S4 #10 | CDR Buyers Deep Dive - Part 3: The Future of Buying (in a post-Microsoft world?)

[00:00:01] Hello, customer experience. Tom speaking, how can I help? Hi Tom, this is Emily. I'm just calling because I'm not really satisfied with the service that I've received from Restored Biochar. Oh no, I'm so sorry to hear that. Let me put you on hold for one second. Thank you. And come back to you. Three weeks later. Oh yeah, sorry, we can't help you.

[00:00:29] Tom, I haven't eaten. I haven't drank anything. I've just been waiting on the end of the phone. Are you there? No, sorry. Bye. That is a good example of bad customer experience. Is that the worst you've had? I have never waited on the phone for three weeks before. That would be obscene. Hmm. I do sort of appreciate the commitment though to coming back after three weeks. Yeah, I know.

[00:00:58] But I didn't expect that from the customer service line. At least getting a response. Maybe not an answer, but at least a response. That's the thing. It's key. I do think I'd rather hear no than not hear anything at all. Hello. Hello. Hello. Welcome to the Carbon Removal Show. Welcome back. This is Tom Praviti. And this is Emily Spuddle.

[00:01:27] This is our final episode in our CDR buying miniseries, Deep Dive 3 Parter. That's a mouthful. Yeah, we've got to come up with something catchier, especially if we're going to keep doing these like three episode little chunklets. Triplet, trio, cluster, curious cluster, carbon removal. Or a trying triplet. We feel like a trying triplet sometimes, the three of us. It does feel like that. The last two days I felt like that.

[00:01:55] Okay, we'll workshop it. We'll workshop it. Off mic. Right, back to CDR please, Tom. Yes. Episode three. So what is in store? Well, for episode one of this miniseries, we explored what is motivating existing buyers. And in the last episode, we looked at how these buyers are buying and navigating some of the challenges of interacting with this new and evolving space.

[00:02:21] And in today's episode, we're going to be looking forwards and thinking about what the market needs to do to make buying easier, more attractive and less risky so that we can grow this thing at the pace it needs to grow. Wunderbar. Wunderbar. Excellent. Excellent. Anyway, we obviously don't claim to have all the answers and neither do our guests. But if carbon removal is going to scale to gigaton levels, I feel like I haven't said that for a while, gigaton. Oh, that's a good word.

[00:02:51] It's good to have it back. Get your mouth around a gigaton. A gigaton, imagine. But if we are going to scale to gigaton levels, several problems do need solving. As it happens, Tom, problem solving is my middle name. Right. Well, Emily problem solving swaddle. That is a mouthful. That is a mouthful. Emily problem solving swaddle. Double barreled and everything. Let's get into it. Right. The first problem we're looking at is the problem of trust.

[00:03:20] That word does come up a lot in CDR at the moment. Yeah, we've talked about trust a lot before here. In like an emerging, fast developing market that sells a non-physical product, there are plenty of reasons why distrust can creep in. And understandably, in order for buyers to lean in, they're going to need to be confident the market is real, credible and defensible. Is, for example, what's being delivered exactly what

[00:03:48] you purchase? Will it be delivered on schedule or at all even? Will this stand up to scrutiny? And loads more questions. Yeah, questions on questions on questions. Uncertainty is a scary place to be. And right now, it honestly probably feels easier to kind of just, you know, sit on your hands and wait until the centre of gravity shifts and there's more certainty to cling to. Who wants to be an early mover into a risky space?

[00:04:15] One of the aspects of the trust problem is that this wavering is creating a bit of a bottleneck. Leila Toplik, formerly of Coalition Member Carbon Future, is back to explain. We have a challenge around urgency, like why now? But we also have a challenge that we've been addressing around the lack of clear data-backed signals that help leaders understand, is this real?

[00:04:39] Is it investable? Does it reduce my risk? And why do I need to act now? So trust is what makes CDR investable and scalable. And again, not as a tagline, but as a system that's built on credible data, high integrity infrastructure. So that would be standards, DMRV, insurance, enhanced, clear policy signals and also having a strong ecosystem. Otherwise, skepticism would

[00:05:09] creep in and slowing both the capital flow and also, you know, eroding investor confidence. So what we're talking about here are things like MRV, third-party verification, registries, standards, intermediaries. I feel like we've talked about them so much in this mini-series. But it's clear that it's not enough for these things to just exist. They need to be credible and crucially, legible. Yeah. And to be honest, this can be where things get messy.

