YouSaid · the spoken record

Christoph Gebald

lines on the record: 25
first: 2023-02-03
most recent: 2023-02-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“If you're climbing Everest and if you're constantly looking to the peak, you're frustrated all the time because it's so far away. But if you simply consider the next step you have to take, it can be a very beautiful journey. There's a philosophy at Clamorx is the power of small steps. And this is something everyone can do. If you on the one hand have like a very big target like climbing Mount Everest, but on the other hand, you focus on the next step and make sure you're not being killed on the next step that you're taking and that you have the energy reserves to do it and the right team to do it, you'll be successful. If I recall summiting Denali, for example, in Alaska, I don't know what was it like a minute on the peak or two minutes on the peak, but it was a five-week journey and the time in Basecamp, the time in High Camp. So if you do something like direct air capture, which is an extremely long journey, you have to acknowledge the beauty of the journey you're taking and not only think about.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is dream policy and dream deployment support that's happening there. I mentioned I'm an Avid mountaineer when I studied in the US and end of my studies with two friends from college, I climbed Mount McKinley in Alaska. And it's a bit of like saying, hey, I'm really dreaming about climbing this mountain. And suddenly you have someone saying, okay, let's do it. Here's the gear you need. Here's your ticket to fly to Alaska. Here's the pair of ski you're going to use. Here's the plane to the glacier. It's a bit like that feeling, you know? You have been dreaming about that and suddenly you really have the opportunity to do it.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Investors, the direct air capture industry is suddenly becoming a billion dollar industry where you're having projects being enabled on the billion dollar scale, which is similar magnitude as other large-scale energy projects or renewable projects. So we are essentially going from like a very young industry with a limited number of players and experience to a playground that is reserved of very large energy companies and figuring out how to convince investors to fill the gap, that is at stake going forward.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Half of my brain is in the future. And I always try to figure out how to unlock the next phase of growth. And for example, in the United States, we have this huge piece of government support with the Department of Energy. There is $3.5 billion on the table to deploy direct air capture on a megaton scale. And on the other hand, we have the Inflation Reduction Act, which also has support for direct air capture. So the question that we're currently having is how can we leverage what we have accomplished to date in the best way to fulfill the requirements of this program and show really the large scale implementation of air capture in the United States. This is only half part of the story. The other half has to be financed from the private market or from”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's the thing with decisions. Decisions are mostly painful. And mostly, the more painful they are, the more powerful they can be. This saying of Warren Buffett, I think, who once said, successful people say no, nine out of ten times, and saying no hurts, it really hurts. Like saying no to opportunities hurts. And that's one of the biggest challenges in our field is with this essentially unlimited market and essentially unlimited applications you could have for pulling carbon from the air. There's also the risk that you're not focusing. One of the most tricky parts is to constantly turn down on opportunities all across the board, like to people who are applying to your company, to potential partners, to potential investors, also to potential policy. So this constant refocusing and recalibrating on what you're up to.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Viserentivity, the opportunity to take CO2 out of the air and store it in the ground. And you have the ability to reduce actively the CO2 content.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The good news is we have two founders. And this is simply too much for one brain, the way we have split it up at ClimWorks is that Jan is working on the technology and operations front, and I'm working on the market, investor, and policy side so we can actually have our brains fully contributed to those two challenges of scaling market and scaling tech at the same time. What we developed over time actually a lot is intuition for certain things. And Gut feel for how things should be and where they should go in 2017. Our main business was about selling CO2 as a commodity. And we were extremely proud of having the Coca-Cola company behind it as a customer to the CO2 we're pulling out of the air to carbonate the drinks. And right at this time, we discovered”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You declare it as Wild West. On the other hand, I'm seeing substantial acceleration since October 2018, which gives me a lot of confidence that we can move the needle in the right direction for the 2050 targets.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything we do is actually going back to October 2018, the IPCC, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, released a report on the 1.5 degree target. And in this report, they made clear to achieve this target, you have to remove CO2 from the air in massive quantities, massive being gigatons. What that did to us and our whole industry was really a step change in perception. Like before October 2018, everything we did was mainly based on us educating. Now, since October 2018, suddenly we had a lot of wind in our sails and the boat was driving much faster. And it not only did it for us, but for this whole ecosystem, it's actually not too much time where you had to figure out a lot of pieces of the puzzle, right? To me, it totally makes sense.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's two different tracks. The only thing what we have in common is the underlying science. The way you capture a CO2 molecule from a very chemistry point of view is similar for capturing CO2 from the air and from a combustion flue gas. All the rest is very different. In air CO2 is heavily diluted. It's 0.04%. In a combustion flue gas, it's 10 to 20%. So the system implementation, the business models, the market applications and the whole value chain is different.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A handful of companies that existed pre 2010. On the other hand, we are seeing more and more new companies existing only since one and a half or two years. Now, the market is large enough for a good two dozens of companies, climate science asks our industry to remove several gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Individual company can achieve if we are ambitious, say, in the range of a gigaton. So if the target is five gigatons for direct air capture in 2050 and you have five super successful companies like Unicorn Squared, it'll be five firms each contributing a gigaton. So plenty of space. In 20 to 30 years down the road, there will be an ecosystem of I do think 20 to 50 companies which are very, very successful, very profitable in this domain capturing CO2 from the air.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Actually, our original first dream has been to sell plants, but no surprise no one wanted to buy those plants because no company on Earth had the business model to buy and operate direct air capture machines. We transitioned to, we pre-finance those facilities.