"Technology has the potential to change the way we live," says Dan Jørgensen, the Danish Minister of Energy, Utilities and Climate.

His opening remarks marked the beginning of The Carbon Virtual Summit 2021 on September 28th where innovators, authorities and academia from the U.S. and Denmark gathered to discuss new ways to reach a shared goal of effective carbon removal.

One of the speakers were Dr. Julio Friedmann, senior Research Scholar, and Lead of the Carbon Management Research (CaMRI) Initiative at Columbia University, and he highlighted the importance of new innovation.

“We must turn clean energy into things like hydrogen and synthetic fuels that require innovation – and new catalysts, new technologies, new business model, new regulations – that means new innovation on all fronts.”

These were the keynotes expressed by 

Watch the full virtual summit here

Up until two to three years ago, there was no market, no investments and limited awareness in the carbon removal space – but this has changed dramatically in the last few years with increased revenue streams from new buyers who are ensuring that future capacity is built.

“These sophisticated buyers – such as Stripe, Shopify and Microsoft and others – are now buying and locking in capacity to make sure they have a supply of high-quality engineered carbon removal in the future, through 2025-2030,” says Peter Reinhardt, Co-founder of Charm Industrial.

This development is thus a large contrast to just a few years back when deeptech entrepreneurs in the carbon removal space struggled to create demand – now there is more demand than supply for carbon removals.

We need more changemakers onboard

However, the carbon removal community remains small compared to the vast potentials of growth in this space. To fully unfold its potential, we need to grow the space and the sense of agency, and this requires a new mentality and more entrepreneurs entering the field.

We need to break through the mentality that it is only our responsibility to protest it – it is actually our responsibility to solve it.

Peter Reinhardt said in a comment on the need for action beyond e.g. Greta Thunberg's activism

Adding to the discussion, Dante Simonetti, CO-founder of SeaChange, emphasized that the oil and gas industry has the potential of spurring this movement, as they possess considerable capital, experience, and talent necessary for long term gains. However, to reach the desired cost and scale for carbon removal, entrepreneurial action is not enough – strong research, more innovation and better technology is needed to make a material impact on climate change.

Research, innovation and partnerships are key

The US and Denmark recently signed a formal agreement (MoU) on energy research including mentions of carbon removal. Collective set of actions like these are needed to provide structure and focus to spur more carbon removal innovation. Innovation is a key driver in accelerating the movement, either to improve existing technologies or create opportunities for real breakthrough innovations with a more disruptive character. We need to bring research, development, and partnerships into the field, but it needs to be done right.

Adding to the discussion, Christian Ketels, Director and Co-Chair of Innovation Fund Denmark, underlined that funding agencies has a lot of tools, programs and opportunities to support research and development so if you have an idea for a partnership between a US and Danish partner that would really make a difference, you should not hesitate to approach the agencies. They might very well be able to find a way to support such partnerships.

Policies as a playmaker

Social license is another crucial factor that should be included in the discussion. We need to build support and social acceptance to accelerate carbon removal initiatives, and this involves looking into new policies.

Anders Hoffmann, Deputy Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Climate, Energy & Utilities of Denmark, suggests that there are four areas that need to be taken into consideration: First, it is a question of legality and changing the existing regulation. Secondly, we need to look at the incentives and who can benefit in terms of jobs and reduced criteria pollutants. Thirdly, it is necessary to get the value chain right through the whole process from capturing, transporting, and storing the carbon. Fourth, we need to consider the social acceptance on the storage part, with questions arising such as “do people want to live near a storage location?”

Part of our responsibilities as climate leaders is to try doing things that work in other parts of the world and that can be scaled all over the world.

Matt Baker

Deputy Secretary for Energy, Natural Resources Agency, State of California 

If our efforts aren’t applicable particularly to China, India, the rest of Europe, and the developing world, then it does not mean nearly as much.

“Part of our responsibilities as climate leaders is to try to do things that work in other part of the world and that can be scaled all over the world,” says Matt Baker.

He further adds that part of it involves getting the technology right, getting social license and bringing the cost down in ways where countries increasingly have the resources and mentality to decarbonize to continuously take care of the material needs of people.

To follow up on the summit, Innovation Centre Denmark Silicon Valley will unfold the identified gaps and opportunities in a series of deep dive virtual roundtable discussions.

Read more about the upcoming activities in our insights article here: On the road to Zero: More collaboration between Denmark and US on Carbon Removal