[00:05:37] We don't like the mess. I remember a few years ago, we went to a Carbon Future event. Listeners may also remember. And there was a slide shown at that event that very helpfully sort of mapped out all the actors and all the steps in the system. And just looking at that slide, it was pretty intense. And like to an outsider or a newcomer, you can totally see how it won't

[00:06:03] necessarily look like a sort of reassuring set of checks and balances, even if it is fundamentally robust. How is anyone who isn't an expert or who isn't in the loop supposed to even know that? I remember that slide. Yeah. And I almost remember it being purposefully put there to show how complicated it is. Yeah. I think that was the idea. Yeah. And we were all like, yeah, yeah. Bamboozled. Absolutely bamboozled me. Straight over my head. Yeah.

[00:06:30] There are lots of layers to this system though, and often many options available within each layer. So it is complex. And that complexity may itself risk undermining trust, especially for anyone not working in this space day to day. So how can we fix for this? I would really look at kind of two important aspects of trust. One is transparency. How does it work?

[00:06:55] And second is, I come from tech. I spent 20 plus years in technology. So obviously cybersecurity, AI are big focus areas today. So in cybersecurity, there is also this concept called zero trust, where you actually create an infrastructure where different actors are part of that infrastructure and nobody's trusted by default. So that's also very important where no one controls everything

[00:07:22] and there's no conflict of interest. So again, the transparency and creating the right infrastructure that is both efficient and scalable, right? In order for us to reach gigatons, but also it is trustworthy by design. We need to have the infrastructure that actually builds trust. And that is having some of these key elements, which are actually coming together, exist in the market. So I mentioned standards that define what quality looks like.

[00:07:50] Independent digital MRV that collects that data, enables suppliers to optimize their projects, and then hands off that data to third-party verifiers to verify. And then for certification, then we have the market infrastructure to actually connect supply with demand. So that's about building that infrastructure that enables the market to function with trust embedded and also at scale. I guess the complexity of the infrastructure itself doesn't need to be a problem.

[00:08:19] We often put our trust in things that we don't fully understand, you know, like financial systems, or like healthcare interventions, or friends and family members. Yes. You know, I'm not a doctor, I'm not an economist, but I like vaguely maybe trust those things. But I would also note that there's like definitely some pushback on that trust. It's not always the case that we put our trust in these institutions unquestioningly. And culturally, it does feel like

[00:08:48] there's some kind of growing suspicion of systems like this that just feel like black boxes. Hmm. As Leila says, transparency is key, as is finding a balance between simplicity and enough third-party checks and balances to provide reassurance. Yeah, totally. Like making it easier to navigate can't come at the price of making it verifiable and safe. That would just completely undermine the trust that we're trying to build in the first place.

[00:09:16] So if trust is the goal, and market infrastructure is one of the mechanisms, how do we strengthen that infrastructure? And how do we make buying itself both appear and actually become less complex? Another big challenge to keep in mind here is that this very infrastructure is actually still being built. And it's tricky to dive headfirst into a market where the guardrails aren't always clear. It's kind of like jumping into the deep end when they're still filling up the pool,

[00:09:45] you know? Doesn't feel like the best idea. No, terrible idea. And one thing that several people we spoke to highlighted was a lack of standardisation as a cause for hesitation. Yeah, we mentioned in the last episode that there isn't really a dominant model for buying yet. And that's also true of the supply side. Again, this isn't necessarily a problem per se. We're still in many ways in the experimentation stage and parts of this market. And a lack of

[00:10:12] standardisation can be a positive in terms of driving innovation and problem solving and avoiding complacency. But it does mean that buyers can struggle to evaluate projects or to defend purchases internally. So what hope is there for more simplicity here? Here's Bea Huyea from Coalition member Patch, who we heard from briefly last episode.

[00:10:34] I think capital C compliance is the standard, right? And in the interim of that, if we hold on to hope that we will have the political will and alignment to get to that point in the future, I think that it will continue to be sort of a slower paced movement towards convergence.