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the beauty of air capture, it's independent of the location you're capturing the CO2. We can capture CO2 anywhere on the planet and through diffusion and jet streams and wind phenomena, it's diluting over the atmosphere”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's because of scaling our core competence is pulling carbon from the air in the most effective way. And the core competence of others is how CO2 can be stored in the safest and most durable way and lowest cost way in the underground. Underground storage depends heavily on the region you're working. For example, in Iceland, where we actually doing underground mineralization, which means the CO2 is essentially turned into stone. looking at in Norway where it's more conventional underground storage where the CO2 is locked up in the underground as a gas in the United States in Louisiana with a project going on which is also more conventional storage and those partners at those sites have to of course understand the local properties of the storage wells and this is why it's distributed on several different shoulders”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Contacts, and actually it went very fast from the first encounter at this party in Marrakesh to the first pilot being installed, it took less than 12 months, which was remarkable for our company at that state.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can confirm over the last 15 years the really big breakthroughs were serendipity. It's probably a 90% serendipity and a 10% result of the rough planning. And the fact that we're operating in Iceland really goes back to lucky encounters, like being invited to a very special party at the COP in Marrakesh, where I happened to meet the wife of the former president of Iceland who introduced me to the former president of Iceland, Oliver Grimson, who I had the chance to talk to and tell him that we're capturing CO2 from the Erwith machines. And he said, oh, well, that's beautiful. This is something he has been looking for for many years because in his country, in Iceland, since two decades, researchers have found a way how CO2 can be stored very effectively and safely in the ground. And he helped to enable”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where you today don't have off takers for renewable energy sources. Think about the sunbelt of the planet, right? If you install a large scale direct air capture facility, you can promote the construction of a solar electricity park, and that can help to electrify parts of the world that are currently not being electrified. So in summary, yes, it requires energy, but it can also be a catalyst to much needed deployment of renewable energy sources.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. We do focus on the application of sustainable energy sources to power direct air capture. Air capture, no matter how you do it, is an energy intensive business. And you want to make sure that you're using renewable energy sources. Now, the world urgently needs to scale the deployment of renewable energy sources. However, there's a limit like the classical example. Maybe the wind is not blowing when you want to use your dishwasher, right? It's becoming increasingly a challenge to balance the availability of renewables and the need in the grids. Direct air capture can be a catalyst to the deployment of renewable energy systems because we can take renewables at times when others cannot or promote the deployment of renewables in areas.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Very simple answer 10%. If we take a ton of CO2 out of the air with our machines, we are emitting 0.1 tons in the form of gray emissions from both energy and material use. If we are serving a ton of carbon removal to the market, like be it corporates or private people, or maybe in the long run even governments, what that means is we're taking roughly 1.1 tons of carbon out of the air and provide 1.1 tons for permanent underground storage in order to have net removed a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's essentially about cost, technology we have today, and we are deploying today works, period. And we could scale that to gigatons. The question is, what is the ultimate cost entitlement of the technology that we're having today and will be achieved by scaling today's technology in the long run? We're working on heavy deployment of the current state of technology, and we are continuing to work on technology development to progressively walk down the cost curve.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm an Avid mountaineer. And the outdoors are a very sensitive environment, especially the mountains, the effects of climate change, like landscapes are changing. And so I always wanted to contribute to the topic of stopping climate change. To me, always it felt wrong to put CO2 in the atmosphere and not take it back. It's normal to us that if we're using water and we are treating the wastewater, like if we have trash, we're not throwing it out of our windows in the streets and it's piling up. But we don't really have a waste management system for the atmosphere. As an engineer, noticing that there's no technical and no feasible solution out there for a treatment facility of our atmosphere, it was clear to me that something has to be done. I could have earned much more in the last 15 years elsewhere, but not earned more to my heart and my passion than what I'm currently.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First and foremost, we have to reduce CO2, like drive electric cars, insulate our houses, use renewable energy sources instead of fossil sources. However, there's only so much you can reduce. There is a remaining part of unavoidable emissions, around about 5 to 10 percent. And this has to be removed from the atmosphere. If we were to approach the full 100% with direct air capture, this would be simply uneconomical and unfeasible. We are the last resort for things. You're not getting rid of otherwise, like agriculture, hard to abate emissions like flying, for example, or hard to decarbonize industry like steel making, aluminum making, etc.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At the World Economic Forum, I perceived a very genuine interest business leaders are gearing up and understanding solutions to achieve the targets that they have announced. And for us being one pillar of the solution pool that is out there to achieve net zero by latest mid-century.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We started actually to do this already 15 years ago to develop technology, to pull carbon out of the air. And some five years ago started to put it in the ground. And initial efforts to do that have been solely based on the trust that existed in this field. So if you buy an electric car, you can feel the performance of the car, right? If you have solar panels, you can power your computers or your lights at home. If you capture CO2 from the air with machines and pump it in the underground, you're not feeling anything. You can't see CO2. You can't smell CO2. And so far, every action in this whole industry has been based on trust. We finally had a third party confirm and verify that the services we are doing are right and quantified in the way as we put it on our certificates.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'm an avid mountaineer, and so to me, I always wanted to contribute to stopping climate change. It felt wrong to put CO2 in the atmosphere and not take it back. It's normal to us that if we're using water, we are treating the wastewater, but we don't really have a waste management system for the atmosphere. As an engineer, noticing that there's no technical and no feasible solution out there for a treatment facility of our atmosphere, it was clear to me that something has to be done. We discovered viserendibity the opportunity to take CO2 out of the air and store it in the ground. Air capture is suddenly becoming a billion dollar industry. We are essentially going from a very young industry with a limited number of players and experience to the playground. This is what we have to figure out going forward.”
2023-02-03 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Turning point for a climate-crisis solution, w/Climeworks' Christoph Gebald · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT