You’ve worked across policy, advocacy, and now standards. How has your view of what it means to be accountable in this space changed over time?
Things have become less black and white over time, which I think is pretty common in a growing sector and especially true when you have a lot of new customers and stakeholders jumping in. The more perspectives that enter the space, the more you realize accountability isn’t one-size-fits-all. It’s about being clear on your role, transparent about trade-offs, and consistent in your values, even as the landscape shifts.
There’s a lot of pressure to move fast in this space. How do you think we balance urgency with credibility?
I think a lot of it comes down to transparency. Let’s get carbon removal deployed quickly and let’s be honest about when it works and doesn’t. Not everything we’re considering in carbon removal right now is going to be a credible pathway to meaningful scale, deliver true carbon negativity, or even be measurable in ways that allow for credible market-based solutions. That’s okay, as long as we’re clear about what’s real and what’s still in progress.
What’s one assumption about carbon removal you wish more people would challenge?
That markets alone will get us to scale. They are just one piece of a very big and complex puzzle; they just happen to be the piece that has moved the fastest. I worry we over-optimize for what’s right in front of us. The United States isn’t going to pass a national compliance market policy and even when other jurisdictions do, they aren’t going to get us to gigaton scale by midcentury. Markets can be an enormously helpful or even essential tool, that doesn’t mean they’re the only one.
What’s one policy change you think could meaningfully reshape how carbon removal industry function or who they serve?
We need more policies that recognize carbon removal as a public good. The carbon removal policies of today are largely iterations on policies that were developed for point source carbon capture on coal fired power plants a quarter century ago. Those have been helpful, but we also need policies that reflect what carbon removal is now, not what was politically feasible a decade ago. Policies that grapple with and fully leverage the fact that carbon removal is a public good can unlock new political coalitions and legislative victories.
Building on that, are there any federal opportunities you see on the horizon over the next four years?
Absolutely–far more than people seem to appreciate. Policy moves in cycles and most of the real work happens before there’s a window to pass major legislation. It takes time to develop and socialize new policies. We need to be doing that now for carbon removal. That includes clarifying how the federal government shows up as a buyer, scaling support for robust measurement and monitoring, and ensuring new programs reward real, durable removals. We have a narrow window to shape the next phase of policy and the more we invest in its design today, the more credible and scalable the industry can become in the years ahead. I also think there’s a real opportunity in the next couple of years to see new legislation on federal purchasing move forward.
If you could redesign the rules of the carbon removal market from scratch, where would you start?
The first thing we need is more alignment on what counts as carbon removal. Just because a particular technology or solution can remove carbon doesn’t mean that it actually does in a specific project. I think it's great to invest in projects that aren’t carbon removal yet but could lead to carbon removal, however it’s critical that we be transparent about that. Today’s markets prioritize delivering tons in ways that sometimes undermine any incentive we have to be honest about the actual removals.
Why did you say yes to joining Absolute’s advisory board?
Because Peter and Greg are angels. But really, they’re the right people asking the right questions. They’re building the standard we need not just for today’s industry but to get us to megaton and gigaton scale. I also appreciate the transparency in how they operate, in doing things like creating different categories of credits based on a project's certainty, and defining the difference between removals and negative emissions. One of the most important outcomes of accountability is building public trust and it’s practices like these that will get us there.