[00:10:59] And we've seen this on a couple fronts. The first is around integrity, market consensus. So with ICVCM's core carbon principles, I think we're increasingly seeing convergence towards that as a market signal, whether you're a newer entrant in the market, whether you're a newer entrant in the market, or even maybe more of a market expert that is comparing your own specifications and procurement criteria and integrity standards to the CCP label.

[00:11:25] And then we also see VCMI sort of endorsing that beginning Jan 1, 2027, you want all CCP labeled credits in a VCMI portfolio, similar to like leveraging the Corsia standard as a convergence of, we know there's a lot of these different markers of integrity. So how can we provide a market clearing signal to buyers?

[00:11:49] Now, the complication there is, at the project level, we still need to really interrogate and diligence per every buyer. So back to this point that everybody has a different risk appetite, a different delivery and timeline need, especially if you have a climate claim, or depending on the fiscal year and the budgeting cycle of a corporation. And so it's very necessary, but still insufficient. And so that's just one example in the integrity lens that we are seeing that convergence,

[00:12:19] we are seeing, I would say, more acceptance that that is what will hopefully bring buyers in. And in the interim, how do you still facilitate action, given all the different signals that you can see as a buyer? Given this market is still evolving, intermediaries like Patch and Carbon Future really have a crucial role to play in not just maintaining that infrastructure, but helping guide buyers through it, as we mentioned in the last episode.

[00:12:47] Honestly, I think the onus is on the market to provide reassurance. It's not like the buyers or like potential buyers are being unreasonably indecisive or jittery. You know what I mean? This is the role of the CDR marketplace to make sure that it is accessible and welcoming to newcomers, which of course, includes providing the reasons for confidence. Am I right?

[00:13:12] I would agree. I would agree. Yeah, I'd agree. And currently, one of the big buyer concerns, very legitimately, is the financial risk. What we do is we insure the financer because it's what we've seen is the maximum likelihood of the capital getting into the project. Here's Ibrahim Sauer from carbon insurer RTO, who we also heard from last time. RTO is working to mitigate this risk.

[00:13:38] What we don't want is developers taking on insurance. They then go to the buyer and the buyer goes, well, we don't care. We actually are worried about this other thing that you didn't know about. And you know what I mean? Like no one needs to give a developer additional costs. So what we would do is a developer would come to us very early. And traditionally, people would say to them, you're just too early to talk about insurance. You need to go away and come back in two years.

[00:14:03] That doesn't grow a market, right? It doesn't really help. So what we do is come to us at feasibility and then we'll run the project through our risk model completely free. We don't charge developers anything. If they pass our risk assessment, then we give them a letter of insurability to say this project's insurable.

[00:14:19] You can take that to buyers and banks and then help de-risk it. And it gives the developer that extra leg up so that the person on the other side of the table is like, oh, okay, this developer has another thing taken care of that I don't have to worry about now. And I think the other side of that is if there's anything that flags as making the project uninsurable, we tell the developer. Again, we don't charge anything. We just give them a one page summary to say, here are the risks. This is what we flag.

[00:14:47] And it's not just important for insurance because, you know, insurance is just a caveat or something to think about on the way to investment. That's how we think about it. To me, it makes a lot of sense that RTO focuses on insuring the financier as opposed to having the project bear the cost. Take mortgages, for example. When a bank lends to a homebuyer with a deposit, it often buys mortgage insurance or uses a guarantee scheme.

[00:15:13] The bank or financier pays for or arranges this cover because it is their credit risk on the mortgage that's being protected. A homeowner is unlikely to buy insurance on that mortgage itself because it's then protecting the bank's money, not the homeowner's situation. And the homeowner is already paying for that risk through the interest rate. If anything, the homeowner will take out insurance on the property itself.

[00:15:38] So if your house burns down or is flooded and you lose the house, insurance pays you, not the bank. I hope nobody's house burns down or is flooded. Well, in these climate times. I know. Just like putting it, putting that out after you just mentioned it, you know, put it out into the universe. I wanted to like counteract that a little bit with like, here's hoping that doesn't happen. Abraham also notes that the value added here isn't just that there's a payout if something goes wrong, as you mentioned, Tom.

