The Carbon Removal Show | Negative Emissions, Net Zero, Climate Positive: Recent Episodes

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The Carbon Removal Show is the world's leading in-depth podcast on carbon removal.

We combine hours of research and interviews with the world’s leading experts to explore the latest developments in carbon removal technology and policy in an easy to digest and engaging podcast format.

Our narrative driven, story-focused episodes are enjoyed by both experts in the field and climate-curious individuals wanting to learn more about this increasingly widespread topic. The problem of carbon emissions is clear - the solution, however, is not. Our succinct, level-headed and impartial approach to carbon removal gives our listeners the facts and the tools they need to make sense of, and take action on, how we as humanity can sustainably remove carbon from the atmosphere.

To find out more, head to https://thecarbonremovalshow.com/

The world’s coastal areas are some of the most at risk places on earth when it comes to climate change, but could they potentially be some of the most valuable places for creating solutions too?

It’s time for part two in our mini-series on Oceans and... it's the Season two finale!

As we established in last week’s episode, oceans are now becoming a much bigger part of the climate conversation and are a huge site of interest for carbon removal innovation. In this episode Tom and Emily will be taking a deeper look at some of the most exciting coastal-based solutions that are popping up.

They’ll be putting another biomass-based solution into focus – mangroves; they’ll be discussing The Blue Carbon Challenge, a program launched by Friends of Ocean Action to find viable solutions in blue carbon; and they’ll be looking at an interesting ocean-based take on rock weathering - an entirely different context to what we’ve looked at in previous episodes!

A note from our fact-checking corner: midway through this episode we discuss the relative rates of carbon sequestration of mangrove forests vs. the tropical forests you may be more familiar with. For the sake of clarity, we wanted to say here that mangroves store more carbon per year than the forests we mention on a per hectare basis. Forests still come out on top in absolute terms – not to take anything away from the magnificent role of mangroves

A huge thanks to our guests:

Ronald Tardiff, Pillar Lead at Friends of Ocean Action

Kelly Erhart, President & Co-Founder at Vesta

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

The time has finally come to talk about ocean-based carbon removal!

In this episode (the first in our two-part mini-series on Oceans) Tom and Emily will be exploring the role that oceans can play in carbon removal.

They'll be focusing on the way kelp is being used as a biomass-based approach to carbon removal speaking to two companies who are using kelp as a carbon removal solution, in very different ways.

Many thanks to our guests in this week's episode:

Marty Odlin, Founder at Running Tide
Caroline Hooft-Slootweg, Co-Founder at Kelp Blue

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

It's not only big names like Microsoft who are addressing their impact on the climate crisis, there are lots of smaller organisations appearing on carbon removal buyer lists too!

This week's episode puts a spotlight on Aledade, a US healthcare services organisation with an interesting philosophy and strategy behind their carbon removal purchases.

We speak to Will Palmisano, Head of Aledade's climate committee, to learn more about their carbon removal mission, how they’re going about it and what their work can teach us about how companies of all sizes can get involved in carbon removal in a meaningful way.

Thanks to Aledade for sponsoring the episode and for sharing their story.

Please note that since the recording of this episode the stats quoted from CDR.fyi have been significantly superseded. Visit CDR.fyi for the most up to date statistics.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

Now we've been through the process of buying our first carbon credits, we wondered how a larger, infinitely more complex operation might do the same.

We spoke to Elizabeth Willmott from Microsoft to get to the bottom of what it means to be a big time buyer of carbon credits.

We dive into the company's climate strategy, how to remove the emissions of one of the world's most significant companies, and what to do about historical emissions.

You can read more about Microsoft's Carbon Removal Program mentioned in the episode here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/corporate-responsibility/sustainability/carbon-removal-program

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

All the excitement of recording the previous two episodes in Iceland left us with one puzzling question. How would we practice what we preach and offset the carbon we emitted by flying there?

We set our researcher Henry on the case, and got in touch with the show's sponsors, Patch, in order to work out the best way forward.

Thanks to our guests:

Henry Irvine, Researcher on The Carbon Removal Show
Ariel Hayward, Sustainability Lead at Patch

Note: This is not a sponsored episode. While Patch sponsor the podcast, their inclusion on this episode is purely informative.

