Interview With Jack Andreasen, A Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy Leader

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Q: How would you describe what you’re doing to someone new to the topic?

I work on a broad suite of technologies necessary to stop pollution from hitting the atmosphere, or remove it directly from the atmosphere. 

Q: And how would you describe it to an expert?

I work on US federal and state policy/regulations that incentivize the deployment of key decarbonization technologies. My portfolio covers carbon management which includes both point source CCS and all forms of durable carbon removal. My days are spent advocating for carbon management on capitol hill, working with partners on identifying key legislation or regulatory opportunities for carbon management, and posting neurotically on social media.

Q: What was it that first made you interested in carbon dioxide removal, and what made you decide to take up a career in CDR?

I came into CDR by way of carbon storage in sedimentary basins. My mentor is a gentleman named Mr. John Rupp who was one of the first, and most formative, CO2 storage researchers at Indiana University. I met him there during my graduate program and found myself being drawn to his classes, arguments, and overall view of the world. While at school, I focused on subsurface policy/regulations alongside doing some technical work on formation fluid salinity measurements in the Mt. Simon Sandstone. This project through the Indiana Geologic and Water Survey spurred my interest in carbon management, and by extension, CDR.

Q: Where do you hope, and where do you think, the carbon removal industry is in 3 years?

I hope the industry is scaling across continents and pathways, and realistically I think that’s where we will be. We’ve seen great momentum in the US, and Europe, Japan, SE Asia, Canada, Australia, Kenya and others are creating markets for CDR. This is resulting in many first-of-a-kind projects deploying across the globe. 

Q: Who are your biggest supporters, and the biggest obstacles to your work – and to scaling CDR?

My biggest supporter, outside my wife, is Breakthrough Energy. They have created a organization that looks to advance some of the most difficult but necessary technologies through the deployment cycle. They work on everything from yet to be proven in lab technologies, all the way to project finance. The people I have met in my time at Breakthrough, both inside and outside the organization, are the ones that will drive CDR to gigaton deployment. I feel lucky to be in a position to meet them, and work with them.

The biggest obstacle is evergreen in CDR: demand. How do you encourage private, voluntary purchases of high quality CDR, year over year, while continuing to incentivize governments to deploy CDR tech as well? That’s more or less the question that we are all trying to answer, and it will always be the greatest barrier in CDR.

Q: If you were not dedicating so much resources to carbon removal, where else would you dedicate them?

I’m not entirely sure what I would do if I wasn’t working in climate or on carbon management. I have a real passion for it. But if I had to guess I would take my skill set and apply them to existing industries that I enjoy in my personal life, namely the fashion industry. The heterogeneity of inputs and supply chains for fashion make it incredibly challenging to decarbonize, let alone do it in a way that even approximates “sustainable.” I’d love to work with some brands/houses to make their art as low impact as possible. Outside that, I enjoy making coffee, cooking, and watching the birds in my backyard.

Q: What trends are you most excited about? Where are the biggest holes in the carbon removal industry?

The trends towards including CDR into compliance mechanisms are very encouraging. We need that in every market in the world. And I’m continually impressed and excited with the work Microsoft is doing to drive the industry forward. They’re not just pushing big capital outlays, which they are, but they’re doing it in a systematic way that allows future buyers to get in, by lowering the barrier to entry for buyers. The biggest hole is still demand, always will be. We need more markets and more buyers.

Q: Are there specific industries you think should have CDR mandates, or should be given more responsibility to purchase?

I’m not a big mandate fan myself. We should create standards, or fees for pollution, and let technologies compete to see who can provide the most efficient solution. If that solution is CDR, great, if not, even better. I’m not even sure how you would go about assessing responsibility to purchase. To decarbonize, everyone will have some responsibility to purchase CDR, and they should be given that as one pathway, amongst many others, they can use to decarbonize their project, business or overall sector.

Q: What are overlooked opportunities in cleantech or carbon removal, in your opinion?

Insetting CDR technologies is and has been talked about for a while now, but I think it’s really only starting to scratch its potential. The recent Heirloom deal includes an option to create e-SAF from the removed CO2, and that’s an obvious way a company is trying to align their emissions with their reduction strategies. The obvious sector is mining, with their abundant access to cation rich minerals. If we can find a way to incorporate CDR practices within a business, and it becomes a cost-saver and/or revenue generator, then you will start to see adoption uptake even faster.

Q: How do you think US leadership and global cooperation are best applied to CDR, and what are the tangential issues that need to be tackled?

The US has the most robust CDR technology provider landscape and public policy in the world. That’s largely built on the backs of 45Q, and the more recent DAC hubs, DAC and CDR prizes and decades of RD&D done by both federal and state institutions. In order to hit the gigaton scale we need many countries to deploy CDR. So it can’t just be the US. We’ve seen great strides in the EU, UK, Japan, Australia, and Kenya. We need these countries to continue leadership to get to deployments of CDR. We need to learn by doing. We need to see cost-down trajectories play out in real life. And while this is going on we need to increase the pace of innovation through public-private partnerships on R&D.

CDR is unique, compared to electricity generation, in that a CDR project in Kenya could be removing CO2 for a company in the United States. We must ensure that we have limited barriers to be able to deploy projects anywhere in the world, with the same rigorous standards, and have anyone in the world have access to the removed carbon for purchase. Whether that is a nation-state or international company, we need the CDR market to be global and fungible. We need cooperation and coordination between business, foundations and government to ensure CDR has a future pathway for demand and that we are not picking winners (technology or geography) to early. CDR is going to scale with 1000 policies across a 1000 jurisdictions. We need them all working together as closely as possible.

Q: And lastly, if you could enact one policy for climate, what would it be?

Globally recognized and enforceable pollution fee that’s consistent with the latest estimations of the social cost of carbon.