Will COP26 supercharge carbon markets?

We’re back with another business-focused episode of Carbon Removal Newsroom, hosted by Radhika Moolgavkar, Nori’s Head of Supply and Methodology, along with Holly Jean Buck, Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo (P.S.— look out for Holly’s new book, Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net-Zero Is Not Enough, coming out on November 16th!). Plus, we’re joined by our co-host for business-focused episodes: Susan Su, partner focused on climate investing at Toba Capital and course creator for Climate Change for VCs, a course and community through terra.do.

This week, we are taking a look at the UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26), the summit in Glasgow which begins Sunday, October 31st and lasts for two weeks. Specifically, we dive into the UK’s announcement calling for a global net-zero commitment by 2050, and what the implications of this goal might be for the carbon removal industry.

Next, we discuss some of the VC funding that happened in October, particularly for CarbonCapture, a modular DAC company, that landed a huge round. Plus, Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto recently announced a plan to invest $7.5b by 2030 into decarbonizing their business. Does their foray into Direct Air Capture signal a trend that big emitters are ready to invest into this technology at the scale necessary to really bring down costs per ton? Or are they looking for a way to avoid emissions cuts? Or both?

We finish the episode with two good news stories from Susan: the first is that electric car sales more than doubled year-over-year in August to over 516,400! Second is that turtle populations in Cape Verde rose from around ten thousand in 2015, to almost 200,000 this year after successful conservation efforts.