[00:16:07] Having insurance in place can really change the conversation that goes on inside of an organization. And RTO also provides ongoing monitoring against risks in real time. It gives the buyer, the corporate comfort that should things go wrong, they have the backstop of insurance. It makes it easier at an investment committee, at any investment committee to say, this is the insurance that we have behind it. It's kind of Lloyd's cover holder.

[00:16:35] It's the same kind of insurance you see on any other deal. That's very important. And then the last thing is for every project that we cover, we monitor the risks. So every two weeks we use satellite data predominantly. So it's not always super relevant, but we look across things like political methodology, governance. So any risk that we flag, we give those insights to the corporate for everything that we're assessing.

[00:17:00] We then give to the insured, which is the corporate, but with the thinking that it goes to the developer. So the developer gets an ongoing assessment of, for an IFM project, for example, if we flag that there's high fire risk in the next 30 days, they can do their fire mitigation activity. So we kind of take it dual approach. We mitigate the risk at source where we cover the financial risk, but then we also mitigate by monitoring the risk for ourselves.

[00:17:27] We share that data so that we can reduce the chance of a risk because no one wants a claim, right? Not just us, but the buyer, the corporate doesn't want the claim. The developer doesn't want the claim. We all want the project to succeed. And if we have the data and resources to help, then we should be doing that. It's great that infrastructure seems to be developing and it sounds like there are growing ways of mitigating risks. That's amazing. There is another barrier still standing, though.

[00:17:53] How is CDR explained both internally and externally? Talking about storytelling. This is like my favourite topic. Trust building. You can do all the reassurance you like. And honestly, that might be enough to convince potential buyers that CDR isn't a crazy thing to do. And some of the more passionate among them might be happy with that. Good to go. But they do actually still need to understand the reasons for buying it.

[00:18:21] The idea of building the positive as well as reducing the negative. Yeah. And CDR isn't always framed well to decision makers. This is why companies can struggle to justify buying. So the narrative has to translate the value into business terms, as our imaginary CFO might be thinking. Not the CFO of the carbon removal show. No, we don't have one, sadly. Here's Leila again.

[00:18:47] Often, carbon removal is explained in climate science language. That doesn't move a CFO. They want to know, how does this reduce my risk? How does it protect my supply chain? How does it give me a competitive edge? So the narrative has to connect to business outcomes, not just climate science. So that's one. The two is, sometimes there is one-size-fits-all messaging.

[00:19:13] So much of the communication treats the public or, let's say, the market as one single audience. Well, in reality, each stakeholder, even within what we're calling the buyer group, we have different industries, we have different roles. So each stakeholder really needs a tailored case built around their pain points and their needs. We actually heard Leila make this point back on our public perceptions deep dive that we did last year.

[00:19:41] Some of my favourite episodes, if you haven't listened yet, highly recommend. But I definitely think it's worth remaking this point in this context. If the story is stuck in abstract, climate-y language, it can feel like a discretionary spend. But once you translate it into risk, resilience, strategic advantage, it becomes a different kind of conversation, one that finance teams and senior leadership can actually engage with, you know?

[00:20:11] You'll probably see them sort of like perk up a bit when you're speaking their language. I've seen this framing change in conversations with buyers, and it is definitely a way to get their attention. Their ears prick. There's a little ear quiver. Back in our first episode of this deep dive, of this thruplet, we looked at how different motivations are playing different roles for buyers. And we also said those aren't mutually exclusive. Likely all are going to play a role in many cases.

[00:20:40] So making the case from multiple angles, the business case, the conviction case, the corporate responsibility, realness case, is one way to strengthen it, make it more robust and make the whole offering of CDR more appealing to more buyers. Mm-hmm. Strength through diversity. Exactly. Of course, communication and shaping the narrative is just as important within organisations as between them.

