Carbon Removal Jobs Newsletter Issue #6

Pick of 10 Jobs, US funding and Project Bison operational this year

Author

Olivia de Csillery
January 03, 2023

The Carbon Removal Jobs Newsletter

Hello and happy new year! 

The US government has committed $3.7bn to kick-start the American Carbon Removal Industry. This is a game-changing move for the sector, representing well over double the total amount invested globally in 2021 ($1.4bn). Hopefully, this is a sign that 2023 will be the year of the carbon removal 👀

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In this newsletter, you’ll find some of the latest jobs found by Carbon Removal Jobs as well as:

  • Our top job picks since our last edition

  • The biggest news stories from the industry

  • A great CDR project that needs highlighting

  • The best resources for job-seekers

Feedback? What works and what doesn’t in the newsletter? Is there anything you’d like to see next time? Any parts you skipped over? Please reply to this email!

Now onto the good stuff...

10 awesome jobs in CDR 💼

In each edition, we pick out 10 of the 100+ jobs that are added to Carbon Removal Jobs between issues. Find all open roles on the site or catch every new role on our Twitter.

  • Venture Science Associate, Climate @ Marble

    • # of employees: 11-50

    • Location: Remote, Paris - France

    • Expertise desired: Chemical Engineering, Process Engineering, Materials Science, Electrochemistry, Catalysis, Synthetic Biology, Biochemistry, Computational Biology, Geochemistry, Plant Science

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Staying updated on carbon tech 📰

The US government have announced $3.7bn in funding to help build a commercially viable CDR industry in the US, funded through Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The money will be split across four programs:

  • 4 Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs: the race to receive $3.5bn funding is officially underway as the government has announced the funding guidelines - each of the four hubs will eventually use DAC at commercial scale to capture 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually. Whilst the long-awaited announcement was celebrated, some were disappointed by the narrow scope of the funding, with promising techniques like ocean capture, biochar and soil carbon sequestration all barred.

  • Direct Air Capture Prizes: three prizes totalling $115m have been announced, addressing the different stages of the commercialisation process.

  • Carbon Utilization Procurement Grants: grants of up to $100m will be available for technologies that reduce carbon emissions and use commercial or industrial products made from captured carbon emissions.

  • Technology Commercialization Fund: an anticipated $15m is expected to be awarded to accelerate the commercialization of CDR technologies by advancing measurement, reporting and verification of best practices and capabilities.

The first carbon capture and storage (CCS) site in the UK has been greenlit by the government

The new CCS project in North Lincolnshire plans to go live by 2027 and to remove 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 from the air per year - at least 5% of the UK government’s 2030 target. However, the bigger picture remains that progress towards the 2050 net zero targets is mixed as this announcement coincided with the green light for the first new coal mine in the UK in 30 years …

They will be facilitating $11m of carbon removal purchases on behalf of Stripe and Shopify. This funding round has a wider range of carbon removal solutions than ever before, including direct ocean capture, biomass burial, integrating carbon storage into clean fertilizer production and direct air capture coupled with alkaline material mineralization.

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Giving CDR projects their flowers 💐

Project Bison, the world’s largest carbon capture and storage plant launched by CarbonCapture and Frontier Carbon Solutions, is expected to be operational by late 2023. Based in Wyoming, the new facility will remove 5 million tonnes of atmospheric CO2 annually by 2030. For scale, the current record for the largest atmospheric carbon removal project is 4000 tonnes of CO2 per year, at Climeworks’ Orca plant in Iceland. A start, but there’s more work to do: we’d need 10k Project Bisons to offset current global emissions of CO2 (50bn tonnes a year).

Project Bison uses Direct Air Capture, a highly modular technology which enables rapid scaling. However, meeting the vast energy demands of this technology could be challenging. The energy required to power Project Bison at full capacity could potentially reach up to 90% of Wyoming’s current electricity consumption. There are also concerns about the impact of expanding renewable electricity generation at such a scale on the local environment. The world of carbon removal will have much to learn from the successes and failures of Project Bison.

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Top resources for job-seekers

A running list of resources that we have found helpful for finding a career in carbon removal. Reply to this email if you have any further suggestions.

  • Airminers Community - Slack community of founders, scientists, investors working on mining carbon from the air.

  • Airminers Boot-up - Brilliant way to get learned on CDR. Join a cohort and form a reading group that takes you through the basics of the industry.

  • Work on Climate - Slack community dedicated to helping those find a job in climate (plus events and more)

  • Terra.do - App for all things work in climate related. Includes university style courses, networking opportunities and more.

  • Open Air Collective - Crack-team of activists working to advance the CDR industry. The best place to get involved in a carbon removal project today.

  • Carbon Curve substack - High quality, in-depth interviews and takes from the industry. Na’im also regularly shouts out job opportunities he finds.

  • Climatebase - A job board for the climate industry as a whole as well as offering a fellowship and other career-boosting services. Sometimes difficult to find carbon removal jobs.

  • Nori Podcast- Highlights the resources above and provides personal experience on pursuing a career in carbon removal.

  • New CDR factsheet from Clean Air Task Force, Bellona and Carbon Gap

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