[valw]

If you want make your money work against climate change, I wouldn't recommend this service - it's simply not competitive compared to voluntary carbon markets, in which well-certified projects can offset a teqCO2 for less than 10 USD (that's 100 times more efficient carbon offsetting than ClimeWorks, for high-end projects), and do so with additional co-benefits in terms of biodiversity and livelihood of local communities. REDD+ projects such as https://www.standfortrees.org are good examples of that.

The differentiating factor of this service is that it's "Permanent: turn CO2 into stone". That benefit is mostly psychological, not pragmatic. Aside from that, the 'small land and water usage' metric is also biased. Yes, rainforest protection projects use land, and you know what else they do? Protect rainforests!

It's also not that promising as a CCS technology. Just like energy, CO2 is most efficiently captured where its concentration is highest - that is in power plants, steelmaking plants, etc.

I know we love revolutionary startups and shiny new things here, but there are scientific bodies and certification standards which have already done the work well in this space, looking at the problem with a holistic approach and with numbers.

I know people mean well here, but for climate change what matters is results, not intentions - so run the numbers before you throw your money out of the window. Cool startup branding is not what makes a project impactful.

[dwild]

Why not both?

Planting tree is nice, but theses solutions you give have limits, which will only make the cost higher. This is a technological solution, sure it has limits too, but its cost will only go down by being done more efficiently and at one point, we will need to do theses things too, thus the sooner we reach lower price, the better we will be.

As you said, it's 100x more expensive, thus no industrial client will consider this solution yet, but you can afford it. Be the first stone that allow them to become 50x more expensive, etc...

Being client to them show also that we are ready to put money where our mouth are. That push toward more investment in theses spheres because there's money in the game. Investing into planting trees at 1/100 the cost... well except exploiting even more cheap labor... there's no money to be made.

[valw]

There's a common misconception that voluntary carbon market projects solely consist of planting trees - that's not the case. There are also forest protection projects, energy transition projects, and so on. ClimeWorks' project could be certified as well... but then carbon credit buyers would realize it's just less effective than the alternatives. I guess that's why ClimeWorks's go-to-market strategy is 'high-tech' branding: they go after technology lovers rather rather than informed investors.

Also see what I mentioned about CCS. AFAIK, the most promising CCS technology consist of burning biomass in power plants, and then using geological confinement of the sequestered carbon. The reason it's more effective, as I mentioned, is because the carbon is captured where its concentration is high - less entropy to fight.

It's absolutely true that current offsetting methodologies won't always stay so cheap - and as prices rise, new innovative methodologies will develop. Buying carbon credits is not an impediment to innovation; but it has the advantage of rewarding projects for being efficient, rather than "technologically cool".

[dwild]

> There are also forest protection projects

Same constraint as planting tree... at one point there's no more forest to protect (or the cost of protecting one just increase). It will just get more expensive.

> energy transition projects

This one is interesting, again, will just get more expensive with time, but that one I never seen any project that allow to buy carbon credit for theses kinds of projects.

> AFAIK, the most promising CCS technology consist of burning biomass in power plants, and then using geological confinement of the sequestered carbon.

Where can I offset my CO2 emission that way?

I don't care about investing in a solution that has no future. If what I pay for it means that it will just make the next ton more expensive, when it's already hard to make people pay for it already, I'm not for that solution.

Sure that one is 100x more expensive, but the cost can only go down with scale, and if it doesn't, well it will just push other technological solution to be developed because it's a proof there's money in sustainable solutions.

[valw]

> This one is interesting, again, will just get more expensive with time, but that one I never seen any project that allow to buy carbon credit for theses kinds of projects.

And yet Gold Standard reports renewable energy projects are a high share of their pipeline: https://www.goldstandard.org/sites/default/files/documents/m...

> Where can I offset my CO2 emission that way?

That's still at an experimental stage AFAIK (like most CCS technology), so unfortunately not yet available for such purposes.

> I don't care about investing in a solution that has no future. If what I pay for it means that it will just make the next ton more expensive, when it's already hard to make people pay for it already, I'm not for that solution.

A more optimistic way to look at it is as such: if we commit to offsetting our emissions by buying carbon credits, rising prices will pressure us towards reducing our emissions.

That's where we want to be headed, because there is NO future where emissions remain high and are totally offset.

I would encourage you to rethink your approach as follows: invest in the transition, not in the destination.

> Sure that one is 100x more expensive, but the cost can only go down with scale, and if it doesn't, well it will just push other technological solution to be developed because it's a proof there's money in sustainable solutions.

What makes you so sure that ClimeWork's solution can scale better? Their solution requires huge energy expenditures, and its not like we have a lot of geologically favourable sites for their solution.

If you want long-term innovation, why not fund general CCS research instead? It's much more likely to yield impactful and well-thought solutions.

[dwild]

> Gold Standard reports renewable energy projects

How does renewable energy project have anything to do with athmospheric carbon capture? It's a way to lower carbon emission into the atmosphere sure, but we got 100 years of CO2 to take out of it too. I also already do everything I can to go toward renewable energy.

> That's still at an experimental stage AFAIK

Okay... so not an alternative for me right?

> A more optimistic way to look at it is as such: if we commit to offsetting our emissions by buying carbon credits, rising prices will pressure us towards reducing our emissions.

We aren't all the same person you know? We are currently talking about someone that can afford 100x the price to offset his emission and is ready to do it. I'm not too far from being that person, I'm already trying to reduce my emission, why not both?

I have nothing against planting tree, it's an amazing solution, but its limit are well below what needed right now.

People don't want to pay more right now, it's a HUGE issue. Go look at Canada carbon taxes, most of the provinces are currently fighting it in court, they are putting sticker on gas stations to tell people that they'll have to pay hundred more. 100% of that tax which is MUCH lower than the true environmental cost of that CO2 will be used to refund people. I'm already ready to pay more, 100x even, but planting more tree won't make theses people more likely to offset their emission if it make it more costly, that solution though not only offset my emission, but also invest into a potential solution and show there's a market for atmospheric carbon capture.

> That's where we want to be headed, because there is NO future where emissions remain high and are totally offset.

Which come back to my first answer, why not both. There's no future where we don't take out the CO2 already in the atmosphere either. I have seen multiple article talking about how the current warming is enough already that what get naturally released from glacier melting is more than what we release. Something being too expensive is no longer a reason to not research toward a solution, we need to research them all.

> I would encourage you to rethink your approach as follows: invest in the transition, not in the destination.

I never talked about destination, I talk about what we will need during the transition.

>What makes you so sure that ClimeWork's solution can scale better?

Where did I say their solution will be the right one? Excluding it from being the right one is a much bigger issue. What I'm sure about is that if there's a solution that scale better, but also allow to scrub atmospheric level, but still not viable, seeing any investment into ClimeWork's solution will make them much more likely to go toward that, instead of waiting for tree planting initiative to become costly enough to finally justify researching their costlier solution.

>If you want long-term innovation, why not fund general CCS research instead?

As a private individual earning in the mid 5 figures, that's the best I can do. I can surely pay 100x more carbon capture than I consume, but that's not a viable solution if it will just make it costlier for someone else, and won't actually solve the issue. Instead I vote with my wallet, and that's one that seems viable to me.