[00:21:06] The decision to buy carbon removal is very rarely taken by one person alone. Maybe if you're like an individual who wants to buy a few tonnes, you can make that decision on your own. Other than that, it's going to be a kind of collaborative decision-making process. It will likely involve teams, maybe teams that work in different departments, and maybe they're making choices from very different perspectives. Different priorities. Yeah, exactly. In episode one, Carolyn talked about needing to make the business case internally,

[00:21:36] about linking the stories of growing regulations, risk and more. But she also spoke to us about what this decision-making can actually look like within a company. A big thing we have here is like first principles thinking, which is like, if there's a problem, why is this the problem? How can we work on this problem? And that sort of thinking is what really drove this. It's like, why are we just doing random offset buying? How can we align this? What do we need to align this?

[00:22:03] And a big thing I think people forget about ESG is the G. And the governance frameworks have to be set up for this. And governance takes time. Governance is involving stakeholders, getting people involved, making people accountable, bringing people together and creating all these sort of basically documentation to ensure that everyone is on the same page. Everyone has the same decision-making capabilities, that if decisions need to be made, there are feedback processes, discussions.

[00:22:33] So every voice is heard. Every sort of feedback can be heard. A big thing we have here is feedback culture. So that was something we really want to instill. And because of that, and because of that discussion, that means it's not only falling on me. It's a group decision. And that also means people get really excited about it. But Carolyn illustrates that making the case internally can be iterative and collaborative. That seems like how it should be, really, I think. Yeah, I agree.

[00:23:01] You're never going to get a yes straight away, I think, with this. It's an iterative process. But also, if you get a yes straight away, it sort of like says to me that they haven't thought about it deeply enough. You almost want the no. Or not the no, but like the, let's talk more about this, you know? And let's continue having that conversation about this. And that conversation, it's all going to look really different for every organization, as with all of this that we've said so many times.

[00:23:27] And it really has to be different because each company will have slightly different language that they use, different perspectives and all that. And if you can't explain why this matters in the language that your organization uses to make decisions, then you're going to struggle to buy it all. The challenges facing the buying market can't only be solved by improving the situation for buyers themselves. We need to think bigger here.

[00:23:56] And we also need to ensure adequate supply, which also means supporting those producing the CDR. Ironically, given we desperately need more buyers, we are actually facing a supply shortage, with many buyers already waiting years into the future to see their purchase tons fulfilled. Even if demand increases, this supply could remain limited if new and existing projects aren't adequately supported. And new projects can take years to build. We just need more of everything, really.

[00:24:26] We really do. More podcasts. More projects. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Here's Adam from Terraset, who's already told us in this series how this fact fuels their buying philosophy. The main issue in this space is people are trying to build things that are new and they're unproven and they will take time to deliver. And the revenue might be multiple years down the line.

[00:24:54] And in a world where capital isn't necessarily cheap and it isn't easy to just access debt capital and venture capital might not always be suitable for the makeup of a particular project. And lenders can be risk averse in a new space and all these other challenges that come with securing capital.

[00:25:19] And for buyers like Terraset, the way they buy is nothing to do with securing limited supply. It's about growing it for their own future purchases as well as for everybody else's. If you want more projects, you need more capital flowing earlier and in ways that are resistant to long timelines and high uncertainty. But even with more mature market infrastructure that includes risk mitigation like insurance

[00:25:46] and with more and more enthusiastic buyers, we're likely still going to need one other ingredient to unlock supply. Any guesses, TP? Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. Hmm. I wonder. We need policy. And you have just done a series on policy, so I won't get into the specifics that smarter people than me are into there.

[00:26:11] But at some point, this is a space that needs to have more political support, more regulation than it currently has in terms of compelling action. And we don't, we aren't able to control those things necessarily as individuals, but we can still play a role

[00:26:39] in the space and do some things to move it forward while that hopefully keeps moving forward. It's policy! Of course. Of course it's policy. Ah, policy. How could we forget about policy? Our good old friend policy, that external factor that affects everything here. As Adam says, it's a big challenge. While the promise of CDR for compliance is often mentioned as a reason to buy, uncertainty about

[00:27:07] potential future policy developments and what these will entail can also be a blocker for buyers. Yeah, totally. Many companies suspect that carbon removal will become necessary for net zero, but they're still lacking strong regulatory signals. There's a lot of questions that remain. Will the credits that we buy today have any value under future regulation? Will the country in which a CDR project is located have an impact on how credit sit issues can be used?

