The Carbon Removal Show

Get in loser, we’re going shopping. In part two of our buyers deep dive, Tom and Emily move from motivation to mechanics. Because deciding to buy carbon removal is only the beginning. The real challenge is everything that comes next.

In this episode:

🏗️ Buying CDR Is Not Exactly A Trip To The Shops: Tom and Emily step inside the deal room to ask what buying carbon removal actually involves, and why the process still looks different from buyer to buyer.

🤝 Direct, Marketplace, Or Somewhere In Between?: We explore the major routes into the market, and how each path shifts who carries the burden of due diligence, education, risk, and relationship management.

📚 A Tiny Language Check-In: Offtakes. Pre-purchases. Payment on delivery. Emily makes sure we are all still speaking the same language.

💥 Buy Now, Pay Earlier: We look at catalytic buying, and why paying early can matter as much as buying at all. For early-stage suppliers, pre-purchases can unlock cash flow, credibility, and further finance. But for buyers, they also mean taking on very real delivery and technology risk.

💸 Money, Money, Money: Eventually, every lofty climate intention runs into the same question: which budget line is paying for this? We explore the internal mechanics of getting CDR through procurement, finance, legal, and contract systems that were not really designed with carbon removal in mind.

🧾 Internal Carbon Pricing, Revenue Shares, And Other Ways To Fund The Madness: Klarna explains its internal carbon fee model. Wise explains why it ties climate finance to revenue. The wider point: there is still no single standard approach, but serious buyers are finding ways to make climate spending durable.

😵‍💫 Why It Still Feels So Higgledy-Piggledy: Buyers, suppliers, and intermediaries are all building the path as they walk it, and that friction has consequences for who enters the market, and who gets left waiting for capital.

👥 Featuring

Guest insights from:

Paolo Piffaretti (ClimeFi)
Bee Hui Yeh (Patch)
Brendan Molony (Docusign)
Caroline Corbett-Thompson (Wise)
Adam Fraser (Terraset)
Ibrahim Sarwar (Artio)
Alexander Farsan (Klarna)

Hosts: Tom Previte and Emily Swaddle

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Podcast Coordinator: Ellie Morris

In the first part of our buyers deep dive, Tom and Emily start with a deceptively simple question: why is anyone buying carbon removal at all? In a market with no universal mandate, high prices, and a dash of reputational risk, the real surprise is not that buying is hard. It’s that any company manages to do it in the first place.

In this episode:

💸 Why Buying CDR Can Look Completely Irrational: From a CFO’s perspective, carbon removal can look expensive, risky, hard to explain, and suspiciously like something that arrived in their inbox before the budget meeting. So what gets a purchase over the line?

🌱 Belief, Conviction, and Backing the Market Early: For some buyers, the motivation starts with a simple premise: carbon removal will be necessary, so the industry needs support now. 

🏢 From Climate Values to Corporate Strategy: Conviction matters, but no market scales on vibes alone. We explore how CDR gets translated from ‘the planet needs this’ into something that can survive contact with a spreadsheet and at least one sceptical colleague from finance.

⏳ Buying Early as a Competitive Advantage: What if carbon removal is not just a climate gesture, but a strategic hedge? We unpack the argument that early buyers are not simply purchasing tonnes for today, but locking in future relationships, terms, and access to supply before the market tightens.

⚖️ Responsibility, Risk, and the Long-Term Licence to Operate: As climate regulation evolves, investors pay closer attention, and supply chain pressures grow, will carbon removal start to look less like a nice-to-have and more like part of how some businesses are preparing for the future?

🔀 Putting It All Together: No one wakes up one morning, points at a carbon removal contract, and says: yes, this alone will save the quarter. This episode traces the messy mix of motives that gets a purchase over the line.

👥 Featuring

Guest insights from:

Alexander Farsan (Klarna)
Adam Fraser (Terraset)
Caroline Corbett-Thompson (Wise)
Paolo Piffaretti (ClimeFi)
Leila Toplic (formerly of Carbonfuture)

Hosts: Tom Previte and Emily Swaddle

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

In this final episode of our public perceptions mini-series, Tom and Emily ask a deceptively simple question: what would a better conversation about carbon removal actually look like? One that can hold urgency without hype, complexity without alienation, and honesty without infighting.

In this episode:

🧠 Why Stories Matter More Than Stats: Carbon removal isn’t short on data, but data alone doesn’t move people. We explore why stories linger longer than numbers, and how storytelling can humanise CDR without dumbing it down.

🌍 Who Is “The Public”, Really?: We remember that audiences are plural, contextual, and deeply shaped by geography, culture, and lived experience. One message will never fit all.

⚖️ When Internal Debates Spill Outside: Healthy disagreement is essential, but public mud-slinging over durability, methods, and perfection can confuse buyers, journalists, and newcomers. Where’s the line between rigour and self-sabotage?