Find us on LinkedIn and Twitter @RestoredCC.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Following our trip to the climate conference at Iceland Innovation Week, we wanted to explore.

Today we're trying to get to the bottom of whether Iceland is a geological and political anomaly or a real glimpse into a potential brighter future for all of us.

Many thanks to our guests in this episode:

Sandra Ósk Snæbjörnsdóttir, Head of CO2 mineral storage at CarbFix
Kiddi Haflidason, General Manager at VAXA Technologies Ltd
Fannar Jónsson, Quality Manager at Blue Lagoon Iceland
Omar Sigurbjornsson, Director Sales and Marketing at Carbon Recycling International

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

Tickets? Booked. Microphone? Packed. Passport..?

This week we're off to Reykjavik to take part in Iceland Innovation Week's climate conference Ok, bye.

The event's name refers to the first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change, Ok-jökull and it was a chance for us to check in with some of the businesses and policymakers turning this isolated North Atlantic island into a world leader in carbon removal projects.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

It's our final episode from the UK Greenhouse Gas Removal Event in London and our very own Tom Previte was asked to host another panel.

This one was called "Getting it right for people and the planet" and was the conference's public facing panel, giving non-experts and newcomers a chance to learn about and ask questions on greenhouse gas removal in the UK - a perfect fit for the podcast right?

Thanks again to CO2RE for inviting us to take part in such an exciting event. You can find out more about the greenhouse gas removal hub at co2re.org.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

Today we’re at the UK Greenhouse Gas Removal Event, a gathering of researchers, policy makers and businesses, to discuss the state of carbon removal in the UK today.

CO2RE, the greenhouse gas removal hub led by Oxford University and the hosts of the event, were kind enough to ask us to host a pair of panels across the two day conference.

We caught up with friends old and new to bring you the latest expert insight on the current state of carbon removal in the country we call home.

Thanks to CO2RE for inviting us along. You can find them at co2re.org.

You can find the full Green Shoots panel, excerpts of which are included in this episode, here.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

We're back! And we've been busy...

Today, Tom visits the Science Museum in London to take a look at Our Future Planet, the museum's carbon removal exhibition. As carbon communicators ourselves, we were keen to find out what the Science Museum were doing to educate their guests on our favourite topic of discussion.

Tom was taken through the exhibition by its curator, Rupert Cole. Rupert took us through the items on display, the way guests experience the exhibition, and the language they use to communicate carbon removal.

The exhibition is not without controversy. Our Future Planet is sponosored by Shell and Extinction Rebellion have accused the Science Museum of assisting in the oil giant's attempts to greenwash their reputation. The Science Museum has defended the sponsorship, saying that energy companies have a significant role to play in finding solutions to the climate crisis, and that the Science Museum retains editorial control over the exhibition.

You can read the full statements of both Extinction Rebellion and the Science Museum here. and the Science Museum's sustainability policy here.

Our thanks to Rupert and the Science Museum for showing us round. Our Future Planet runs until September 11th.

To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading and all our sources, head to restored.cc.

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

Good news! The Carbon Removal Show will be coming back for another season this summer.

We want to make it as interesting, entertaining and educational as possible for all of you so we're asking you to let us know your thoughts about Season 1,

Head to restored.cc/feedback to let us know what you think!

Now you've discovered what carbon removal is all about, what are you going to do next?

In this finale, we have brought together a mix of carbon removal-related inspiration:

An interactive game to help us all understand the road to gigaton-scale carbon removal
A reflection on how COP26 left the carbon removal space (spoiler - we really do need it and we really do need it now)
An array of stories from our guests of how they found their groove in the carbon removal space
Our top tips for how you can continue your carbon removal journey, whatever stage you're at

Thank you for tuning in to season 1 of The Carbon Removal Show - we hope you've enjoyed it as much as we've enjoyed making it! Please like, subscribe, and tell a friend (or several) about the show. Oh, and do get in touch with us on Twitter, and subscribe to our weekly newsletter.

We can't wait to join you again soon for season 2!

