11 ms·

Show HN: An API for CO₂ Removal

94 points by kisamoto 4y ago

Hi all, We're Fabienne and Ewan of Climacrux. Today we're proud to launch our latest project to try and make carbon dioxide removal as accessible as possible: CDR Platform [1]. In short: it’s an API to connect to a portfolio of carbon removers. You can purchase from as low as a single gram and select from both natural and technological removal methods. Longer: A couple of years ago we launched an alternative to carbon credits, Carbon Removed[2], designed for individuals to buy and subscribe to CDR. But we always had the nagging thought that there was more that could be done. CDR Platform is our foundation for that - a simple API to get prices and purchase (at the moment). Our plan is to become the Stripe of the carbon removal ecosystem, seamlessly connecting the supply to the demand. We’d love to hear your feedback. Do you see a use case for this and would you use it? What features have we missed? Do you understand what we’re doing and if not, what’s unclear? We’d love to hear from you.[3] Many thanks and happy hacking, Climacrux. P.s. If you are a carbon remover, send us your prices, life cycle analysis and some more information about your removal timeline. Our aim is to bring your services to a wider audience so you can focus on reducing our CO₂ levels. Thanks for your work! [1] https://docs.cdrplatform.com https://docs.cdrplatform.com [2] https://carbonremoved.com https://carbonremoved.com [3] ewan@climacrux.com

drlobster 4y ago
Pure ideology
- kisamoto 4y ago
  But it's worth trying.
- vegcel 4y ago
  I mean, if a consumer wants to round up to the nearest dollar on their online purchase of Tyson Frozen Pork Cutlets 8 Pcs (which most certainly has a calculable carbon footprint caused from deforestation) to plant some trees to offset that deforestation, why not?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
truthwhisperer 4y ago
Lariscus 4y ago
Carbon capture isn't real (as advertised). If you take green energy out of the supply to capture carbon, a carbon producing power plant will have to make up for it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJslrTT-Yhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJslrTT-Yhc
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Yes, we need to decarbonize. But that doesn't mean we can't also try to accelerate the removal of carbon from our atmosphere.
  - Moissanite 4y ago
    Eventually, sure - but in the short term, carbon removal is an inefficient way of allocating resources.
    - kisamoto 4y ago
      But we have to allocate some resources to start the development process now (and hopefully make it more efficient and effective).
  - cookingrobot 4y ago
    You have a machine that if you turn it on, it removes carbon from the air. But, to power it you release a greater amount of carbon into the air. Should you turn on the machine? No, you should leave it off. Only when your power sources are green should you turn on the machine.
    - kisamoto 4y ago
      The machines must result in more capture & storage than they produce - net negative emissions. For example, using a machine to heat waste biomass with fast pyrolysis turns the biomass into bio-oil. Bio-oil can then be pumped underground resulting in long-term, stable storage. The machine produced far fewer emissions than were captured naturally by the plants.
edent 4y ago
I took a look at the website front page, but I couldn't see how CO2 is removed. Does the money go to planting trees? Lab diamonds? Coal buyback? I love the idea of offsetting my intensive compute use. But I'd like to know who is doing the removal and how they're doing it.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Good idea to have it on the front page. We do have more info on our partners and the relevant removal methods in the other docs[1] but I'll add some info to the homepage to make that clearer, faster. Thanks for the suggestion. [1] https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner
- mritchie712 4y ago
  this[0] is one of the more interesting approaches I've seen. No idea if it's "safe", but seems logical. 0 - https://charmindustrial.com/ https://charmindustrial.com/
- neallindsay 4y ago
  For the "How?" you need to click through to the "Removal partner" page that lists the companies that actually do the sequestration. https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner
PaulHoule 4y ago
Personally I'd care about the quality of the schemes before learning the exact API. I had to navigate around to find some partial information, it would be nice to see a table of the schemes, their attributes, and their cost. Personally I don't like the inclusion of tree planting schemes and that greensand scheme because as long as unmeasurable and uncertain schemes like that are selling low cost credits there is not going to be a market for carbon removal, just a lot of corporations running ads congratulating themselves for being "net zero" while the planet burns.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Yup, will make the methods more present on the homepage so you don't have to click around. I understand your hesitation on tree planting and mineralization however it is optional if you choose to purchase these methods. Others prefer the more nature-based CO2 removal. We do value the quality of the schemes, only picking removal over dubious credits but we will aim to put more emphasis on this.
- boringg 4y ago
  I think this is the crux of the argument. API is great in concept but validating and verifying the underlying technology that is claiming CO2e reductions is by far the bigger and harder problem. Sorry if I'm being harsh here but its similar CO2e platform accounting companies -- theres a million of those and its low cost low effort low return for actual benefits (just putting money in the pockets of the middle men). I don't see how something like this is beneficial unless its essentially sending hot leads to technologies.
  - kisamoto 4y ago
    First - we are happy you like the concept and we do agree with you. Validating and verifying is difficult at the moment. Partly because there are a lot of questionable schemes out there and partly because carbon removal as a concept is very much in its infancy. Our approach is to inspect the life cycle analysis of our partners wherever possible and try to provide as much transparency as possible - delivery times, pricing structures, purchases from partners for independent verification etc. Trust has to be earned and we hope transparency can help build trust in us and the CDR market in general. Second - it was on our original roadmap to try and bring in a standard for removals however as a for-profit this was generally received poorly. We fully support some form of indepedent third party validation for carbon removal that addresses the flaws in the existing credits system but I'm afraid this isn't our primary priority at the moment. Perhaps we could form a non-profit sister to address this in the future though...
boplicity 4y ago
I've grown increasingly skeptical of carbon removal. It strikes me as incredibly inefficient; there are much easier and cheaper gains to be made by no longer removing carbon from the ground in the first place. Further: The Carbon Removed website claims that carbon is "permanently" removed from the atmosphere, and yet lists some of the carbon removal sources as "reforestation." This doesn't add up. Forests are part of the carbon cycle, and not a way to "permanently remove" carbon from the atmosphere. Overall, I very much doubt that our society will do enough to stop climate change from drastically changing our planet. I wish that I saw initiatives like this as a source of hope, but don't see much, if any evidence to support such hope.
- zaphar 4y ago
  Given the existing headwinds I am skeptical we can make any progress without removal. The problems are a two hit combo of political will and technical limitations.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Carbon removal is definitely not mututally exclusive to reducing emissions in the first place. Avoiding emissions is cheaper and easier than removing them. But realistically we can't stop emitting tomorrow and even if we could, we have an excess of emissions in the atmosphere to address. As for hope, it's a mixed message. On one hand we have more emissions than ever. On the other we have more awareness and action than ever. Personally I lean towards hope and want to give it as much of a chance as possible. We see net-zero as a bridge to a more sustainable future. Reduce emissions and remove the unavoidable.
- 8note 4y ago
  There is only one way to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, and that's to launch it off the earth and onto a path where it could never make it back. Everything else will store carbon for a while, before eventually releasing it again A forest stores lots of carbon while it exists - there's cycles of trees dying and releasing carbon, and new trees taking their place absorbing carbon, but there is a steady state change in terms of carbon in the trees that currently exist. The carbon is only released by deforesting the area again
adamjc 4y ago
Carbon capture is not a cost-effecient use of resources. You are using fossil fuels to generate power to capture carbon.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Renewables are used whenever possible. Even if fossil fuels are used the end result is captured carbon dioxide (net negative).
  - danuker 4y ago
    In any case it is strictly a better use of renewables to directly offset fossil fuel use for electricity, rather than allow greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, then capture it back. https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/the-amount-of-energy-required-by-direct-air-carbon-capture-proves-it-is-an-exercise-in-futility/2-1-1067588 https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/the-amount-of... "Removing CO2 directly from the air requires almost as many joules as those produced by burning the fossil fuel in the first place"
    - kisamoto 4y ago
      If it were that binary - yes. But we also need to progress the efficiency of carbon capture. As the linked article states, "economies of scale and efficiency improvements would undoubtedly help" and we can only get there by continuing to develop carbon removal methods.
      - danuker 4y ago
        As long as the technology does more harm than good, we should not see it as a solution, nor even a component of the solution. Funding research for improving efficiency, maybe. But the main actionable policy NOW is detecting and reducing emissions. The US still subsidizes fossil fuel.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
noasaservice 4y ago