😅 Humour, Humanity, and Letting the Mask Slip: We hear the case that humour, vulnerability, and emotional honesty are under-used tools in climate communication. From memes to podcasts, cultural work is not a nice-to-have, it’s infrastructure.

🎨 Imagining Futures: We consider how the arts can open up new ways of engaging with carbon removal.

🔀 Simplicity vs Complexity: How do we communicate urgency and necessity while staying honest about uncertainty and evolution? The challenge isn’t choosing one, but knowing which to lead with, and when.

🏢 From Climate Concept to Business Reality: What does this all mean for conversations with businesses? We consider how narratives must shift when speaking to buyers, CFOs, and decision-makers, without losing trust.

👥 Featuring

Guest insights from:

Shilpika Gautam (Opna)

Ross Kenyon (Reversing Climate Change)

Selina Wagner

Leila Toplic (Carbonfuture)

Hosts: Tom Previte and Emily Swaddle

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

In this second instalment of our miniseries on public perceptions of carbon removal, Tom and Emily dig into the roots of scepticism: where the hostility comes from, which fears are justified, and where misinformation takes hold. This episode explores why trust is hard-won - and so critical to get right.

In this episode:

🧠 Fearing the New: From 19th-century electricity panics to GMOs and vaccines, we explore why novel technologies attract suspicion - and why CDR is no exception.

🌿 Nature, Identity, and Emotional Attachments: Public discomfort with “engineered” climate solutions isn’t irrational - it’s rooted in deep cultural and ecological values. We explore how biodiversity, land use, farming livelihoods, and spiritual relationships to place shape perceptions far more than technical risk assessments.

🏭 The Long Fossil Fuel Shadow: Why do so many people see carbon removal as Big Oil’s loophole? The team unpacks the long legacy of CCS, the role of energy majors in early DAC investments, and the powerful idea that “polluters should pay” - even though implementation is still murky.

📉 Moral Hazard, Greenwashing… or Misunderstanding?: Does buying or investing in CDR slow actual emissions cuts? The team pick apart the numbers, the caveats, and the narratives that refuse to die.

🌊 St Ives - When CDR Hits the Shoreline: We learn about a project that spiralled amid distrust and poor communication, and that illustrates why transparency and timing matter more than any technical spec sheet.

💬 The Myths We Tell Ourselves: Gigaton fantasies, $100-per-tonne illusions, and over-confidence that the “best technology” will eventually win. Which internal industry narratives are warping expectations, eroding credibility, and setting up the industry for disappointment?

Learn More

🔗 Explore the St Ives community campaign - Read resources, statements and updates from the local activists who opposed the marine alkalinity trial in Cornwall.

🔬 Dive into the CO₂RE research on the St Ives case - A detailed review of what happened, why public trust broke down, and what the trial reveals about the social dimensions of marine CDR.

👥 Featuring

Guest insights from:

Ingrid Sundvor (Carbon Balance Initiative)
Dr. Elspeth Spence (Cardiff University)
Dr. Rob Bellamy (University of Manchester)
Sebastian Manhart (Carbonfuture)

Hosts: Tom Previte and Emily Swaddle

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks

Tom and Emily kick off a brand-new three-part miniseries on how people understand (and misunderstand) carbon removal - and what that means for the future of the sector. From the words we choose to the baggage they carry, from early “sci-fi” scepticism to today’s governance debates, this episode unpacks why public perceptions aren’t a side issue: they’re central to whether CDR can scale at all.

In this episode:

🧠 Low Awareness, High Stakes: We look at why knowledge of CDR remains tiny - and yet how support rises sharply once people actually learn what it is.

📜 Early CDR Was… Science Fiction: Back in the noughties, carbon removal felt like aviation before the Wright brothers. But have we caught up?

🗣️ The Language Trap: “Ocean acidification”, “nature-based”, “engineered”: the words we choose shape the reactions we get. We hear why analogies can mislead, why metaphors can create false binaries, and why the “natural = good” instinct is more complicated than it looks.

🌏 When Context Changes Everything: From smallholders in Malaysia to farmers in Cornwall, public perceptions aren’t static - they’re contextual.

🏛️ Governance Isn’t Background Noise: We learn that CDR isn’t just hardware. Change the governance model, and you change the public response. People don’t just ask “what is CDR?”; they ask “who’s in charge?”

🔍 Before We Scale, We Need Trust: Early impressions matter. And in a landscape primed for misinformation and polarisation, how we communicate now will shape the governance, justice, and legitimacy of CDR for decades to come.

👥 Featuring

Guest insights from:

Dave Addison

Ingrid Sundvor (Carbon Balance Initiative)

Dr. Elspeth Spence (Cardiff University)

Dr. Rob Bellamy (University of Manchester)

Hosts: Tom Previte and Emily Swaddle

Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks