This episode explains carbon removal—how to capture CO₂ from the air and store it permanently. Nan Ransohoff says the world needs to remove 5 billion tons of CO₂ per year but has only done 10,000 tons total. The 2030s are the make-or-break decade. She highlights three companies: Climeworks (giant fans that suck in air and filter CO₂, but use lots of energy), Charm Industrial (turns corn stalks into oil and injects it underground), and Running Tide (grows seaweed then sinks it to the ocean floor). All are too expensive now and need government and corporate buyers to scale up.
In this episode of Business Breakdowns, the program invites Nan Ransohoff, Head of Climate at Stripe and Project Lead for Frontier, to delve into carbon removal as a key lever in addressing climate change. The core argument is that, beyond emissions reduction, carbon removal technologies must be sca
Nan Ransohoff, Head of Climate at Stripe and leader of the Frontier project (a $1 billion advance purchase commitment), systematically outlines the current state and prospects of carbon removal as a key lever in addressing climate change. Core thesis: The world needs to remove approximately 5 billion tons of CO₂ annually, yet the cumulative permanent removal to date stands at only about 10,000 tons. The industry is in an extreme early stage of "going from zero to one hundred," and the 2030s represent a critical window for determining whether carbon removal can scale.
Nan Ransohoff points out that the reason carbon removal has shifted from "a nice-to-have" to "indispensable" lies in the fact that human emission reduction efforts have been too slow.
Global annual emissions amount to approximately 50 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent. IPCC models indicate that to achieve the net-zero target by 2050, around 5 billion tonnes of CO₂ must be permanently removed each year — roughly equivalent to the United States' total annual emissions. However, the reality is that as of 2022, the cumulative permanent carbon removal worldwide stands at only about 10,000 tonnes, creating a chasm from "zero to billions" relative to the target.
"If we had significantly reduced emissions decades ago when scientists first issued warnings, carbon removal would not be as central to the story as it is now. Because we have been too slow in cutting emissions, the weight of carbon removal has been amplified."
Nan emphasizes that carbon removal is not a substitute for emission reductions, but a necessary supplement given that "it is already too late to rely solely on reductions." The industry needs to scale from 10,000 tonnes per year to 5 billion tonnes per year in less than 30 years — a growth rate that far exceeds any historical precedent across industrial sectors.
Nan categorizes current carbon removal technologies into three types: purely natural, purely engineered, and hybrid "nature + engineering" solutions.
1. Direct Air Capture (DAC) — Purely Engineered Route
Representative company: Climeworks. Giant fans draw in air, separating 412 CO₂ molecules out of every million air molecules, concentrating them before injecting them underground for geological storage. Core constraint: The process itself is highly energy-intensive and must rely on large-scale, low-cost clean energy (solar, wind, nuclear) to achieve net-negative emissions.
2. Natural Solutions — Free but Insufficient
Plants naturally capture carbon through photosynthesis, and rocks slowly absorb carbon over tens of thousands of years. However, natural solutions have three major drawbacks: not permanent (trees can rot or burn), require large amounts of arable land (competing with food production), and too slow.
3. Hybrid Solutions — Nan's Most Promising Direction
Nan reveals that Frontier's recently released roadmap lists approximately 100 technology gaps, with synthetic biology receiving the most attention — how to engineer natural carbon sinks to be more permanent and efficient.
Nan believes the root cause of the carbon removal industry’s long-standing “chicken-and-egg” dilemma is simple: there are no customers.
“If you’re an entrepreneur, why would you build a company with no revenue? If you’re an investor, why would you invest in a company with no revenue? That’s simply not an attractive value proposition.”
Frontier’s solution draws on the “Advanced Market Commitment (AMC)” mechanism from the vaccine sector:
Nan explains how it works: Frontier signs forward offtake agreements with suppliers, who can then use these agreements to apply for bank loans to build facilities. “Peter (Charm’s founder) took our purchase commitment to the bank and said, ‘I have customers,’ and only then did the bank agree to lend.”
But Nan admits the voluntary market can only go so far as “first base”:
Nan acknowledges that climate change is a classic "tragedy of the commons" — negative externalities are diffuse, long-term, and difficult to attribute, and governments have historically been slow to respond to "slow-boil crises."