Reduce energy usage to reduce CO2. That means reduce internet calls, and reduce CPU utilization to do the thing. Strip the tracking crap out of your app. Reduce/eliminate all but the absolutely necessary API calls required. edit: To be honest, anything that causes bloat is what pushes the "get rid of current device and get newer device". And it's not 1 app, but dozens over bad upgrades and bad features, tracking, monetization, etc. I don't just think of the CO2. I also think of all the industrial e-waste in silicon chip making, and the fact that their cradle-to-grave cycle is a "local landfill".
- kisamoto 4y ago
  It's a good point. We want to do a real deep dive into the emissions involved in all our products and do keep an eye on both our personal and service emissions. Tracking is mostly for fast error identification at this early stage and because we're looking to (dis-)prove this as an opportunity. Thanks for your thoughts. Side note: A good read to put the 'value' of carbon dioxide into perspective is 'How Bad are Bananas' by Mike Berners Lee. He tries to give the same 'gut feeling' to carbon as we have with money (e.g. Champagne is more expensive than soda).
- seanp2k2 4y ago
  I wonder how many tons of CO2 were spent on the mid-term election cycle and associated media production / political tours / rallys / communications / junk mail / spam texts / ad campaigns.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  > ...and the fact that their cradle-to-grave cycle is a "local landfill". If only. :( Open air pits in third world countries where the equipment is burned to recover the trace valuable elements from the ash is, sadly, a lot more likely.
- KronisLV 4y ago
  > Reduce energy usage to reduce CO2. That means reduce internet calls, and reduce CPU utilization to do the thing. This is an interesting way of thinking! On one hand, all of my homelab servers now run on old AMD Athlon 200GE CPUs that would otherwise be considered e-waste in the eyes of some, but now run at 35W TDP and are enough for all of my CI/backup/development needs, in addition to being a cheap x86 option. To me, it feels like drawing 100W from the wall might be a reasonably energy efficient option, since I don't care as much about uptime (servers can sleep every night when I do), redundancy or failover (apart from additional HDDs for data and backups), cooling (they're all passively cooled with heatsinks, slightly warm up the house in the winter) or other things you'd expect in a data center. That said, this line of reasoning also implies that many languages would go out the window, if we talk about the back end: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320436353_Energy_efficiency_across_programming_languages_how_do_energy_time_and_memory_relate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320436353_Energy_ef... (or an article: https://medium.com/codex/what-are-the-greenest-programming-languages-e738774b1957 https://medium.com/codex/what-are-the-greenest-programming-l...) Python would go out the window. Ruby would go out the window. Same for something like Lua and PHP, maybe even TypeScript in the back end. You'd essentially have to use C, C++ or Rust. Maybe something like Java, C#, Go or JavaScript for your back end (or some of the other more energy efficient languages, just listed some of the more popular options here). I think that makes sense at larger scales (hundreds or thousands of instances, or more) instead of your small CRUD app, where you just want to iterate quickly and write code that's simple. Then again, Wirth's law should also not be forgotten about and it's hard for me to reason about the CO2 impact of big tech vs the collective impact of small projects. And then there's something like comparing how much energy crypto used vs data centers. Bitcoin: approx. 127 TWh/year (source: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/bitcoins-energy-usage-explained/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/bitc...) EU data centers: approx. 77 TWh/year (source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/energy-efficient-cloud-computing-technologies-and-policies-eco-friendly-cloud-market https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/energy-effi...) If nothing else, it's curious to see the numbers.
cagenut 4y ago
Your docs mention biochar but your main site and pricing don't. Also, everything seems to be phrased-for/aimed-at the buyer, do you intend to be a marketplace or to only work with some upstream supplier? [edit: nvm I found the 'removal partner' page. let me put it differently then: if i went and bought 100 acres, grew hemp or something on it, ran it through a giant biochar retort, and buried the resulting biochar >20cm deep... what would you give me for a ton?]
- kisamoto 4y ago
  We're in talk with a couple of bio-char partners yet but I'm afraid you can't purchase it yet because we don't have one onboarded. It's mentioned as we see it as a meaningful removal method (and will hopefully have a partner soon!). At this stage our vision is primarily buyer focused to spread CDR integrations. We work directly with verified suppliers with the aim to help the buyer bring carbon removal to their business and their customers. In future this could evolve into a marketplace however we'd need to ensure the quality (permanence, additionality etc.) of the suppliers.
husainfazel 4y ago
I wonder what the carbon cost of generating the certificates and sending/emailing them is?
- kisamoto 4y ago
  We're working on that with the end goal of using our own API to remove the carbon footprint of them. Plus for customers where it's not relevant we'll offer a fully on-demand model where nothing is sent but available for generation through the customer account.
bamboozled 4y ago
Don’t listen to the naysaying, it’s a cool idea, thanks I’ll be looking forward to using it.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Thank you so much! We know that carbon removal (and climate change in general) is a controversial topic so we really appreciate your kind words.
RobotToaster 4y ago
GWAAS: greenwashing as a service.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Why do you perceive carbon removal as greenwashing?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
Antieji 4y ago
I think there is a place for frontier carbon removals, but I agree with other commenters that it's not as effective as some of the (much much cheaper) solutions that we already have. There's nothing wrong with incentivising carbon avoidance, deforestation etc while also keeping an eye on burgeoning solutions. Another caution is that most removals are selling you forwards, not credits. So you can't actually claim you are offsetting your carbon today. Full disclosure, I work for Fenix Carbon (www.fenixcarbon.com) where we're specifically focusing on high quality offsets and connecting buyers directly to the project developers.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
xyst 4y ago
feels like putting a bucket under a waterfall to be honest. For what it's worth, tech behind it looks kind of cool. We need leaders around the world to move off of cheap energy (ie, oil and gas) and subsidize it for developing countries. We need strict penalties for producers and we need to get off of animal products.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Agreed that there needs to be changes on all fronts. At the moment we're really pushing for the voluntary market. It's not a mandatory regulation but there are companies and individuals who do want to do something but don't have easy access. We're trying to make CDR as accessible as possible with the hope of the side effect of raising awareness, increasing demand and causing more people to vote for leaders who value sustainable policy.
_yb2s 4y ago
This is awesome! I can't believe all of the negative comments about lowering the barrier to do something this important. We only have one earth, it is priceless because we cannot live without it, and we are really messing it up with massive amounts of CO2. It really doesn't matter much how expensive, difficult, or inefficient removing the CO2 is... it must be done, we have no other choice. Like any tech, it will get better over time when more and more money goes into it.
- Syonyk 4y ago
  "It has to be done" isn't helped by "throwing money at schemes that don't do what they claim to do on the tin." Especially when, by people doing that, they feel that they've "solved the problem" and can go on consuming as they have been. To a certain group of people, "carbon offsets" are more or less the old church "indulgences" - permission to {sin, emit} with the consequences covered. And if that money is doing nothing but enriching some people in the middle while not actually doing anything useful ("We'll not cut down this forest... that we we weren't planning to cut down anyway", or "Sure, we'll protect this land... and go clearcut the next mile over because we don't care where the ranch goes"), it's worse than nothing - because you've now "granted permission to emit" while not actually offsetting anything. That's not how it should be, but it's certainly how a lot of people perceive it to be. "Oh, it's fine, it's carbon neutral, I have an offset subscription" vs having to actually face that their carbon emissions aren't being offset. So I don't think it's fair to say that people asking questions about "Is the money being paid doing what it's supposed to actually do?" are pro-carbon or something. There's a lot of outright fraud in that space, and an API that smooths the friction of larger fraud isn't something useful. If you're going the wrong way to your stated destination, going that wrong way faster isn't helpful. Now, can I have all your surplus money to put into solar farms somewhere? Don't ask if they're in coal heavy territory or somewhere with a bunch of nuclear /hydro, it doesn't matter, right? We have to do everything we possibly can! ... except the one thing that would make a difference, which is consume radically less.
  - _yb2s 4y ago
    I don't understand how this criticism applies to OPs service. Why do you think the emissions aren't really truly being offset? It looks like they provide 5 different CO2 capture services through different partners, and the projects methods and details are widely available. You can choose any desired ratio of the 5. Of these 5, 4 of them seem to be methods that, for a cost, directly and physically remove a known quantity of CO2 from the atmosphere. Only one, Forestation, seems to be potentially prone to the type of ambiguities you mention, where the intended impact never actually occurs, but this depends on if it's actually being done properly. The partner they are using is onetreeplanted, which seems to be endorsed by or partnered with a lot of credible environmental organizations.
erulabs 4y ago
Great idea, wishing you luck! While carbon removal today is inefficient, it's not set in stone to always be that way. For example, olivine is super interesting - one of the most abundant minerals on earth - it absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere passively when ground down into small pieces. The Cascade Mtns in Washington state are full of the stuff and not far from the beach. The ocean grinds rocks into sand all day with zero carbon costs. With the right combination of luck and strategy, I don't see why some forms of carbon removal can't eventually be extremely cheap. It might be the greenest thing we can do to literally turn our beaches green! This is nice for folks like me who make business SaaS so we can add a nice line item "removes some carbon!" to the checkout list. I know to some, that's probably disgusting and cynical, but I strongly prefer surrounding myself with optimists, so, it works for me!
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Thanks a lot - it's really motivating to read comments like this that align perfectly with what we're trying to achieve. If you'd like to try us out, need help or just want to chat sustainability my direct email is in the OP and I'd be happy to hear from you :)
simpsond 4y ago
How do you verify that the removal is done correctly / accurately? Is that based on trust with the partner doing the removal?
- moffkalast 4y ago
  The market for carbon offsets isn't really regulated and the partner registries aren't accountable to anyone nor does anything prevent you from making one yourself. Needless to say they aren't exactly what you'd call reliable. Half the time you're paying someone with a golf course to not chop down trees that they weren't going to remove anyway. There is a fundamental conflict of interest with this as most corporations are trying to buy as many offsets for as little of an investment as possible to present themselves as net zero, so whoever is good at marketing and manages to provide a better (and likely impossible) ratio of offset/pay will get most business. As such it's a feedback loop that rewards competent scammers and cuts out fair parties for being uncompetitive. Without proof that you can see for yourself as to where the funding is used and what the actual physical results are I wouldn't trust anything. Perhaps that's something that OP can provide.
lob_it 4y ago
The more negligent and incompetent methane emissions become, the more carbon credits will be devalued. Do you consider methane leaks as a 10 year investment plan? There is no tracing where the co2 came from once ch4 turns into co2 (we've had methane leaks for decades). :) https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/gwp-star-better-way-measuring-methane-and-how-it-impacts-global-temperatures https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/gwp-star-better-way-mea... https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/MethaneMatters https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/MethaneMatters https://www.epa.gov/natural-gas-star-program/estimates-methane-emissions-segment-united-states https://www.epa.gov/natural-gas-star-program/estimates-metha... The opportunities for fraud have already been proven. There is no money (gdp) in preventing methane leaks and we get the upside of higher temperatures and carbon credit manipulation. Carbon credits schemes profit from neglect. The "save the world types" just chased co2......
- exp1orer 4y ago
  If I'm reading your comment correctly, you may not be aware that methane abatement is also eligible for carbon crediting programs, which operate under the framework of "global warming potential" (GWP) to translate different gases into "CO2-equivalent tons" (tCO2e).
  - lob_it 4y ago
    I put the comment in-between the lines :) https://apnews.com/article/inflation-science-technology-government-and-politics-texas-ed246fb005e484962db30403ecc31daf https://apnews.com/article/inflation-science-technology-gove... I'm actually not a climate change warrior either, I just read a lot ;)
chachra 4y ago
Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Remove!
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Yup - in that order!
RantyDave 4y ago
$5/tonne for forestation? I did the numbers - some time ago so my memory is hazy at best - but I'm pretty sure we ended up at one big tree being roughly one tonne of carbon, and big trees are not five dollars a pop. Have we not included the cost of the land?
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Forestation can be quite controversial so we err very heavily on the safe side. Our calculation is on the site[1] but I'll copy it here for clarity as well: * We use an average CO₂ sequestration rate of 10.875kg of CO₂/tree/year. * We only take the first 5 years of the trees' carbon sequestration into account. What gets sequestered after this is a gift to our planet and we don’t sell that. * To mitigate chances of loss due to disease or fires we double plant (meaning we buy double the number of trees that we need to). Therefore for every two trees we purchase we assign a removal value of 54.375kg (10.875kg * 5 years). For one tonne of carbon that is (1000kg / 54.375kg) * 2 trees = 37 trees (rounded). At $0.15 per tree that's $5.5. [1] https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-method#forestation https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-method#forestation
KronisLV 4y ago
This seems like a really cool idea! Making it easy to do good is almost always a wise choice. Personally, up until now I've been subscribed to Wren to offset some of my personal CO2 footprint and get a little bit more educated about climate adjacent topics: https://www.wren.co/ https://www.wren.co/ It's not really something you'd use in an automated fashion, but rather a yearly subscription, so not comparable against the solution in the post 1:1, but it still might be of interest to some. Of course, one can also talk about the impact of personal decisions vs those of corporations and the need for legislation and so on, but I'll take what's achievable for me, even if I do a little good.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  Thanks for the praise - we appreciate it. We know Wren and in fact have a similar project for carbon removal called "Carbon Removed"[1]. We love the idea of a subscription to remove your footprint or even just a one-time removal to compensate for a long-distance flight. On the conversation of personal versus corporations - we agree that a system/societal change is required but believe this will only with all of us beginning to change our ways and have these conversations with our networks. Society is made up of individuals after all :) Thanks to you for contributing to a sustainable future. [1] https://carbonremoved.com https://carbonremoved.com
earlyriser 4y ago
Hi Ewan, Fabienne. I have been following since a while (Ewan, we exchanged some emails at some points). This API is great. Somehow I forgot to comment a week ago. Some feedback. It's clear it's an API/Github project, but it's not clear how to get an account. It feels like I arrived to Stripe's docs, but without a path to go to the Stripe page where I can get an account. The fixed fee makes it feel less Stripe-ish, less like an infrastructure that just "works" (like tap water) and then the user needs to time the system, instead of simply use it without friction. (I'm guessing this if because you're starting). More clarity, maybe a sample on the certificates. A video, gifs, illustrations on the homepage would be great. But this is great, and I know how difficult is to push something like this. I will continue to see you grow. Congrats on the launch.

94 points by kisamoto 4y ago

drlobster 4y ago

Pure ideology

kisamoto 4y ago
But it's worth trying.
vegcel 4y ago
I mean, if a consumer wants to round up to the nearest dollar on their online purchase of Tyson Frozen Pork Cutlets 8 Pcs (which most certainly has a calculable carbon footprint caused from deforestation) to plant some trees to offset that deforestation, why not?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

truthwhisperer 4y ago

Lariscus 4y ago

Carbon capture isn't real (as advertised). If you take green energy out of the supply to capture carbon, a carbon producing power plant will have to make up for it. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJslrTT-Yhc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJslrTT-Yhc

kisamoto 4y ago
Yes, we need to decarbonize. But that doesn't mean we can't also try to accelerate the removal of carbon from our atmosphere.
- Moissanite 4y ago
  Eventually, sure - but in the short term, carbon removal is an inefficient way of allocating resources.
  - kisamoto 4y ago
    But we have to allocate some resources to start the development process now (and hopefully make it more efficient and effective).
- cookingrobot 4y ago
  You have a machine that if you turn it on, it removes carbon from the air. But, to power it you release a greater amount of carbon into the air. Should you turn on the machine? No, you should leave it off. Only when your power sources are green should you turn on the machine.
  - kisamoto 4y ago
    The machines must result in more capture & storage than they produce - net negative emissions. For example, using a machine to heat waste biomass with fast pyrolysis turns the biomass into bio-oil. Bio-oil can then be pumped underground resulting in long-term, stable storage. The machine produced far fewer emissions than were captured naturally by the plants.

edent 4y ago

I took a look at the website front page, but I couldn't see how CO2 is removed. Does the money go to planting trees? Lab diamonds? Coal buyback? I love the idea of offsetting my intensive compute use. But I'd like to know who is doing the removal and how they're doing it.

kisamoto 4y ago
Good idea to have it on the front page. We do have more info on our partners and the relevant removal methods in the other docs[1] but I'll add some info to the homepage to make that clearer, faster. Thanks for the suggestion. [1] https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner
mritchie712 4y ago
this[0] is one of the more interesting approaches I've seen. No idea if it's "safe", but seems logical. 0 - https://charmindustrial.com/ https://charmindustrial.com/
neallindsay 4y ago
For the "How?" you need to click through to the "Removal partner" page that lists the companies that actually do the sequestration. https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner

PaulHoule 4y ago

Personally I'd care about the quality of the schemes before learning the exact API. I had to navigate around to find some partial information, it would be nice to see a table of the schemes, their attributes, and their cost. Personally I don't like the inclusion of tree planting schemes and that greensand scheme because as long as unmeasurable and uncertain schemes like that are selling low cost credits there is not going to be a market for carbon removal, just a lot of corporations running ads congratulating themselves for being "net zero" while the planet burns.

kisamoto 4y ago
Yup, will make the methods more present on the homepage so you don't have to click around. I understand your hesitation on tree planting and mineralization however it is optional if you choose to purchase these methods. Others prefer the more nature-based CO2 removal. We do value the quality of the schemes, only picking removal over dubious credits but we will aim to put more emphasis on this.
boringg 4y ago
I think this is the crux of the argument. API is great in concept but validating and verifying the underlying technology that is claiming CO2e reductions is by far the bigger and harder problem. Sorry if I'm being harsh here but its similar CO2e platform accounting companies -- theres a million of those and its low cost low effort low return for actual benefits (just putting money in the pockets of the middle men). I don't see how something like this is beneficial unless its essentially sending hot leads to technologies.
- kisamoto 4y ago
  First - we are happy you like the concept and we do agree with you. Validating and verifying is difficult at the moment. Partly because there are a lot of questionable schemes out there and partly because carbon removal as a concept is very much in its infancy. Our approach is to inspect the life cycle analysis of our partners wherever possible and try to provide as much transparency as possible - delivery times, pricing structures, purchases from partners for independent verification etc. Trust has to be earned and we hope transparency can help build trust in us and the CDR market in general. Second - it was on our original roadmap to try and bring in a standard for removals however as a for-profit this was generally received poorly. We fully support some form of indepedent third party validation for carbon removal that addresses the flaws in the existing credits system but I'm afraid this isn't our primary priority at the moment. Perhaps we could form a non-profit sister to address this in the future though...

boplicity 4y ago

I've grown increasingly skeptical of carbon removal. It strikes me as incredibly inefficient; there are much easier and cheaper gains to be made by no longer removing carbon from the ground in the first place. Further: The Carbon Removed website claims that carbon is "permanently" removed from the atmosphere, and yet lists some of the carbon removal sources as "reforestation." This doesn't add up. Forests are part of the carbon cycle, and not a way to "permanently remove" carbon from the atmosphere. Overall, I very much doubt that our society will do enough to stop climate change from drastically changing our planet. I wish that I saw initiatives like this as a source of hope, but don't see much, if any evidence to support such hope.

zaphar 4y ago
Given the existing headwinds I am skeptical we can make any progress without removal. The problems are a two hit combo of political will and technical limitations.
kisamoto 4y ago
Carbon removal is definitely not mututally exclusive to reducing emissions in the first place. Avoiding emissions is cheaper and easier than removing them. But realistically we can't stop emitting tomorrow and even if we could, we have an excess of emissions in the atmosphere to address. As for hope, it's a mixed message. On one hand we have more emissions than ever. On the other we have more awareness and action than ever. Personally I lean towards hope and want to give it as much of a chance as possible. We see net-zero as a bridge to a more sustainable future. Reduce emissions and remove the unavoidable.
8note 4y ago
There is only one way to permanently remove carbon from the atmosphere, and that's to launch it off the earth and onto a path where it could never make it back. Everything else will store carbon for a while, before eventually releasing it again A forest stores lots of carbon while it exists - there's cycles of trees dying and releasing carbon, and new trees taking their place absorbing carbon, but there is a steady state change in terms of carbon in the trees that currently exist. The carbon is only released by deforesting the area again

adamjc 4y ago

Carbon capture is not a cost-effecient use of resources. You are using fossil fuels to generate power to capture carbon.

kisamoto 4y ago
Renewables are used whenever possible. Even if fossil fuels are used the end result is captured carbon dioxide (net negative).
- danuker 4y ago
  In any case it is strictly a better use of renewables to directly offset fossil fuel use for electricity, rather than allow greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, then capture it back. https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/the-amount-of-energy-required-by-direct-air-carbon-capture-proves-it-is-an-exercise-in-futility/2-1-1067588 https://www.rechargenews.com/energy-transition/the-amount-of... "Removing CO2 directly from the air requires almost as many joules as those produced by burning the fossil fuel in the first place"
  - kisamoto 4y ago
    If it were that binary - yes. But we also need to progress the efficiency of carbon capture. As the linked article states, "economies of scale and efficiency improvements would undoubtedly help" and we can only get there by continuing to develop carbon removal methods.
    - danuker 4y ago
      As long as the technology does more harm than good, we should not see it as a solution, nor even a component of the solution. Funding research for improving efficiency, maybe. But the main actionable policy NOW is detecting and reducing emissions. The US still subsidizes fossil fuel.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

noasaservice 4y ago

Reduce energy usage to reduce CO2. That means reduce internet calls, and reduce CPU utilization to do the thing. Strip the tracking crap out of your app. Reduce/eliminate all but the absolutely necessary API calls required. edit: To be honest, anything that causes bloat is what pushes the "get rid of current device and get newer device". And it's not 1 app, but dozens over bad upgrades and bad features, tracking, monetization, etc. I don't just think of the CO2. I also think of all the industrial e-waste in silicon chip making, and the fact that their cradle-to-grave cycle is a "local landfill".

kisamoto 4y ago
It's a good point. We want to do a real deep dive into the emissions involved in all our products and do keep an eye on both our personal and service emissions. Tracking is mostly for fast error identification at this early stage and because we're looking to (dis-)prove this as an opportunity. Thanks for your thoughts. Side note: A good read to put the 'value' of carbon dioxide into perspective is 'How Bad are Bananas' by Mike Berners Lee. He tries to give the same 'gut feeling' to carbon as we have with money (e.g. Champagne is more expensive than soda).
seanp2k2 4y ago
I wonder how many tons of CO2 were spent on the mid-term election cycle and associated media production / political tours / rallys / communications / junk mail / spam texts / ad campaigns.
Syonyk 4y ago
> ...and the fact that their cradle-to-grave cycle is a "local landfill". If only. :( Open air pits in third world countries where the equipment is burned to recover the trace valuable elements from the ash is, sadly, a lot more likely.
KronisLV 4y ago
> Reduce energy usage to reduce CO2. That means reduce internet calls, and reduce CPU utilization to do the thing. This is an interesting way of thinking! On one hand, all of my homelab servers now run on old AMD Athlon 200GE CPUs that would otherwise be considered e-waste in the eyes of some, but now run at 35W TDP and are enough for all of my CI/backup/development needs, in addition to being a cheap x86 option. To me, it feels like drawing 100W from the wall might be a reasonably energy efficient option, since I don't care as much about uptime (servers can sleep every night when I do), redundancy or failover (apart from additional HDDs for data and backups), cooling (they're all passively cooled with heatsinks, slightly warm up the house in the winter) or other things you'd expect in a data center. That said, this line of reasoning also implies that many languages would go out the window, if we talk about the back end: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320436353_Energy_efficiency_across_programming_languages_how_do_energy_time_and_memory_relate https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320436353_Energy_ef... (or an article: https://medium.com/codex/what-are-the-greenest-programming-languages-e738774b1957 https://medium.com/codex/what-are-the-greenest-programming-l...) Python would go out the window. Ruby would go out the window. Same for something like Lua and PHP, maybe even TypeScript in the back end. You'd essentially have to use C, C++ or Rust. Maybe something like Java, C#, Go or JavaScript for your back end (or some of the other more energy efficient languages, just listed some of the more popular options here). I think that makes sense at larger scales (hundreds or thousands of instances, or more) instead of your small CRUD app, where you just want to iterate quickly and write code that's simple. Then again, Wirth's law should also not be forgotten about and it's hard for me to reason about the CO2 impact of big tech vs the collective impact of small projects. And then there's something like comparing how much energy crypto used vs data centers. Bitcoin: approx. 127 TWh/year (source: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/bitcoins-energy-usage-explained/ https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/bitc...) EU data centers: approx. 77 TWh/year (source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/energy-efficient-cloud-computing-technologies-and-policies-eco-friendly-cloud-market https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/energy-effi...) If nothing else, it's curious to see the numbers.

cagenut 4y ago

Your docs mention biochar but your main site and pricing don't. Also, everything seems to be phrased-for/aimed-at the buyer, do you intend to be a marketplace or to only work with some upstream supplier? [edit: nvm I found the 'removal partner' page. let me put it differently then: if i went and bought 100 acres, grew hemp or something on it, ran it through a giant biochar retort, and buried the resulting biochar >20cm deep... what would you give me for a ton?]

kisamoto 4y ago
We're in talk with a couple of bio-char partners yet but I'm afraid you can't purchase it yet because we don't have one onboarded. It's mentioned as we see it as a meaningful removal method (and will hopefully have a partner soon!). At this stage our vision is primarily buyer focused to spread CDR integrations. We work directly with verified suppliers with the aim to help the buyer bring carbon removal to their business and their customers. In future this could evolve into a marketplace however we'd need to ensure the quality (permanence, additionality etc.) of the suppliers.

husainfazel 4y ago

I wonder what the carbon cost of generating the certificates and sending/emailing them is?

kisamoto 4y ago
We're working on that with the end goal of using our own API to remove the carbon footprint of them. Plus for customers where it's not relevant we'll offer a fully on-demand model where nothing is sent but available for generation through the customer account.

bamboozled 4y ago

Don’t listen to the naysaying, it’s a cool idea, thanks I’ll be looking forward to using it.

kisamoto 4y ago
Thank you so much! We know that carbon removal (and climate change in general) is a controversial topic so we really appreciate your kind words.

RobotToaster 4y ago

GWAAS: greenwashing as a service.

kisamoto 4y ago
Why do you perceive carbon removal as greenwashing?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

Antieji 4y ago

I think there is a place for frontier carbon removals, but I agree with other commenters that it's not as effective as some of the (much much cheaper) solutions that we already have. There's nothing wrong with incentivising carbon avoidance, deforestation etc while also keeping an eye on burgeoning solutions. Another caution is that most removals are selling you forwards, not credits. So you can't actually claim you are offsetting your carbon today. Full disclosure, I work for Fenix Carbon (www.fenixcarbon.com) where we're specifically focusing on high quality offsets and connecting buyers directly to the project developers.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

xyst 4y ago

feels like putting a bucket under a waterfall to be honest. For what it's worth, tech behind it looks kind of cool. We need leaders around the world to move off of cheap energy (ie, oil and gas) and subsidize it for developing countries. We need strict penalties for producers and we need to get off of animal products.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
kisamoto 4y ago
Agreed that there needs to be changes on all fronts. At the moment we're really pushing for the voluntary market. It's not a mandatory regulation but there are companies and individuals who do want to do something but don't have easy access. We're trying to make CDR as accessible as possible with the hope of the side effect of raising awareness, increasing demand and causing more people to vote for leaders who value sustainable policy.

_yb2s 4y ago

This is awesome! I can't believe all of the negative comments about lowering the barrier to do something this important. We only have one earth, it is priceless because we cannot live without it, and we are really messing it up with massive amounts of CO2. It really doesn't matter much how expensive, difficult, or inefficient removing the CO2 is... it must be done, we have no other choice. Like any tech, it will get better over time when more and more money goes into it.

Syonyk 4y ago
"It has to be done" isn't helped by "throwing money at schemes that don't do what they claim to do on the tin." Especially when, by people doing that, they feel that they've "solved the problem" and can go on consuming as they have been. To a certain group of people, "carbon offsets" are more or less the old church "indulgences" - permission to {sin, emit} with the consequences covered. And if that money is doing nothing but enriching some people in the middle while not actually doing anything useful ("We'll not cut down this forest... that we we weren't planning to cut down anyway", or "Sure, we'll protect this land... and go clearcut the next mile over because we don't care where the ranch goes"), it's worse than nothing - because you've now "granted permission to emit" while not actually offsetting anything. That's not how it should be, but it's certainly how a lot of people perceive it to be. "Oh, it's fine, it's carbon neutral, I have an offset subscription" vs having to actually face that their carbon emissions aren't being offset. So I don't think it's fair to say that people asking questions about "Is the money being paid doing what it's supposed to actually do?" are pro-carbon or something. There's a lot of outright fraud in that space, and an API that smooths the friction of larger fraud isn't something useful. If you're going the wrong way to your stated destination, going that wrong way faster isn't helpful. Now, can I have all your surplus money to put into solar farms somewhere? Don't ask if they're in coal heavy territory or somewhere with a bunch of nuclear /hydro, it doesn't matter, right? We have to do everything we possibly can! ... except the one thing that would make a difference, which is consume radically less.
- _yb2s 4y ago
  I don't understand how this criticism applies to OPs service. Why do you think the emissions aren't really truly being offset? It looks like they provide 5 different CO2 capture services through different partners, and the projects methods and details are widely available. You can choose any desired ratio of the 5. Of these 5, 4 of them seem to be methods that, for a cost, directly and physically remove a known quantity of CO2 from the atmosphere. Only one, Forestation, seems to be potentially prone to the type of ambiguities you mention, where the intended impact never actually occurs, but this depends on if it's actually being done properly. The partner they are using is onetreeplanted, which seems to be endorsed by or partnered with a lot of credible environmental organizations.

erulabs 4y ago

Great idea, wishing you luck! While carbon removal today is inefficient, it's not set in stone to always be that way. For example, olivine is super interesting - one of the most abundant minerals on earth - it absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere passively when ground down into small pieces. The Cascade Mtns in Washington state are full of the stuff and not far from the beach. The ocean grinds rocks into sand all day with zero carbon costs. With the right combination of luck and strategy, I don't see why some forms of carbon removal can't eventually be extremely cheap. It might be the greenest thing we can do to literally turn our beaches green! This is nice for folks like me who make business SaaS so we can add a nice line item "removes some carbon!" to the checkout list. I know to some, that's probably disgusting and cynical, but I strongly prefer surrounding myself with optimists, so, it works for me!

