Cowboy’s approach is unique in that it combines carbon removal with renewable fuel production. What first got you interested in this work, and what sparked the idea behind Cowboy?
My Cowboy co-founder, Dr. Michael Urynowicz, had been leveraging his experience in bioremediation and working on the technology and process behind Cowboy in his lab at the University of Wyoming for 15 years before we came together to build a company around it in 2020. We’ve been friends since getting our Masters degrees together in the mid-90’s, so I was aware of what he was doing, generally, as it relates to renewable natural gas. But when we connected in 2020 and I saw that the technology also offered a highly scalable and highly durable carbon removal pathway, I knew we had to build Cowboy together to make sure his vision was realized and the climate solution that it offered was brought to market.
Cowboy has put a lot of emphasis on how its projects are measured and how removals are calculated. What convinced you that this approach was so important, when not all of your competitors approach their projects with the same rigor?
We knew that with a novel technology, and one that involves legacy energy assets – in Wyoming, no less – and utilizes coal formations for permanent geologic storage, that we would likely encounter skepticism, and even resistance, in bringing it to market. And we did. We also believe deeply in the power and potential of voluntary carbon markets to simultaneously drive economic prosperity and climate stability. But voluntary markets only work if buyers and sellers can transact on a foundation of trust and transparency.
We knew that if we were going to get customers to trust our technology and buy credits from us, we had to meet the highest standards of transparency and accountability in our removal methodology, as well as our LCA and MRV. To accomplish that, we’ve designed our process and built our project in a way that enables and supports very straightforward measurement of inputs and outputs and calculation of our net removals. Validation and verification activities to determine net carbon removals from our project benefit from reliable measurements and data streams provided by third-parties, as well as simple calculations.
From our company’s earliest days, we have aimed to be our biggest critic. Our philosophy is that we need to convince ourselves before we can convince anyone else. This disciplined and rigorous approach builds confidence. Cowboy was created to address the climate challenge. We know we can only be successful in that task if our customers trust us – and our partners, like Absolute Climate.
Why did you choose to go with Absolute Climate?
We chose Absolute because they are unequivocally the most rigorous and robust standard in the market. The voluntary carbon market has experienced a great deal of criticism in recent years, stemming from a lack of integrity and honesty in accounting and reporting. As such, it is critical for Cowboy to work with only those companies of the highest integrity and to align with standards that can be defended against the most rigorous accounting approaches. To our knowledge, Absolute is the only standard that is based on the flux LCA accounting framework, which we believe is the approach that most accurately reflects the real world – that is, what the atmosphere actually sees. Their business model is also exclusively focused on establishing standards. By separating rule making from credit issuance, they eliminate potential conflicts of interest that can erode market credibility.
Simply stated, like Cowboy, Absolute believes that the only way to ensure carbon removal markets can achieve the impact required to reach our climate goals, is to build trust and transparency into them from the start. And that means using the best science and highest integrity carbon accounting methods for carbon removal project developers to align to. We believe Absolute is the only standards body that is built from the ground up to meet the highest standards of integrity and transparency, and we are pleased to work with them to bring our carbon removal solutions to market.
As you’ve brought Cowboy’s projects to market, have you experienced any challenges with helping buyers understand how your system works and what lessons have you learned about building market confidence?
Yes, we’ve encountered several challenges with how best to communicate what we do – and what we don’t do. We’ve had questions regarding the utilization of coal formations for our storage (no coal is consumed or burned in our process), the durability of our geologic sequestration method (adsorption is one of the most permanent methods available), and the production of methane (our carbon-neutral, renewable methane is captured to avoid atmospheric release and its use offsets reduces the demand for fossil fuels), among others.
Addressing all of these concerns and more over the past few years has taught us valuable lessons about the importance of listening, of engaging with a broad range of stakeholders and questioning our own assumptions. We’ve also learned the value of clear and transparent communications and of being willing to incorporate stakeholder concerns into our operations and how we approach our markets. Market confidence comes from being willing to listen and open to criticism. We at Cowboy will always do what we need to do to ensure the market’s trust and confidence in us.
Looking across the carbon removal field, what do you see as the most overlooked opportunities for scaling impact and credibility, and where do you think project developers like Cowboy can make the biggest difference?
We are obviously biased, but we see tremendous opportunity in doing “what” we are doing and “where” we are doing it. By “what” I mean leveraging both existing natural systems and processes and legacy energy infrastructure. Our ability to scale very quickly and with very low capital investment is a direct result of the fact that nature has provided the geo-bioreactors that our process utilizes and previous energy entrepreneurs have provided the infrastructure that we leverage to access those natural systems. We encourage other carbon removal entrepreneurs to look closely at what assets and infrastructure might be hiding in plain sight right in front of them. And by “where”, I mean Wyoming. We know that the “conventional wisdom” outside Wyoming might be that the state would not be friendly to carbon removal companies. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Wyoming is an “all of the above” state when it comes to energy solutions, has an incredibly skilled workforce and a regulatory infrastructure that moves at the pace of entrepreneurship while fully protecting the environment and human health.
We believe low cost and highly scalable BiCRS solutions, like Cowboy’s, are likely to have the biggest impact in carbon removal over the next 20 to 30 years. But BiCRS companies need to think bigger than they have been. To truly have impact at the global scale, BiCRS project developers need to access as much “waste” biomass as possible, but also need look to expand to other sources of biomass that aren’t traditionally thought of as “waste” – as long as those feedstocks still result in a significantly positive net CDR when utilized in a BiCRS process.
Many in our industry have started talking about “CDR 2.0”, which describes how projects will need to adapt to a market with less climate ambition. By generating both renewable fuels and negative emissions, Cowboy’s approach is a great example of the industrial and market integrations that create real world value beyond credits. Is this an intentional part of your strategy, and how can it help you stand out in a crowded space?
Well, I can’t say that we anticipated a market with “less climate ambition”, as you say. That’s not why we are bringing the Cowboy BiCRS+RNG process to market. We’ve always believed that there is no single solution to our complex and linked energy and climate challenges. We need as much carbon removal as we can possibly build AND we need to ensure a smooth and economically fair transition of our energy economy toward greater sustainability – no matter how positive or negative the “market” might be toward one of those needs or the other. But we’ve also been around long enough to know that progress is never a straight line. And companies can only have a lasting positive impact with their technologies and solutions if they remain financially viable for the long term, and that means being resilient enough to survive – and even thrive – no matter the prevailing political winds. As such, our ability to provide a much needed (see AI and data center power demand) energy transition fuel while at the same time deploying perhaps the lowest capital cost and most scalable carbon removal solution in the market is something that we believe is a huge differentiator and source of value for us.
Bio
Ryan has 25 years of experience in operating, investing, and consulting roles in the energy sector. Currently, Ryan is the Chairman and CEO of Cowboy Clean Fuels, LLC, a company that he co-founded in 2020 to commercialize revolutionary technology developed at the University of Wyoming to produce Renewable Natural Gas and sequester Carbon Dioxide removed from the atmosphere by leveraging natural geo-biological systems and repurposing existing energy assets.
Previously, Ryan was the founder and General Partner of Huron River Ventures, where he led early-stage investments across energy, mobility, and agriculture. He also helped build an energy-focused private equity group at Ziff Brothers Investments and began his career in venture capital at DTE Energy.
