Trees are Great. How Can We Make Them Better? (With Maddie Hall @ Living Carbon)

Disclaimer: For full disclosure, Living Carbon is a portfolio company at Climate Capital Bio, where Jenny works as a Managing Partner.

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We're back with another exciting episode of the Climate Capital podcast! Join us as we dive deep into a chat with Maddie Hall, CEO and co-founder of Living Carbon. Living Carbon leverages synthetic biology to enhance the carbon capture capabilities of trees.

Raised in Seattle, Maddie's interest in climate change was sparked early on by her experience witnessing methane leakage in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Living Carbon's mission is to develop and deploy a synthetic biology carbon removal solution that maximizes the amount of carbon captured per acre. Rather than focusing on crops, as much of the existing field work does, Living Carbon has chosen to concentrate on trees, drawing on methods used in the early 2010s for poplar engineering for biofuel production.

Navigating the carbon project development landscape has been one of the greatest challenges for Maddie. The complex and often varying interpretation of methodologies, coupled with an element of in-group mentality among legacy nonprofits and old-school carbon product developers, has presented hurdles. However, Maddie believes that the market needs to mature and that mission-aligned companies joining forces can help change the system from the ground up.

As a female founder in a male-dominated field, Maddie also discusses the added challenges and pressures she has faced.

Looking forward, Maddie envisions Living Carbon playing a dual role: being the 'picks and shovels' that allow for the scaling of the nature-based carbon capture market, and developing first-of-its-kind projects to demonstrate the feasibility of their approach. She encourages anyone interested in the field or looking to contribute to reach out and join the journey.

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