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One of the most interesting projects in carbon removal is doubling down on the industry. Frontier — a coalition of tech, finance, and fashion firms that buy carbon removal credits to support the crucial technology — has secured another $915 million to power its next round of buying. The artificial intelligence giant Anthropic has also joined the coalition alongside its existing members, including Stripe, Google, JPMorganChase, and others.
On this episode of Shift Key, Rob is joined by Hannah Bebbington Valori, who leads Frontier. They discuss the health of the carbon removal industry after a tough few years, how Frontier is changing its buying strategy for its newest round, and why Anthropic entered the coalition.
Shift Key is hosted by Robinson Meyer, the founding executive editor of Heatmap News.
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Here is an excerpt from their conversation:
Robinson Meyer: I do think there are people who are going to see Anthropic join and say, Anthropic, complicated company. Because on the one hand, I think it’s been the most ... if there’s any company, I think, that’s kind of pledged most among the frontier AI labs to uphold, let’s say, liberal democratic values, I think Anthropic obviously has to be top of the list. At the same time, they’ve partnered with xAI. They seem to be using a lot of compute at this Colossus Data Center, which is particularly carbon intensive in Tennessee. I think there are people who say carbon removal is kind of a delayist technology. It allows companies to keep emitting fossil fuels, to keep burning carbon and kind of promising to clean it up later, but not doing anything to reduce emissions in the near term. And Anthropic would be a great maybe example of this. What would be your response to that?
Hannah Bebbington Valori: Well, I think my response to that would be a couple of things. One is the moral hazard around carbon removal has really not come to fruition. This concept that companies buy carbon removal as kind of a way to get out of corporate climate commitments or other climate activity is like really not borne out in the data for a couple of reasons. One, the people who care about carbon removal are the people who care about the climate, and so those folks are often building broader programs that include carbon removal and other things.
Two, these are all voluntary activities today, and I think — they’re very, very expensive ones at that. Buying carbon removal today costs hundreds of dollars a ton. If you wanted a sort of get out of jail free card, Frontier and carbon removal is not that. There are many other ways to have a climate program or maybe have a broader sort of civic responsibility program that are much cheaper than what we do.
And I think this is borne out sort of generally in the data, like how much money we spend on carbon removal versus how much money we spend on decarbonization efforts, rightly so, is a fraction. And so the world as it stands is not replacing carbon removal with other decarbonization activities. Rather, buying carbon removal today is recognizing that this market will not turn on like a light switch in 2050 when we want it if we don’t invest today. And so folks who buy carbon removal now are really sort of playing that long game thinking into the future about what we want to exist and investing today to make that happen.
And then, you know, the other way to answer this question is like we should hold folks’ feet to the fire on this. So people who buy carbon removal ... Honestly, people who don’t buy carbon removal should be thinking about decarbonizing their emissions.
Meyer: Where is OpenAI? They should be a Frontier …
Bebbington Valori: Totally. You can call them and tell them that. We should be banging on the doors of these companies and many other companies to be asking them, what are you doing to decarbonize? And that is not just Anthropic. That is everyone.
You can find a full transcript of the episode here.
Mentioned:
AI IPOs Could Create a Wave of New Funding for Climate Tech
Rob’s most recent story on carbon removal: Carbon Removal After Microsoft
Rob’s original story about Frontier: We’ve Never Seen a Carbon-Removal Plan Like This Before
This episode of Shift Key is sponsored by ...
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Music for Shift Key is by Adam Kromelow.