[00:27:36] And what about anti-greenwashing legislation? So many questions and so many more to come, I think. We won't go into them all now because we already made three episodes about policy this season. We did. Go back and check them out if you haven't listened already or if you're interested in diving into this. Of course, a lot of existing buyers are buying in spite of the lack of policy sticks out there to encourage them. Do you remember Klarna's BVCM approach from the first ep of this deep dive?

[00:28:04] In case you've forgotten, BVCM stands for Beyond Value Chain Mitigation. We're very transparent about who we're supporting with how much money and that we're not saying this is counting against our footprint. We're very clear. We see it as our mission to support solutions that contribute to global net zero. And I think one of the points is that there's no succinct label you can put on a product or something like that, right? Like the old sort of carb neutral labels, etc.

[00:28:33] Well, that was driven by sort of marketing budgets, etc. But for us, these narrative claims have just been powerful for our broader storytelling about who Klarna is and what we care about. In cases like Klarna's and many others we've spoken to, this really isn't about compensating for omissions and making claims. So they're not spending time working out how to buy credits that they might be able to map neatly onto future compliance.

[00:29:01] They're buying despite the policy uncertainty. But that really won't be the case for everyone. In fact, the buyers we've interviewed for this series probably aren't representative of all the potential buyers out there. For that very reason, they're already buying. And in all likelihood, we're going to need policy or at least a very strong policy signal to expand the pool. In fact, some people we speak to even question whether the voluntary market can get much bigger than it is

[00:29:31] or whether we're already at the ceiling that is without regulation coming into play. Speaking of the buyer pool, Tom, this is where we have to break the fourth wall a bit. Because as our listeners may know, there's been some big buying news in the CDR world recently. And it's broken while we've been producing and releasing this series. Not exactly ideal timing for us. But, you know, needs must.

[00:30:01] Yes, the big pause or the Microsoft freeze. And we thought we'd hop back onto the mics here because we know there have been some jitters. Who better to unpack this than the CDR FYI co-founder Tank Chen? A few weeks ago, there was an article by the Heat App News that came out and essentially said that, according to their sources, that Microsoft is pausing their purchases,

[00:30:26] which then caused it quite a big stir in the ecosystem. First of all, Microsoft being a large buyer in the ecosystem, some would say 90%, which is accurate if we're looking at only 20, 25. More accurately, they are around almost 80%, which is, you know, not to say that it's a big difference. It's a 10% difference, but it's a big difference in total tonnage. If you look at their portfolio, I mean, a lot of their portfolio is actually in BEX.

[00:30:57] And these bioenergy with carbon capture and storage projects are large in size. They're large infrastructures. And so it's really nice for that industry to have the support from a credible buyer like Microsoft, right? I mean, Microsoft as being the dominant purchaser, their news of them pausing caused quite a lot of concerns in the industry for sure.

[00:31:21] For those of you not chronically online, let me tell you, LinkedIn has been ablaze with discussion on all of this the last few weeks. Still feels like it is kind of ablaze with this. I'm not reading much else right now. To be honest, from everything I'm seeing, it feels like there's quite a lot of alarmism going on, alongside some more measured takes, obviously. Chatting with Tank really underlined for me that what we're seeing with Microsoft was always atypical.

[00:31:51] Even when we've talked on this show about tons purchased, we've tended to bracket what is and what isn't Microsoft. So according to our CDRFY data, Microsoft started purchasing small volumes of, you know, really across different methods from biochar to biomass sinking in late 2022.

[00:32:12] But their significant volume came in 2023, where altogether they purchased about 3 million credits in 2023 and then 5 million credits in 2024. Between the second quarter of 2024 until the end of the first quarter of 2025, Microsoft did not purchase any tons of CDR for about three quarters.

[00:32:37] And then all of a sudden in Q2 2025, Microsoft came in and announced a bunch of megaton orders. So these are, you know, carbon-revolved contracts that are worth millions of tons. As we said in one of our reports that the CDR market doubled overnight. And that's really because of Microsoft's purchase of megaton purchases, which then persisted, you know, in Q3, Q4, these megaton deals kept getting announced.

