The Carbon Curve

Episode 38 is with Dai Ellis (Co-founder and CEO) and Vilas Rao (Co-founder) of Cascade Climate.

Today Na’im speaks with Dai Ellis and Vilas Rao about how Cascade Climate is working to address key challenges in open-system carbon dioxide removal (CDR), particularly around quantification of enhanced rock weathering (ERW), why a community-built quantification standard is key to increase consistency in MRV practices across the ERW market, and how to encourage industry adoption and data sharing to advance understanding of ERW.

In this episode, Na’im, Dai, and Vilas discuss:

* The co-founders’ vision for launching and building Cascade;

* The problem Cascade was founded to solve;

* The reason for focusing on ERW and the key challenges associated;

* The current state of net removal quantification and the reason for creating a community-built standard;

* Incentives to encourage adoption and implementation of the community-built standard;

* The importance of having data-access and encouraging data-sharing in driving shared learning and building trust;

* The role policymakers play in ERW;

* Responsible deployment of ERW in the Global South; and

* The good-movie and the bad-movie versions of open-system climate intervention.

Relevant Links:

* Carbon Curve Podcast Ep. 3 - “Dai Ellis on what scaling up HIV medicines can teach us about building a thriving carbon removal market”

* The Great Unwind - Substack by Dai Ellis

* Carbon Travels - Substack by John Sanchez

* Foundations for a Healthy ERW Market Cycle - Blog Post

* Cascade Climate on OpenAir’s This is CDR webinar series

* Cascade Climate website

About Dai:

Dai Ellis is CEO and co-founder at Cascade Climate. Dai is an entrepreneur with deep experience founding and scaling high-performing nonprofit and for-profit ventures across climate, health, and education. He has co-founded five different ventures and paid forward what he’s learned the hard way as an executive coach to climate tech founders and CEOs. Earlier in his career, Dai led the Clinton Health Access Initiative’s pioneering work on market shaping for drugs, vaccines, and other health products in the Global South. More recently, he has been at the forefront of efforts to import learning and tools from global health market shaping into climate tech.

About Vilas:

Vilas Rao is a co-founder at Cascade Climate. Vilas has been growing businesses in the agriculture technology space for the past decade, looking for ways to apply technology to agricultural production systems to drive a more sustainable and secure food supply. Prior to Cascade, Vilas was the Chief Revenue Officer for Arable Labs, which delivers a real-time crop monitoring solution for farming. Earlier in his career, Vilas led the scale up of FieldView, the largest data platform and partner ecosystem in agriculture while at The Climate Corporation. Vilas got his start in agriculture working with smallholder farmers in Nepal, which led to his lifelong fascination with the connections between the food system, economic opportunity, and our planetary footprint.

About Cascade Climate:

Cascade Climate works to accelerate progress in climate interventions that leverage Earth’s natural systems—from soils to oceans to glaciers—to stabilize our climate. As a philanthropically-backed nonprofit, Cascade coordinates and resources ambitious initiatives across science, industry, philanthropy, and policy to overcome the core bottlenecks that are holding back the most promising open-system climate interventions. Its initial focus is advancing the development of a healthy market for enhanced rock weathering (ERW), underpinned by its scientific evidence base and its potential for durable, gigaton-scale carbon dioxide removal.

This episode was created and published by Na’im Merchant. Episode production and content support provided by Tank Chen.

Na’im Merchant is the co-founder and Executive Director of Carbon Removal Canada, a policy initiative focused on scaling carbon removal in Canada. He is also a policy fellow with Elemental Excelerator. He previously ran carbon removal consulting practice Carbon Curve, and publishes The Carbon Curve newsletter and podcast. Every two weeks, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing the policies, technologies, and collective action needed to scale up carbon removal around the world.

Tank Chen is a carbon removal advocate based in Taiwan whose focus is on communicating the importance of carbon removal to policy makers, corporate leaders, and the broader public through education, communications, and policy advocacy.

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