? The carbon footprint is the accumulated total carbon dioxide emissions we as humans are emitting. They are not equally distributed over the globe. So they depend heavily where we're living and what lifestyles we're following. We are here in Central Europe, like I'm living in Switzerland, there we're talking about an average of 10 tons of CO2 equivalent of a global carbon footprint. In North America, this number is probably two to three

times higher. And in other parts of the world, in Africa, for example, this number is 10 times lower. So that's what's meant with the carbon footprint of a person. And do you think that's a good way to look at your participation in this problem, is to look at your own carbon footprint? Because it does seem that climate change is such a big problem. Like, how much could I possibly contribute to the solution? Indeed, your personal footprint is a very good way of looking at it. Like the personal number, so to say, you're responsible for and that you have been very importantly, right?

That you have been responsible for the years you're on Earth. Like I'm becoming 40 quite soon. So multiply the 10 tons per year with 40 and you get the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere I'm as an individual are responsible for. And the truth is, if we want to achieve climate targets and avoid catastrophic climate change we have to get this number to zero in the next 30 years and there won't be one silver bullet doing all the job getting us from where we currently down to zero but it will be a combination of many things and approaches that have to come together in order to get us from our current value to zero by the year 2050. And everyone has to contribute to that, and every individual counts.

If you as an individual act, you're able, of course, to take care of your personal footprint, but maybe even more importantly, you're able to inspire others. And in my personal point of view, and also the view of, or this way we define this as the vision of our company, as a vision of our company, we have to inspire a billion people to remove CO2 from the air. And we are absolutely convinced that if we achieve that, if we inspire a billion people to remove CO2 from the air, we will leave the world in a better place than we found it. for individuals and for ourselves as people and residents of this planet, is on the one hand, of course, tackle our own emissions, but on the other hand, inspire and get new technologies running, get new approaches up and running.

That's really where you will have a lot of leverage. So what you said is interesting because when you talk about removing co2 which is what you are all about i think people think of it more as well it's important not to put so much co2 into the atmosphere but you're talking about taking away the co2 that's already there which is a different way a flip side of looking at the problem. We actually have to do both, right? If we started to reduce emissions already 20 years back, we could focus our efforts on only reducing emissions and we'd be fine. However, since in the last 20 years, we kept on emitting quite heavily,

like year on year emissions are growing. And the assumption is that this might continue and that we're not able to tilt the curve as as quickly as as we wanted and therefore climate science currently says there is no or connection between reducing and removing but there's an end connection meaning we have to reduce as much as we can and on top of that we we have to remove and actually if if you are one of those persons who is like really eager to to reduce as much as possible also to on on the personal lifestyle front fly as little as possible, use the car as little as possible. Even with that behavior, you won't get to a zero. You will have some hard to abate emissions, like for example, from the food you're eating, right? You will have a footprint. And this is what we're here for.

Like we are removing the part from the atmosphere that cannot be tackled otherwise. So again, reduce as much as we can. And on top of that, the remainder we can't get rid of, we have to remove from the atmosphere. And in just a moment, I want you to explain exactly how it is you do that, because it's pretty cool. I'm speaking with Christoph Giebald. He is co-founder of Climeworks. Look, I'm sure you're aware of climate change and what a big problem it is. And you've probably even asked yourself, what can one person do to make a difference? Well, let me introduce you to Climeworks. Climeworks is the leader in direct air capture technology that permanently removes CO2 from the air

to fight climate change. They have a plant right now that pulls in air and removes carbon dioxide, CO2. The plant can capture and remove up to 4,000 tons of CO2 per year. And by subscribing to Climework's CO2 removal service, you can make a real concrete difference in climate change. Just choose the subscription that best suits your needs.

Do it now, and you'll start changing the climate today by removing CO2 from the air on a monthly basis. And then at the end of each year, Climeworks will confirm the amount of CO2 they removed in your name. Climeworks and what they're doing with this amazing technology has been featured in the Wall Street Journal and National Geographic and Wired Magazine, amongst others. And you can be part of the fight against climate change. Here's what you can do right now. Go to actnow.climeworks.com slash something you should know

to start removing CO2 from the air today. Use code SYSK20 and Climeworks will cover 20% of your first installment for monthly and yearly subscriptions. Now act now because this code is only valid for the first 500 people. And that link and that code are in the show notes. So Christoph, explain the technology and the technique of how you remove CO2 from the atmosphere. In very simple words, think about a time machine for the atmosphere. So that's a very simplistic way of looking at what we are building at Climeworks.

Like we are building large machines. They're composed of modules. Think of it like solar modules or wind turbines. So it's a climate technology based out of modules. And each module sucks in atmospheric air and releases again the air, but filters the CO2 contained in the air from it. So it's essentially a large vacuum cleaner for the atmosphere. And once we cleaned the CO2 out of the atmosphere,

or we filtered it from it, we take the CO2 and provide it for permanent underground storage in order to lock it away from the atmosphere in a permanent way. For example, at the moment, already doing that with a facility, we're operating in Iceland, and there we have a storage partner. They're called CarbFix. And together with them, we are operating in a way that with our machines, we are filtering the CO2 out of the air and then provide this pure CO2 we get out of the atmosphere to the storage partner CarbFix.