kisamoto 4y ago
Thanks a lot - it's really motivating to read comments like this that align perfectly with what we're trying to achieve. If you'd like to try us out, need help or just want to chat sustainability my direct email is in the OP and I'd be happy to hear from you :)

simpsond 4y ago

How do you verify that the removal is done correctly / accurately? Is that based on trust with the partner doing the removal?

moffkalast 4y ago
The market for carbon offsets isn't really regulated and the partner registries aren't accountable to anyone nor does anything prevent you from making one yourself. Needless to say they aren't exactly what you'd call reliable. Half the time you're paying someone with a golf course to not chop down trees that they weren't going to remove anyway. There is a fundamental conflict of interest with this as most corporations are trying to buy as many offsets for as little of an investment as possible to present themselves as net zero, so whoever is good at marketing and manages to provide a better (and likely impossible) ratio of offset/pay will get most business. As such it's a feedback loop that rewards competent scammers and cuts out fair parties for being uncompetitive. Without proof that you can see for yourself as to where the funding is used and what the actual physical results are I wouldn't trust anything. Perhaps that's something that OP can provide.

lob_it 4y ago

The more negligent and incompetent methane emissions become, the more carbon credits will be devalued. Do you consider methane leaks as a 10 year investment plan? There is no tracing where the co2 came from once ch4 turns into co2 (we've had methane leaks for decades). :) https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/gwp-star-better-way-measuring-methane-and-how-it-impacts-global-temperatures https://clear.ucdavis.edu/explainers/gwp-star-better-way-mea... https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/MethaneMatters https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/MethaneMatters https://www.epa.gov/natural-gas-star-program/estimates-methane-emissions-segment-united-states https://www.epa.gov/natural-gas-star-program/estimates-metha... The opportunities for fraud have already been proven. There is no money (gdp) in preventing methane leaks and we get the upside of higher temperatures and carbon credit manipulation. Carbon credits schemes profit from neglect. The "save the world types" just chased co2......

exp1orer 4y ago
If I'm reading your comment correctly, you may not be aware that methane abatement is also eligible for carbon crediting programs, which operate under the framework of "global warming potential" (GWP) to translate different gases into "CO2-equivalent tons" (tCO2e).
- lob_it 4y ago
  I put the comment in-between the lines :) https://apnews.com/article/inflation-science-technology-government-and-politics-texas-ed246fb005e484962db30403ecc31daf https://apnews.com/article/inflation-science-technology-gove... I'm actually not a climate change warrior either, I just read a lot ;)

chachra 4y ago

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, Remove!

kisamoto 4y ago
Yup - in that order!

RantyDave 4y ago

$5/tonne for forestation? I did the numbers - some time ago so my memory is hazy at best - but I'm pretty sure we ended up at one big tree being roughly one tonne of carbon, and big trees are not five dollars a pop. Have we not included the cost of the land?

kisamoto 4y ago
Forestation can be quite controversial so we err very heavily on the safe side. Our calculation is on the site[1] but I'll copy it here for clarity as well: * We use an average CO₂ sequestration rate of 10.875kg of CO₂/tree/year. * We only take the first 5 years of the trees' carbon sequestration into account. What gets sequestered after this is a gift to our planet and we don’t sell that. * To mitigate chances of loss due to disease or fires we double plant (meaning we buy double the number of trees that we need to). Therefore for every two trees we purchase we assign a removal value of 54.375kg (10.875kg * 5 years). For one tonne of carbon that is (1000kg / 54.375kg) * 2 trees = 37 trees (rounded). At $0.15 per tree that's $5.5. [1] https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-method#forestation https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-method#forestation

KronisLV 4y ago

This seems like a really cool idea! Making it easy to do good is almost always a wise choice. Personally, up until now I've been subscribed to Wren to offset some of my personal CO2 footprint and get a little bit more educated about climate adjacent topics: https://www.wren.co/ https://www.wren.co/ It's not really something you'd use in an automated fashion, but rather a yearly subscription, so not comparable against the solution in the post 1:1, but it still might be of interest to some. Of course, one can also talk about the impact of personal decisions vs those of corporations and the need for legislation and so on, but I'll take what's achievable for me, even if I do a little good.

kisamoto 4y ago
Thanks for the praise - we appreciate it. We know Wren and in fact have a similar project for carbon removal called "Carbon Removed"[1]. We love the idea of a subscription to remove your footprint or even just a one-time removal to compensate for a long-distance flight. On the conversation of personal versus corporations - we agree that a system/societal change is required but believe this will only with all of us beginning to change our ways and have these conversations with our networks. Society is made up of individuals after all :) Thanks to you for contributing to a sustainable future. [1] https://carbonremoved.com https://carbonremoved.com

earlyriser 4y ago

Hi Ewan, Fabienne. I have been following since a while (Ewan, we exchanged some emails at some points). This API is great. Somehow I forgot to comment a week ago. Some feedback. It's clear it's an API/Github project, but it's not clear how to get an account. It feels like I arrived to Stripe's docs, but without a path to go to the Stripe page where I can get an account. The fixed fee makes it feel less Stripe-ish, less like an infrastructure that just "works" (like tap water) and then the user needs to time the system, instead of simply use it without friction. (I'm guessing this if because you're starting). More clarity, maybe a sample on the certificates. A video, gifs, illustrations on the homepage would be great. But this is great, and I know how difficult is to push something like this. I will continue to see you grow. Congrats on the launch.