Many thanks to our excellent guests throughout this series. In this episode, we hear again from Aldyen Donnelly (of episode 3 fame), Harriet Rix (episode 2), Diego Saez-Gil (episode 2), Apoorv Sinha (episode 7) and Katherine Romanak (episode 5).

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

What we do about climate change may be one of the biggest questions of our generation. Everyone should be able to have their say. This means we need to start having conversations in earnest to understand how we really think and feel about carbon removal.

But these conversations about carbon removal may feel uncomfortable, a sad reflection on where we find ourselves and a dangerous distraction from the hard task of decarbonisation. How can we balance these concerns with others' hard-headed optimism to grow an industry we're all on board with?

Let's not forget too that research suggests a poor general understanding of carbon removal across the board, alongside a whole host of preconceptions about an industry that's barely off its feet. What can we learn from this?

And, of course, no conversation is free from choices around the language we use. Lingo, jargon - call it what you like, this space is full of it! And how we choose to deploy it may have real impacts for how people understand and build expectations of carbon removal (or maybe we should say "rebalancing the carbon cycle"?)

Join Emily, Emily, Tom, Tom, Mike and all their mics to take a step back and check in on how we're thinking and feeling about everything we've learnt so far.

Many thanks to our excellent guests in this episode:

Mike Childs, Head of Science, Policy and Research at Friends of the Earth
Emily Cox, Research Associate in environmental policy and social psychology at Cardiff University
Tom Mansfield, Founder and Director at Pale Blue Perspective

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

"It's not going to take a few dozen, or a few hundred, or a couple thousand people working on this. We're going to need many more people working on this." (Marcius Extavour)

These days, we talk about carbon removal at the scale of tonnes - hundreds...even thousands of them. Over the coming decades, we will likely need to be talking at the scale of billions. So how do we get there?

And how can a young carbon removal business progress from "one small step" to many giant leaps towards healing humankind's climate conundrum?

In this episode, join Emily and Tom as we ponder a new carbon removal business, and search for the support that could get it off the ground. Marcius from XPRIZE lets us in on how we can get our slice of Elon Musk's $100m pie; Patricia from the Carbon Removal Centre opens our eyes to a community raring to go; and Brennan from Patch gives us the key to unlock the potential of carbon marketplaces. Let the air mining rush begin...

Many thanks to our excellent guests in this episode:

Marcius Extavour, Vice President, Energy & Climate at XPRIZE
Patricia Silva, Co-founder and Non-Executive Director at the Carbon Removal Centre & Investment and Deal Management at Green Angel Syndicate
Brennan Spellacy, Co-founder and CEO of Patch

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast

For carbon removal to thrive under capitalism, we need thriving carbon removal businesses. And thriving carbon removal businesses need an income - but who's paying? Can a service like this, operating for the good of humanity, really work in a world that revolves around money?

That's the crux of this week's episode.

Carbon marketplaces offer one model: buy and sell carbon on the open market in the form of credits. It sounds straightforward enough, until you realise that no two tonnes of carbon removed from the atmosphere are the same. Plus, doesn't this kind of system just give greenwashing companies a licence to pollute?

Utilisation of carbon, rather than storage, is another potential revenue generator. Take your captured carbon, pop it in your product and sell on at a healthy margin. We focus on concrete here (for good reason), though the possibilities really are endless. But beyond the wow factor, does it bring the climate benefits we need?

Many thanks to our excellent guests in this episode:

Sophie Purdom
Andrew Shebbeare
Rob Niven
Apoorv Sinha

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast

We're taking a short mid-season break this week but don't worry, we'll be back next week.

In this short bonus episode to tide you over, Tom and Emily discuss what we've learned so far and where we'll be going next.

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

Measurable, instant, continuous carbon capture and safe, reliable, permanent storage. Sound too good to be true?

Actually, this is exactly what engineered solutions like DAC (Direct Air Capture) and geological sequestration claim to bring to our carbon removal toolkit. The former promises technological innovation that does a tree's job better than a tree. The latter offers one of our surest bets that once we've got the CO2 down, we can keep it down, out of the atmosphere for as good as forever.

Naturally, however, these unnatural solutions have catches, complications... even controversies. Are we engineering our ways out of one problem and into several others?

Many thanks to our excellent guests in this episode:

Dr Katherine Romanak, Research Scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology, University of Texas
Steve Oldham, CEO of Carbon Engineering

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

At first, the idea of harvesting, harnessing, even burning our beloved biomass may seem counterintuitive, at least from a carbon removal perspective. Why not just leave biomass be?

Well, as we've heard so far this season, the carbon cycle is out of kilter. Even with our best efforts of restoration and enhancement, relying on forests and soils alone for the carbon removal we need may be too slow, too short, too unreliable.

This is where biochar and Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) come in. While different, both offer to do more with biomass, for the sake of carbon removal and more.

Can these really achieve carbon neutrality, let alone removal? Is there enough biomass out there? Are these the scalable, permanent and reliable silver bullets we've been dreaming of?! In this episode, Tom and Emily teach each other a thing or two about how to get the best from your biomass, for carbon drawdown's sake.

Many thanks to our excellent guests in this episode:

Dr Naomi Vaughan, Senior Research Associate at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
Pia Henrietta Moon, Co-founder & CEO at Carbo Culture

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast.

"We can sequester with regenerative agriculture between 5% of all emissions and 100% of all emissions. That's a big difference"

Whenever we used to find ourselves around farmland, we never paid much attention to the soil beneath our feet. Making this episode will make us think twice next time...

Why? Because, when you dig a little deeper, soil is far more important for carbon storage than you might have imagined. The world's soils hold more carbon than the atmosphere and the world's forests combined - but what potential do they hold for helping our carbon removal cause?

In this episode, we delve into the silent crisis of our soils, and discover the regenerative agriculture movement ready to address it, with a mix of ancient wisdom and novel technologies.

This episode's guests

Many thanks to our excellent guests in this episode:

Aldyen Donnelly, co-founder and Director of Carbon Economics at Nori
Ben Flock, Head of Transition Finance at Climate Farmers

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast

"The jingle which everyone quotes is the right tree in the right place" (Harriet Rix)

At first, the clear need for carbon removal begs the question - isn't that what trees do?

And they do - amongst a whole host of other benefits that they bring to our lives (tree-huggers exist for good reason).

Yet human activity certainly does not always display our gratitude for the value that trees bring us. With continued deforestation, raging wildfires and rising storm damage, our forests are facing a tough time.

So it's simple - plant more trees and protect the ones we have?

Well, sort of...

In this episode, Tom and Emily work through the complexities to understand the role that our forests may play in the carbon removal puzzle.

Many thanks to our excellent guests in this episode:

Gert-Jan Nabuurs (Leading author on IPCC Report 6 for Land Management & Professor of European Forest Resources at Wageningen University)
Diego Saez Gil (CEO of Pachama)
Harriet Rix (Tree Science and Research Projects Manager at the UK charity The Tree Council)

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast

"The need is irrefutable. It's scientific fact. We need carbon removal" (Sophie Purdom)

If you're reading this, you've probably considered a certain question at some point in your life. It's the same question that puzzles the mind of many others, from activists to artists, businesses to busy parents: how do we heal the damage we've caused - and are still causing - in our planet's climate?

Step one - Plan A - has to be stopping our greenhouse gas emissions. But even if we managed to do that tomorrow (if only), we would still have an almighty mess to clean up.

And that's where carbon removal comes in.

When we started making this series, we didn't know much about carbon removal, so our first questions were naturally: why do we need it, and why now? In this first episode, hosts Emily and Tom explore the case for carbon removal.

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To learn more about The Carbon Removal Show, including further reading, sources from the episode, and our free newsletter head to: https://restored.cc/

Thanks to Patch for sponsoring the podcast

The facts are clear - the planet is heating up because of emissions humans are putting into the atmosphere.

Even if we are able to cut out all our carbon emissions as fast as possible, we would still need to remove carbon we've already put in the atmosphere to hit global temperature targets.

Join Emily Swaddle and Tom Previte as they explore the world of carbon removal. What is it? Why is it necessary? How does it work? And who is doing it?

Along the way they'll be speaking to the people who are working to make carbon removal a widespread reality.

Subscribe today wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information on carbon removal, head to restored.cc.