Nan Ransohoff
@nanransohoff
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I lead climate @stripe and Frontier, an advance market commitment for carbon removal (https://t.co/hGbC6erhdm)
Joined March 2009
Today, I’m excited to launch Frontier—an advance market commitment (AMC) that will buy $925M+ of permanent carbon removal by 2030. Build and we will buy: 🛠️.
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A friendly reminder that economic growth and emissions are not intrinsically linked. The work of decarbonization is to decouple the two -- to enable economic growth without harmful climate impact
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Have been collecting pics of SF’s flower-covered houses. Love them so much.
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Working theory (formed while strolling around Paris): the ideal # of building floors that optimizes for density (without being overwhelmingly dense), natural light (ie buildings don’t block the sun), and character/charm is between 4 and 7. Is there any truth to this?
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When I was ramping up on climate change, I initially found it difficult to see how the many disparate pieces fit together. Here’s my mental model for how to combat climate change, in case it's useful for others trying to quickly orient themselves.
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“I’m a [product manager, lawyer, engineer, etc.] and I want to transition to climate work. Where should I look?”. I get a version of this question a lot. This note summarizes how I usually answer it in case it’s useful for others asking a similar question:.
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OK well a few of us decided to build a version of this just for fun, and now it exists! (link to site in next tweet). To start, 4 syllabi:.- Improving clinical trials by @salonium .- Great English literature by @HenryEOliver.- Housing supply by @bswud @s8mb @johnrmyers .- Cities.
A thing I wish existed: a site that publishes syllabi / 'reading playlists' from experts, in their area of expertise. Ideally there’d be multiple 'versions' of a syllabus (i.e. if you just want to get a feel, read these 5 things, else here’s the full catalog).
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The magic of Stripe Climate is that it's powered by thousands of companies who are collectively buying frontier carbon removal down the cost curve. 🌎
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Many users have told us they want to take climate action, but don’t because figuring out what to do can be complicated. Stripe Climate makes it easy for businesses of any size to tackle climate change by funding frontier carbon removal: 🧵
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Excited to share that we're hiring our first ever Head of Science at Stripe Climate. Since we started ~18mos ago, our fund size has grown substantially and CDR approaches have become increasingly diverse. So we're growing, too. Please share widely!
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The temptation to treat carbon removal as a commodity right now worries me. You cannot commoditize something that barely exists.
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This is a very big deal. @SenatorBennet & @lisamurkowski just introduced the Carbon Dioxide Removal Investment Act, which would provide a $250/ton tax credit for permanent CDR. Importantly, it's technology neutral. Any high-quality, permanent carbon removal would qualify.
Today, a carbon removal tax credit is being introduced into the Senate by @SenatorBennet and @lisamurkowski. It helps rightsize the tax code so all types of carbon removal are supported and spells a hugely consequential boost for this industry.
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Supply of permanent carbon removal is only just starting to exist. If we want any shot of having gigaton-scale permanent solutions later, *we have no choice* but to buy from early (and often expensive) solutions now.
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We just wrapped our 3rd round of purchases in 18 months at Stripe Climate – welcome Sustaera, 44.01, Ebb and Eion! We are the first ever customer for 3 of 4. This time we expanded our board of technical experts to meet the growing diversity of approaches. 🧵.
Excited to announce @stripe's next round of carbon removal purchases! We’re committing $6M in purchases, R&D grants and renewals to 4 boundary-pushing companies and thrilled to have them join the Stripe Climate portfolio:.
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If you’ve been thinking about starting a carbon removal company, now is the time to do it. @lowercarbon's new $350M CDR fund is laser focused on durable approaches, and is run by one of the most knowledgeable, creative and hard-working teams out there. Bravo @orbuch and team!.
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In just 3 years, Charm Industrial has gone from a concept to successfully delivering thousands of tons of permanent carbon removal. Today we’re announcing $53M in offtake agreements between Charm and Frontier members to help accelerate Charm’s scale-up.
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2 million pages of 'supporting information' would take about 4-5 years to read, without sleep . (NuScale is building SMRs)
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nothing makes a person feel crazier than choosing a shade of white paint.
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We built an editable database of 100+ carbon removal knowledge gaps. Our hope is that by making these gaps more visible, and by making it easier for experts without CDR-specific knowledge to figure out where to plug in, we might be able to fill them faster. 🚀.
Want to help scale carbon removal technologies? . We’ve identified 100+ research and innovation gaps that need filling: . Here are 15 of them that need attention. 👇🏻.