And they pump it in the Icelandic underground. And there the CO2 is stored for millions of years and consequently locked away. And in such, we are removing the carbon dioxide permanently out of the air. So that's got to be one big vacuum cleaner if you're going to take CO2 out of the air and make a difference. Indeed. Imagine it like a vacuum cleaner for the atmosphere. It's containers with ventilators pulling in air, releasing again air, and the vacuum cleaners simply filters the CO2 out of the air stream. And so you have a facility in Iceland that does this. Are there others? We do currently operate a facility in Iceland permanently removing CO2 as we speak and day for day. This is currently the only facility doing that globally. There is no other facility

capturing CO2 from the air with machines as we do it and providing it for permanent underground storage. And how is it stored? When you take it out of the air, it's a gas? Is it a solid? What is it? The way it is stored is as follows. We are capturing it in Iceland with machines and provide it subsequently to our storage partner who are called CarbFix. And what they do is they take the CO2 we are filtering off the air, that's a gas, and then they mix the gas with water they're getting out of the underground essentially they're creating carbonated water in a very very very big fashion and pumping this water carbon dioxide mixture mixture back into the ground and that's the beauty about doing that in iceland um the the underground rock which is called basalt is mineralizing the co2 contained in the water or in very simple words we are turning atmospheric co2 into stone in the

underground in Iceland but you do it by basically putting the co2 into water kind of like making a soda exactly in a very words, we are creating soda water out of atmospheric CO2, pump that into problem is, how that helps. Because CO2 just is everywhere or it doesn't matter where you pump it out of the air? Climate change is a global issue and CO2 is everywhere in the atmosphere. So independent of where we capture it and remove it from the air, it will have a global effect so assuming or having a facility installed in Iceland and drawing carbon from the atmosphere will have a global impact on on the climate and on the co2 contained in the atmosphere so now explain if you can how this is a business how how do you operate as a business doing this someone

must pay you to do this so explain your business model our business model is carbon dioxide removal as a service and we are offering that for companies but very importantly we also make this accessible to people like we want to give people a means to act like those who wish to have a really permanent solution a very measurable solution on how to get co2 back out of the atmosphere those we're offering the service to take co2 back out of the air and there are essentially two ways um how people could use the service either in a in a subscription model where we have already more than 14 000 people doing that they are contracting climbworks on on a monthly basis to take co2 back out of the air and store it permanently in the ground. Or you could also use that as gifts, as one-off type of agreements,

like, say, for holiday seasons or birthdays. We all know that situation, right? You're running to a birthday party and don't know what to gift, so to say, and mostly people already have everything. And if you want to give something with purpose and doing good to all of us, this can be such a beautiful gift to take CO2 back out of the air. So when a company contracts with Climeworks to take CO2 out of the air, what is it that they get out of it? Companies are using our carbon dioxide removal service to comply with their climate targets.

More and more companies announce the target of becoming net zero by, for example, 2030 or 2050. And if you, as a company, but also as a person, if you want to have zero emissions, like if you want to achieve a true net zero, you have to reduce as much as you can roundabout to throw out numbers, you will be able as a company to reduce roughly 90% emissions, but you'll be sitting on 10% of your emissions, which are hard to abate or unavoidable emissions you can't get rid of, right? And if you want to bring those 10% down to zero, you have to remove CO2 from the atmosphere. And essentially, there are only two things you can do at the moment, either plant trees, which is a great thing to do. And I motivate everyone and every company to do it. And on the

other hand, you can contract us running machines, take the CO2 from the air and store it in the ground. And that's the motivation. So the motivation for corporations to do that is to comply with the climate targets they put out. And it doesn't matter where you are. You can be in the US and contract with you to take CO2 out of the air in Iceland. And because it's a global problem,

it all counts. Exactly. It's fully independent of where you are. Say you're a North American company with a climate target, and we are operating in Iceland. You could use the CO2 removal service we are having in Iceland to calculate against your emissions, which, side note, might not only need to happen in the United States, but could also be supply chain emissions that, for example, are happening in Asia, right? And in total, however, it's a net zero game. And we're making sure the CO2, which is emitted somewhere on the planet, we are taking back from the atmosphere. I'm speaking with Climeworks co-founder Christoph Giebald, and we're talking about climate change and what we can all do to fight this problem. This next segment is sponsored by Climeworks. Climeworks is the leader in direct air capture technology,

and they make it simple for you to join the fight against climate change. Head to actnow.climeworks.com slash something you should know to start removing CO2 from the air today. And make sure to use code SYSK20 and Climeworks will cover 20% of your first installment. So Christoph, how much CO2 do you take out of the atmosphere in a, I don't know, in an hour, in a day, in a week, in a year? Currently, the annual capture rate of the facility we're having in the remaining emissions, if you want to call it like that, of 10,000 electric vehicles, like for battery production and the footprint of the renewable electricity you're using to drive your car. Now, from this, we're scaling, right? And we're scaling step by step. So from those 4,000 tons per year currently being installed, up and running,

we're going in 10x steps every one and a half to two years. So roughly 40,000 tons by end of next year, then 400,000 tons by 2026. And on our journey, and that's our very clear target to be operating on the multi-million ton scale by the end of this decade. So what is the impact of all of this? I mean, I think there's this sense people have that it's such a big problem, climate change, that there isn't much any one person can do. And you've got this facility in Iceland that's removing so much CO2 out of the atmosphere. But are all these things making a difference, I guess, is what I think people really want to know. Simply speaking, for every gram or ounce

or take whatever unit you want, every little piece, every molecule of CO2 out of the air is not contributing for the years to come to global warming, right? You have to imagine, once the CO2 molecule is out there in the atmosphere, year on year, it contributes to warming, right? And every molecule we take back is not contributing to global warming. So very simply speaking, every molecule or every unit, take whatever unit you wish, counts. And we won't win the fight against climate change with one big change. But it will be a combination of several small steps we have to take in a row. It's like, I always love the example of climbing a mountain. You're most successful if you go step by step, right?

I see it the same way with tackling climate change. It's many, many small steps we all together have to take in order to tackle this problem. And there won't be this one big thing, like this one silver bullet, that will solve all at once. Is the process of taking CO2 out of the air that you do, is it particularly difficult? Is your technology very advanced, and is it getting more advanced, or is the process relatively simple if

you can get it big enough well in this whole field of of capturing co2 from the air we are we're the technology leader and the technology if you hear it for the first time it it might sound like rocket science to you but fundamentally it's it's chemistry that has been known for decades. The art in direct air capture, what the field we are working on is called, is in making it as energy efficient as possible and making it as cost efficient as possible. So it's rather a implementation challenge than a pure science challenge, if you want to put it like that. I was going to ask, do you put CO2 into the air in the process of taking CO2 out of the air? Is it part of the manufacturing of removing CO2?

Yes, we are putting CO2 in the air by taking CO2 out of the air indirectly through the materials we're using and the energy sources we're using. With that question, you're alluding to the bigger topic of a life cycle assessment. That means it's a standardized way how to measure how much CO2 is emitted from mining of the materials that you're using until final recycling of the machine or the device you're using. And for our technology, this number is 10%, meaning that for one ton of CO2 we're taking out of the atmosphere, we are re-emitting as gray emissions 0.1 tons. Now, what we're doing in order to take care of that is that for every ton of CO2 we are contracted, either by people or corporations, to take it out of the air,

we're actually capturing 1.1 tons and put 1.1 tons in the ground so that we have net one ton of carbon removal. So I really like this idea that you were talking about before of these personal subscriptions or giving CO2 removal as a gift, as a subscription gift, because I think so often people think it's just too big a problem. There's nothing I can do that's really going to have an impact, and you kind of can't say that anymore. So explain again how this works. The way this works is very simple.

You can go on our website, climeworks.com, press the button Act Now, and there you will find a button where you can choose a gift, so to say, corresponding to the amount you want to gift. And consequently, what you're getting is a voucher stating the amount of CO2 that will be removed in your name from the atmosphere and locked away permanently. Well, my guess is that most people until now haven't even heard of this process of removing CO2 from the air. And as you said, it's going to take a lot of small efforts that combined will solve this problem. But what you're doing is more than just wringing hands and saying,

oh, I wish there was something I can do. You're making a real, concrete, measurable effort in attacking the problem of climate change. Yes, every step counts. Like the most important thing you can do is really to inspire. At the moment, our industry is really young and there are a lot of hopes on our industry to scale. And if you look at the latest report on climate change by the World Climate Council, IPCC, you will see that removing CO2 from the atmosphere is an essential piece to achieve climate targets. Or in other words, achieving climate targets without carbon removal is impossible as of 2020. And to get there, since this carbon removal industry at the moment is such a niche and small and young industry, every action of people count. And this is the most important thing you can do in the next years to come, is to tell the story and inspire others that you are able and we are able to remove CO2 from the air and with that help this young industry to scale.

Well, like everyone else, I try to do the things people say to do to reduce your carbon footprint. But I never really knew that much about the problem or thought that there was much one person could do. So I appreciate you explaining it in a way that made it understandable and accessible. I've been speaking with Christoph Giebald. He is co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks. Thanks, Christoph. Thanks, Mike. This has been a pleasure talking to you about carbon removal today. And if you're listening and you'd like to get involved,

go to the Climeworks website and use this link specifically so they know we sent you. It's actnow.climeworks.com slash something you should know. actnow.climeworks.com slash something you should know. actnow.climeworks.com slash something you should know. And that link is also in the show notes. And if you use the code SYSK20, Climeworks will cover 20% of your first installment

as a thank you for helping in the fight against climate change. And that is something you should know.