However, she points to two positive signals:
1. The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act (IRA): $380 billion in subsidies to accelerate climate solutions, making clean energy at least cost-competitive with fossil fuels
2. National security dimension: Energy independence has become a strategic issue, driving increased government investment
Regarding the skepticism that "why bother when others are still emitting," Nan's response is:
Regional geographic characteristics determine each country's role: Australia, with abundant renewable energy resources and geological storage conditions, could become a carbon removal hub; different regions need to find their comparative advantages based on sunlight, wind, and geological conditions.
Nan observes that venture capital is shifting from "avoiding hard tech" to embracing climate hard tech.
"At its core, the climate problem is about moving atoms; bits merely serve atoms. Historically, VCs have shied away from early-stage hard tech and R&D-heavy projects, but funds like Lowercarbon Capital and Breakthrough Energy Ventures are changing that."
However, she points out a mismatch between the traditional VC model (7–10 year exit cycle) and carbon removal companies (which require longer R&D cycles), calling for more patient capital and innovative financing tools.
On the advantages of "running climate projects within large corporations":
| Position | Guest Stance | Key Data |
|---|---|---|
| Climeworks (DAC) | Technology representative, already procured | Direct air capture, requires large amounts of clean energy |
| Charm Industrial | Already procured, bullish | Biomass pyrolysis + bio-oil injection underground |
| Running Tide | Already procured, bullish | Seaweed growth + deep-sea sequestration |
| Stripe Climate | Success case | Tens of thousands of enterprises participating, pooling millions of dollars into procurement funds |
| Frontier | Core project | $1 billion pre-purchase commitment, 9-year term |
| Tesla | Positive analogy | Greatest contribution is forcing traditional automakers to transition |
1. Nan Ransohoff: "The world needs to remove approximately 5 billion tons of CO₂ annually, but the cumulative permanent removals to date amount to only about 10,000 tons—the industry is going from zero to one hundred." Support: The U.S. emits roughly 6 billion tons per year, and the scale of carbon removal targets is comparable, yet actual progress is nearly zero.
2. Nan Ransohoff: "The root cause of the long-standing 'chicken-and-egg' dilemma in the carbon removal industry is—there are no customers." Support: No revenue → no entrepreneurs → no investors → no technology. Frontier's $1 billion advance purchase commitment aims to break this cycle.
3. Nan Ransohoff: "We are all buying the 'Tesla Roadster' to make technology cheaper through iteration." Support: Early high-price purchases (e.g., $500/ton) are intended to drive down the cost curve, ultimately reaching below $100/ton.
4. Nan Ransohoff: "The voluntary market can only get to 'first base'; ultimately, it must shift to a compliance market—government carbon taxes or direct procurement." Support: By 2050, annual demand will require hundreds of billions of dollars. With global GDP at roughly $100 trillion, the voluntary market cannot sustain this.
5. Nan Ransohoff: "Tesla's greatest contribution is not how much emissions it directly reduced, but that it forced all traditional automakers to take electric vehicles seriously." Support: Technology spillover effects allow local breakthroughs to have global impact—the same applies to carbon removal.
6. Nan Ransohoff: "Running climate projects inside large companies, leveraging existing distribution networks, has near-zero marginal cost—Stripe Climate enables tens of thousands of businesses to participate in carbon removal with 'one more click'." Support: The customer acquisition cost for independent startups is too high; large companies' assets (payment networks, brands, customer relationships) are underappreciated levers in climate action.
7. Nan Ransohoff: "The 2030s are the critical window to determine whether carbon removal can scale—we need to know which solutions can work by then." Support: Current uncertainty is extremely high; by 2030, the confidence interval should be significantly narrowed to identify the mainstream technology pathway.
8. Nan Ransohoff: "Carbon removal has no intrinsic value—energy does, carbon removal does not. This is its fundamental difference from clean energy." Support: Even if geothermal is expensive, once costs decline, it has a natural market; the "product" of carbon removal is avoiding catastrophe, with no natural buyers—the market must be artificially created.