[00:33:05] So I think to a certain degree, we thought we started normalizing these purchasing behaviors, right, in 2025, which if you were to tell me personally in 2023 that this would happen, I would probably say no way. Because, you know, we were looking at the market doing, you know, 20,000 tons, 50,000 tons of purchases. And that was considered two years ago. That was considered mega, like big, big, big news. Controversial opinion.

[00:33:34] I was actually starting to think that all these mega deals that were going on might be a problem for the market. I mean, which other buyers out there are realistically going to be signing million ton contracts right now? And is it really helpful for every supplier to feel like they need to be teeing themselves up for a big Microsoft deal? Or should even all these marketplaces and brokers be putting all of their focus and efforts into just closing a Microsoft deal as well?

[00:34:04] Yeah, I mean, I do understand the panic to a certain extent. But if we zoom out a bit, I think I agree with you, Tom. I don't think it's such a bad thing to, like, let that canopy clear a little and get some light down to the forest floor. As Tank mentioned, you know, Microsoft has bought a lot of Bex. So obviously there's going to be a bigger impact there. But he also noted that the vast majority of CDR suppliers have never, ever sold to Microsoft.

[00:34:33] I sure haven't. The key question I think this leaves us with is maybe one that we should have been asking a while ago. What might the buyer's market look like without Microsoft in the picture? If you strip out Microsoft, I mean, the carbon removal market has grown over the years. And a big part of it is thanks to Microsoft. But the purchases from companies outside of Microsoft has also, you know, grown quite a bit.

[00:34:59] So yes, so Microsoft might have, you know, initially might have 70% of the market and 80% and 90%. But the remaining 10% is actually getting bigger and bigger and bigger as well. And if you look at the supply, right, I mean, our number shows that they're out of the 259 suppliers on CDR.fyi who have disclosed their volume to us. I mean, only 39 of them, right? So 39 out of 259 actually have contracted Microsoft.

[00:35:30] To all the buyers and potential buyers out there, please don't let this put you off. It's clearly big news, but take Microsoft out of the picture and we likely have a more realistic view of where the durable CDR space is in its maturity. And it is growing year on year at a rate. So for those of us working on growing the market, we have a responsibility not to let panic or scepticism creep in, but to keep doing what we're doing.

[00:36:02] Okay, so what have we learned? What can we all do about this? The thing is, this is, this is, without a doubt, very complex. There's a lot of moving parts. There's a lot of factors to take into consideration. But that, it feels like that's not necessarily putting people off. You know, it's not putting everyone off, that's for sure. And sure, we, we do need loads more than that.

[00:36:30] But people are buying and they're carving out all these paths that people can take to go down this road. And anyone, I think, who's listening to this and who isn't quite sure yet, if they want to follow down one of those paths, I would say, dive in. Perhaps you'll find your own path. Maybe. Or maybe you'll find a path that really works for you. And you know, you're not going to be the first one. It's not going to be straightforward.

[00:36:57] But there is a community that exists to support you through this and to grow the marketplace and to improve the system through which we buy and supply CDR. Mm-hmm. Couldn't agree more. Some reflections that I've got after this three-parter. I think as a new buyer, it does feel to me as though a safe bet is to work with an intermediary. Work with a marketplace. Like, they know what they're doing.

[00:37:26] They're responsible for the majority of buyers that exist today. So, don't be afraid of bringing those people in. Like you say, there are people that exist to help this space. I also actually, reflecting on the insurance side of things, really do strongly believe that in order to grow the market, in order to grow the supply,

[00:37:45] we need the buyers and the project developers and the intermediaries to work together to influence the banks and the lenders in order to build that supply up. Because ultimately, the lenders and the banks are the ones with the money and the capital that will essentially be spent to build these projects. And the whole idea of green hushing just does not sit well with me. This industry is so much about storytelling right now.

[00:38:13] And if you've got a good story to tell, then tell it. Shout it. Like, we need to hear more of these. We don't need more tabloid articles sort of beating up this industry. We need good stories, good, interesting, engaging ways that people are interacting with this space. Yeah, because I think no matter where you sit within this industry or like out with this industry looking in, the most important thing to do right now is keep learning.

[00:38:41] And we're only going to be able to keep learning new things if we keep hearing new stories and if we keep sharing what we're doing and how we're doing it and whether it's working on the things that aren't working so well. And all of those things we have to keep learning. It's so important. I also want to say that, like, we talk a lot about how we're building something new here. You know, we're in these early stages. It's experimental. We're exploring. And that's all kind of feels really exciting and great.