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Off-grid solar microgrids have been conspicuously absent from most hyperscalers’ plans, which is surprising given their ability to achieve enormous scale very fast. We wrote a piece on how off-grid solar can power the AI race:
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Just announced @stripe's first negative emissions purchases, one step on a road to building a large and competitive market for carbon removal. Next, we want to make it *much* easier for businesses to make these kinds of purchases.
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A thing I wish existed: a site that publishes syllabi / 'reading playlists' from experts, in their area of expertise. Ideally there’d be multiple 'versions' of a syllabus (i.e. if you just want to get a feel, read these 5 things, else here’s the full catalog).
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Excellent overview of Frontier, our carbon removal AMC, from @robinsonmeyer at @TheAtlantic: .
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1/ I wrote about how to start an advance market commitment, drawing largely on our experience starting Frontier:.
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Every country that signed the Paris agreement should have to produce a quarterly update on how it's tracking towards goal, accessible to all shareholders (ie citizens). This is basic hygiene for companies, yet somehow it's fine if govts don't do this for all of climate change?.
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Most VCs prefer investing in bits over atoms. But with climate, there's a limit to how much you can address if you can't stomach high capex, long time horizons and science/tech risk. Thrilling to see @claydumas & team go after the hard but critical pieces of the climate puzzle.
Raising $800m for climate-unfucking, carbon-sucking, planet-cooling startups wasn’t always the plan. But the air is thick with smoke. There’s water in the streets. The heat is unrelenting. No more time to lose. @lowercarbon is all in. Let’s go:
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I'm *thrilled* that Zeke is joining us at @Stripe Climate. 🌎.
I have some big career news: I'll be joining the team over at @stripe as their climate research lead, helping to scale permanent carbon removal to meet the challenges of dealing with hard-to-decarbonize sectors of the economy and drawing down atmospheric CO2 later in the century.
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There’s a false dichotomy between “nature” and “tech” based carbon removal. Incredibly promising solutions lie at their intersection. How can we harness what nature does “for free” (ie capture, self replication) and mitigate the downsides (lack of permanence, physical footprint)?.
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We’re experimenting with a new format for sharing @stripe's latest carbon removal purchases, with the goal of making it a bit easier for talent/investors/purchasers to get involved in frontier carbon removal. Let us know if you’d like to join!
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An early observation from Frontier: pairing PhDs with ‘high slope’ generalists can have a supercharging effect (ie better output, faster). This has been especially true for projects where we need to move quickly from theory to practice. I'd wager this generalizes outside of CDR.
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Advance Market Commitments (AMCs) have been used successfully to kickstart vaccine development. @Susan_Athey, @rglenner, Chris Snyder and I make the case that a $1B+ AMC could do the same for carbon removal:
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Most of Frontier’s $925M will go towards offtakes—multi-year contracts that pay suppliers as tons are delivered. But while the field is nascent, low-volume prepurchases like these are essential to get more companies offtake-ready. 📈.
Frontier has facilitated its first carbon removal purchases on behalf of Stripe and the tens of thousands of companies using Stripe Climate. We’re spending $8M on removal from six new suppliers and we’ll be the first customer for each of them.
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Every year around Yom Kippur I'm reminded of this story about my grandma that so perfectly captures who she was: principled, fierce, and brilliant. An excerpt from a wonderful piece my aunt wrote about her in 2016:
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This is *fantastic* news for the field. It’s truly hard to imagine a better person for this job. @orbuch - can't wait to see where you take it, and excited to continue working together to make carbon removal a thing 📈🚀.
Some professional news. I'm joining @lowercarbon to lead carbon removal investing! . Now I’m ryan@lowercarboncapital.com and I can't wait to learn more about what you're working on.
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Has anyone seen estimates of the total green premium needed to drive key climate solutions (like steel, hydrogen, SAF, etc) to $0? Looking for the sum total of the area under the curve (in $) by technology.
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Summary from @jtemple of CDR takeaways from the IPCC report:.1. Carbon removal is basically non-optional.2. We’re going to need to do a whole lot of it.3. We need a portfolio of carbon removal options.4. Scaling up will require funding and policy decisions.
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Stripe Climate is now available globally \o/. Join a growing coalition of 500+ forward-thinking businesses changing the course of carbon removal.
Stripe Climate is now available for businesses around the world. Remove carbon as you grow your business:
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"Contrary to claims that carbon removal is fundamentally at odds with other strategies, we can spend the next decade simultaneously deploying available clean energy technologies and scaling up removal strategies."
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In December my best friend (and her husband and toddler, also besties ofc) moved to be a short walk away. Of the many things that have meaningfully changed my life for the better, this is pretty damn close to the top. Starting this year feeling insanely lucky 🥰.
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We’re piloting Stripe Climate Fellows with the goal of seeding many more ambitious but feasible ideas to grow demand for carbon removal. We’d love help finding exceptional people for this! Applications are due July 15th.
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We talk a lot about carbon removal *technologies*, less about the humans building them. So meet the people who are working in labs, warehouses, and below railway arches to try and crack carbon removal.
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Today I met someone developing a methane vaccine for cows 🤯. Let’s go 🚀.
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We’re interested in finding the most accessible deposits of highly reactive rock that could collectively get the world to teraton scale carbon removal over the next century at the cheapest possible cost. To that end, we’re launching an Alkalinity Sourcing Challenge. We'll award
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Last week I spoke with @Primecoalition investors about the next climate bottlenecks in a post-IRA world. Since I mostly focus on CDR, I decided to phone a (few) friends—@ramez @embrein @hausfath @JaneAFlegal @rypan—and synthesize themes. Slides if curious:.
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Hard to believe we launched Frontier a year ago today. Glad to celebrate by welcoming new Frontier members and an additional $100M to turbocharge carbon removal. 🚀.
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Scientists estimate that enhanced weathering could scale to ~2–4 gigatons of carbon removal per year by 2050 (~40% of the projected global carbon removal portfolio). Lithos is setting the bar for what fast, responsible scale up of enhanced weathering looks like.
📢Announcing that Frontier buyers signed $57M in CDR offtakes w/ @LithosCarbon. Lithos will deliver 154,240 tons of CDR in the next 2-6 years. ~100K of that comes before 2026. ‼️ That’s 10X more than all CDR delivered to date across all pathways ‼️.
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In the last few weeks, two Frontier portfolio companies—Vaulted and Mati—delivered a few thousand tons of permanent carbon removal. We made a dashboard to start tracking deliveries from Frontier portfolio cos:.
2023 was the first year Frontier buyers signed offtakes. So far we've contracted $157M for 338K tons across 3 pathways. More to come next year, so we put together a dashboard to track progress. Follow along as new deals go live and tons get removed 🚀.
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Building community is on many people’s mind right now (mine included). There are lots of wonderful Big Ideas here—new villages, communes, etc. This is a quick plug for the Small Ideas—the things we can do without moving. Running list of ideas—please add!.
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4K+ businesses from all around the world fund frontier carbon removal through @stripe Climate. Now they can highlight their commitments with pre-built, custom web pages. 👇 to see a few of them (ok I went a little overboard, but I love them all!)
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For DAC to reach climate-relevant scale, cost needs to fall dramatically. Today, we’re announcing that Frontier buyers signed $47M in offtake agreements with @CarbonCaptureUS and @heirloomcarbon, two companies charting a path to affordable DAC.
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Stripe Climate Orders makes Frontier’s core focus of finding, vetting, and contracting with the most promising carbon removal companies available to a much broader set of businesses. We hope this unlocks even more of the demand needed to scale carbon removal.
Climate Orders is now available. Pre-order tons of permanent carbon removal directly with the Dashboard or API.
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Delighted that @salesforce has joined Frontier to accelerate the scale up of carbon removal 🚀.
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Delighted that Frontier is an implementation partner for First Mover Coalition's carbon removal track. We hope to make it *much* easier for companies to operationalize their commitments in a maximally catalytic way. Get in touch: buyers@frontierclimate.com.
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We're hiring at Frontier! Please send phenomenal people our way. Diligence Lead: Program Manager:
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We're thrilled to add 6 new projects to the Stripe Climate carbon removal portfolio! @stripe and 2K+ Stripe Climate users are committing $8M in purchases, R&D grants, and renewals upon projects achieving predefined technical milestones:
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it's that time of year when you download all the books you've wanted to read all year en masse and completely ignore the fact that you're only out for a week. .
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Good piece in the @WSJ on Stripe Climate and why we've been so focused on getting more carbon removal companies started as quickly as possible.
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We just released an open source calculator app so anyone can find the optimal solar, battery, gas generator power system for large AI data centers. Big thank you to @climate_ben for helping make this happen!.
Off-grid solar microgrids have been conspicuously absent from most hyperscalers’ plans, which is surprising given their ability to achieve enormous scale very fast. We wrote a piece on how off-grid solar can power the AI race:
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2023 was the first year Frontier buyers signed offtakes. So far we've contracted $157M for 338K tons across 3 pathways. More to come next year, so we put together a dashboard to track progress. Follow along as new deals go live and tons get removed 🚀.
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Around ~6 months ago, I sent a cold email to @SusanAthey asking how we could apply the concept of AMCs to carbon removal after their success accelerating vaccine development. She thought it might work, and we fleshed out the idea with Chris and Rachel:
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*Thrilled* that @JaneAFlegal is joining us to help scale the market for carbon removal 📈🚀.
Some exciting professional news: I’m joining the @Stripe Climate team to help scale durable & responsible carbon removal via Frontier. While we cut emissions today, we need to develop CDR to deal with hard-to-avoid emissions & draw down CO2 later in the century. (1/3).
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Was just looking for a photo from a recent trip to Paris, and it appears I seem to have spent most of the trip photographing beautiful ceilings? Anyways, we should really bring those back.
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"Grants to nonprofits can have asymmetric upside, with impact that persists across society long after they're made." Great list of examples, most of which I wasn't aware of:
New post, taking a break from science blogging. The topic is something that has often puzzled me about philanthropy: why is there so little of it?
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In *under a year* the @CharmIndustrial team turned an idea for a new carbon removal pathway into 416 tons of permanent carbon removal. Remarkable progress in a short period of time and a great example for the field. Also, this just represents a lot of hard work. Great stuff.
1/ Today we're announcing we've delivered @stripe's 416 ton CO₂e carbon removal purchase ahead of schedule, just 12 months after inventing our new carbon removal pathway. The carbon is now in permanent geological storage.
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Our second round of carbon removal purchases is now underway @stripe . If you’re working on a carbon removal solution that has the potential to be high volume, low cost, and permanent, we want to hear from you.
So today, we’re kicking off a new round of purchases. If you’re working on a carbon removal project, let us know here:
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Can someone explain to me how we have a matzo shortage every single year?! Isn't matzo demand quite literally one of the easiest things to predict?.
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Someone should interview whoever runs SFO. That’s a consistently well run airport, even when crazy busy.
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Looking for examples of syllabi or reading lists that are especially effective in (1) focusing a learner on the right content and (2) contextualizing it through intros, annotations etc. Please share any favorites!.
A thing I wish existed: a site that publishes syllabi / 'reading playlists' from experts, in their area of expertise. Ideally there’d be multiple 'versions' of a syllabus (i.e. if you just want to get a feel, read these 5 things, else here’s the full catalog).
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Charm is quickly becoming a very visible example of what's possible in carbon removal—that it's *possible* to become a well-funded, venture-backed startup even with a ‘hard-tech’ product in record time. Hope it inspires other founders of what they might also be able to do.
We’ve raised $100m in Series B funding from General Catalyst, Lowercarbon and more! This comes on the heels of delivering 6,200 tons of carbon removal, and record-breaking new deals with Frontier and JPMorgan Chase to permanently remove 140,000 tons.
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Contracting takes up a surprising amount of time for hardtech builders. We’re publishing Frontier’s offtake template (iterated on over $300M+ in carbon removal deals) with the hope it might help other builders/buyers save valuable time.
We’re making Frontier’s offtake agreement template public. Our hope is that this helps others spend less time contracting and more time building:
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This week I’m up at my family’s cottage in a remote part of Canada, where I’ve been coming every summer since I was born. I wrote a short piece about it—part family history, part love letter to this place, part about the value of wilder summers.
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Congratulations to @heirloomcarbon and .@CarbonCure on the first DAC to concrete sequestration demo! Great work from @robniven @ShashankSamala @maxrscholten @NoahMcQueen13 and many others.
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Today's launch is an exciting milestone—but the real work of deploying this capital quickly and thoughtfully to advance the field starts now. We hope Frontier is a springboard to get carbon removal on its best possible trajectory. 🚀.
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Great news - we’re on the cusp of wildflower season in SF. A few favorites from last year for inspo
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Sharing some quick math to suggest that is not completely crazy that the world could pay for all of the carbon removal needed to stabilize temperatures around 1.5C in the next ~100 years. Inevitable? Absolutely not. Possible? I think so, yes.
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Our largest ever cohort of carbon removal companies!.
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If you’re working on carbon removal, especially if you’re in the early stages, consider applying to our fall purchase cycle for @stripe Climate!.
We’re kicking off @stripe’s fall 2021 carbon removal purchases. To be considered, request a brief discussion with our team by filling out this form before Sept 17th. We’re looking forward to meeting you and learning more about what you're working on!
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IMO an under-discussed thing about AI is its ability to actually be a huge accelerant towards a world with carbon-free energy ‘too cheap to meter.’. The fact that the companies who need massive amts of net new energy *are also* the ones who have the ability to pay a premium for.
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We’ve teamed up with @Watershed to make it easy for their customers to buy permanent carbon removal through Frontier. 🚀. Big thank you to @chranderson, @taylorfrancis and the Watershed team for their partnership in growing the market for carbon removal!.
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Well @zebriez and I had a lot of fun turning one of our ongoing convos into a short piece. It’s broadly about taking a more experimental / expansive approach to relationships of all types, and to friendship in particular:.
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Carbon removal shifted into high gear this year. Frontier received twice as many applications as it did during its first cycle six months ago, with projects spanning more than ten different pathways. 📈.
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👋Frontier’s 2023 prepurchase cycle is open (pre-app deadline May 19), and we’ve opened up offtake applications on a permanent, rolling basis. Learn more and apply:.
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This is a big deal.
Exclusive from @robinsonmeyer: In a global first, the U.S. government is paying for carbon removal.
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We just finished combing through pre-apps. More than a 7x (!) increase in high-durability pre-apps compared to our first purchase cycle 3 years ago. This is a (very) imperfect proxy for the # of high-durability removal companies, but it's a pretty clear trendline nonetheless!
👋Frontier’s 2023 prepurchase cycle is open (pre-app deadline May 19), and we’ve opened up offtake applications on a permanent, rolling basis. Learn more and apply:.
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Made my first piece of furniture! (Very) far from perfect, but had a ton of fun doing it. Big thanks to neighbor @ReturnToZehnder for lending me your tools, teaching me how to use them and for the help and great chats throughout. 🛠️
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"We need somewhere to put the carbon." Important piece from @mattyglesias on the need to swiftly license Class VI wells if we want any shot at unlocking the carbon removal potential of the IRA.
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Is Romanticism making a comeback in SF?. Lately I’ve been wondering if SF is in the early stages of a ‘Romantic Revival’ of sorts. Curious to hear from folks who spend time in the bay if this feels directionally correct:
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outrageously excited about the *new town* @devonzuegel is building! this already reflects a huge amount of vision and hustle. very excited to see it come to life.
I've been quietly working on something for a while, so I'm excited to finally be able to share it with you. We are creating a new town called Esmeralda!. Our team has an exclusive option on a beautiful piece of land 90 mins north of SF, in California wine country
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Today, @kateglazebrook and I met with climate founders and investors in Australia to discuss building the carbon removal ecosystem. Super energized by all of the momentum over here 🚀
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Project type sorted by how “fat-tailed” they are in terms of cost. Cost overruns are common for “one huge thing” projects while cost underruns are common for modular projects. Modularity enables faster and cheaper learning with lower risk. From @BentFlyvbjerg @dgardner’s book
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“Cullenward suggests there might be a way to balance scale and price. The EU could replicate what payment company Stripe Inc. is doing.”.
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For carbon removal to scale, we need *many more* shots on goal, and fast. We partnered with Activate to be the first customer for #ActivateFellows' who are building promising carbon removal solutions. Learn more and apply!
These @stripe contracts will be the 1st sale for the #ActivateFellows, who will also receive two years of funding & other benefits via the Activate Fellowship, which will connect them with the resources, knowledge, & networks they need to transform into entrepreneurs.
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One thing that makes buying carbon removal hard is the uncertainty around what’ll actually get delivered. We developed a framework for how buyers like us can *incorporate* quantification uncertainty into purchase decisions rather than be paralyzed by it: .
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This cycle we’re expanding Frontier’s purchases to include offtakes in addition to pre-purchases. If you’re working on carbon removal–whether you’re very early or starting to scale up–consider applying!.
Frontier is kicking off its fall carbon removal purchase cycle. 🚀. We're also introducing a new purchasing track to help growth-stage carbon removal companies scale via offtakes. Explore our RFP and submit a short pre-application before September 2:
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