[00:39:09] I think I've mentioned before how, like, I really see this as an opportunity to really shift away from current models of commerce or business that are actually really destructive. And I don't think we should let that opportunity fall away from our grasp. We're still in the stage where we can kind of build what we want to build. And I think we have to hold that, like, close to our heart as we are building this because it's such an opportunity.

[00:39:37] And as we said earlier, you know, it feels like culturally we are shifting to have suspicions of organisations that feel like these black boxes and that aren't being transparent. Of course, that makes so much sense to me. And if we want to truly build something new and exciting, this is the opportunity to do it.

[00:39:57] On the topic of new and exciting, actually, we wanted to leave you listeners with a little clip from a new buyer that's coming into the space as of 2025. This is Ben Wynn from GLAAD. And he's got a really interesting way that he thinks will motivate more people coming into the space. When we looked at the carbon removal market, we saw that most of the energy and attention was around corporations.

[00:40:24] At GLAAD, we approach carbon removal in a different way and for a different reason. Our focus is on cleaning up legacy emissions. And we do that because we recognise that to fix the climate problem, we'll need global government action, some form of carbon tax, tighter regulations and pressure on fossil fuel companies. To make that happen, we're going to need the will of the people. More than just a small group of activists and advocates.

[00:40:54] We need the majority on board. And to do that, we first need people to believe it's possible. Therefore, we're building a community, all focused on the same goal, delivering tangible impact, not just collecting signatures. What we've learnt is that to motivate people into action on climate, there has to be something in it for them. So we created the Climate Prize Draw. It's a really simple format that people are already familiar with.

[00:41:22] Each prize is placed at an impact milestone. When the community reaches that milestone, the prize unlocks. We run a draw, somebody wins and the atmosphere gets a little cleaner. We pool the entry fees into a climate pot and deploy it to a portfolio of durable removal solutions, from biochar to rock weathering and DAC. We set a target for each season and an associated cash prize.

[00:41:48] Right now, to get us started, we've set that target at 250,000 kilograms of funded clean-up with a £10,000 cash prize. So, that's the end of our three-parter. Our third three-parter of this series. Yeah, we have had a lot of threes. Hmm. Any meaning? Three is a magic number, you know. Thank you all so much for listening. Thank you to all of our guests who joined us for this mini-series and all of the mini-series that we've had within this series.

[00:42:17] We've had some great guests this time around and quite a lot of guests, I think. We've really sort of chatted with a broad spectrum of the CDR world. The smorgasbord of smorgasbords. The who's who of CDR. No, it's been a real pleasure to sit behind the mic with you, Emily. And with you, Thomas. And with all of our guests. And if anybody else has some interesting buyer stories that they want to share, please don't hesitate. Get in touch.

[00:42:46] Or supplier stories. That would be fun to hear as well. Or, if you have any ideas for things that you think we should cover in the future, don't hesitate. Send them our way. We'll be back soon. Thanks so much for listening. Love you lots. LOL. LOL. Lots of love. Remember an LOL used to be lots of love? Yeah. I feel old. TTFN. LMAO. Goodbye. Go buy. Carbon removal. Oh, yes.

[00:43:14] Thank you for listening to the Carbon Removal Show. Please subscribe if you haven't already. And follow us. We're on LinkedIn, Instagram, threads. It helps so much. And if you could do me this one favour, share this podcast with a friend or a colleague who might resonate with this episode. A huge thank you to all our coalition members, without whom the Carbon Removal Show would not be possible. BZERO. Carbon Engineering. Carbon Gap. Carbon Future. Climfy. Evertamer.

[00:43:44] Klarna. Mashmakes. Milky Wire. Negative Emissions Platform. Opna. Patch. Pinwheel. Plan Boo. ReCarba. Sebastian Manhart. Standard Gas Technologies. Supercritical. And Offstream. If you or your company are interested in joining this amazing coalition, please get in touch. The Carbon Removal Show is hosted by me, Tom Praviti. And me, Emily Swaddle. And produced by me, Ben Weaver-Hings.