Join us for a conversation with award-winning producer-director Leila Conners about her latest feature documentary Legion 44, which chronicles dozens of visionary innovators worldwide advancing groundbreaking carbon removal technologies. From the vulnerable islands of Tuvalu to the Hajar mountains in Oman, the film showcases human ingenuity and collaboration in the face of our unfolding climate emergency. Leila will share the story and goal of Legion 44's conception and production, and information on how you can help spread the word and bring the film to your local cinema.

This Is CDR is pleased to welcome Dr. Brendan Hermalyn, Founder and CEO of Thalo Labs, to share the NYC-based CDR startup's innovative direct air capture technology for urban environments. Thalo Labs is pioneering scalable DAC systems designed to remove CO₂ and other pollutants from indoor spaces and city air, turning captured carbon into valuable products while generating revenue through carbon credits. With a background that includes leadership roles at NASA and Waymo, Dr. Hermalyn brings a wealth of knowledge to the conversation about the future of carbon removal technology in our cities.

This week, This Is CDR is excited to welcome Helen Lundebye, Co-Founder of CDRjobs, a comprehensive platform launched earlier this year dedicated to careers in carbon dioxide removal (CDR). It offers an extensive job board featuring hundreds of active listings from more than 685 companies, catering to both seasoned professionals and newcomers in the CDR sector. Beyond job postings, CDRjobs provides valuable industry data and insights, including salary reports and hiring trends, to assist users in making informed career decisions.

This week on This is CDR, we're joined by the organizing team behind the Carbon Removal Challenge: Matt Parker, Sue Dorward, and Duncan McDowall. The OpenAir Carbon Removal Challenge provides students from colleges and universities around the world an opportunity to design and build new carbon removal solutions and build connections that will bring the next generation of talented engineers, thinkers, and designers into the carbon removal world. There are educational webinars throughout the Challenge and 5 lucky finalist groups are invited to an in-person showcase in New York City in May 2025. This will be the 3rd annual CRC, so please join us to learn about the success of past Challenges and details about participating and supporting this years CRC.

This Is CDR welcomes Dr. Luke Shors, President of Capture6, a pioneering Direct Air Capture company headquartered in California and New Zealand. Capture6 is at the forefront of DAC innovation, offering a unique, water-positive direct air capture (DAC) technology that not only removes CO₂ from the atmosphere but also enhances freshwater availability. By integrating their systems with existing water treatment facilities, Capture6 transforms waste brine into valuable resources, addressing both carbon removal and water scarcity challenges. Dr. Shors is the Co-Founder and President of Capture6. He holds a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education where he also was a fellow at the Harvard Center on Energy and the Environment. Dr. Shors professional interests span health, energy, education and technology, and he has worked in over twenty countries with a range of bilateral and mulitlateral clients including the World Bank, OECD, UNICER and USAID.

​OpenAir is excited to present This Is CDR, an online event series that explores the wide range of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions currently being researched, developed, and deployed, and discusses them in the context of policies OpenAir seeks to form and advance at every level of government in the U.S., as well as in national and subnational jurisdictions globally. ​This week we are excited to welcome Stacy Kauk and Neil Hacker of Isometric. https://isometric.com/ ​Neil Hacker leads Research and Partnerships at Isometric, the leading carbon removal registry. His work involves working with suppliers and building out a suite of high quality protocols for crediting in pathways like Enhanced Weathering, BiCRS and DAC. In his role, he spends a lot of time thinking about how Isometric can leverage high quality monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) to build trust and demand in the voluntary and compliance carbon markets. Stacy Kauk is Isometric's Head of Science. This includes ensuring that rigorous science underpins all of Isometric’s carbon crediting decisions and that the Protocols and Modules are in line with the Isometric Standard. Stacy was previously Head Of Sustainability at Shopify where she was responsible for building Shopify’s $55M+ CDR portfolio and was a founding member of Frontier. She also serves on the advisory boards of Carbon Removal Canada and Collaborative Fund, a venture capital firm. She has a background in environmental engineering and public policy, with 20 years of experience working at the intersection of science and regulation in both the private and public sectors. ​Join us for a discussion of what Isometric does, how Isometric is different from other registries with their focus on scientific rigor, transparency, aligned incentives, and speed, what quality means when it comes to carbon credits, and Isometric's modular approach to protocol development and what protocols have launched recently.

​This Is CDR is back! ​OpenAir is excited to present This Is CDR, an online event series that explores the wide range of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) solutions currently being researched, developed, and deployed, and discusses them in the context of policies OpenAir seeks to formulate and advance at every level of government in the U.S., as well as in national and subnational jurisdictions globally. ​This week we are pleased to welcome Anu Khan of the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative. Link: https://www.carbonremovalstandards.org/ ​In the fall of 2022, Carbon180 published its guide to high accountability MRV, CDR industry stakeholders met in San Francisco to discuss the state of standardization, and scientists convened in Rhode Island to consider the technical and social underpinnings of MRV in open systems like the ocean. Since then, interest in MRV has exploded, with events, panels and workshops all over the world. And Anu Khan (former Deputy Director of Science & Innovation at Carbon180) has been going around to those events asking: What are standards? Where do standards come from? And whose job is this anyway? ​18 months of research on the carbon removal ecosystem, extensive industry interviews, and case studies from other emerging industries has led to the launch of the Carbon Removal Standards Initiative (CRSI). CRSI is a new nonprofit initiative focused on bringing rigor and accountability to the CDR sector through the uniquely powerful mechanism of regulatory standards. In today's episode of This Is CDR, Anu explains what CRSI does, why they focus on policy, and how they work with partners across the CDR ecosystem. ​Anu founded CRSI in early 2024 while an Entrepreneur in Residence at Carbon180. She previously led the Science & Innovation team at Carbon180. Prior to Carbon180, Anu worked in climate philanthropy at Founders Pledge. Her academic background is in electrochemistry and materials science.

In this episode This Is CDR is pleased to welcome Deep Sky Chief Carbon Scientist and Head of Engineering Dr. Phil De Luna to discuss how the company is building large-scale infrastructure in Canada to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate. Deep Sky: https://www.deepskyclimate.com/ ​​About Dr. Phil De Luna: ​​Dr. Phil De Luna is renowned scientist and carbontech innovator, responsible for building Deep Sky Labs. Previously, Phil was a Sustainability Expert at McKinsey & Company. With a PhD in Materials Science & Engineering and a Masters in Chemistry, he has published 50+ papers in high impact science journals. A Forbes 30 Under 30 recipient in 2019, Phil was also a finalist in the $20M Carbon XPRIZE. ​

In this episode we are pleased to welcome Graphyte's CEO Barclay Rogers and CTO Dr. Hannah Murnen to discuss how the company's Carbon Casting process offers carbon dioxide removal that is permanent, affordable, and immediately scalable. Graphyte: https://www.graphyte.com/ ​About Barclay: ​Barclay Rogers is a seasoned executive with extensive carbon experience, including leading business development efforts for Indigo Agriculture (agricultural soil carbon removals) and overall development activities for C12 Energy (geologic carbon sequestration). Barclay holds an MBA from the University of Cambridge, an LLM from the University of Arkansas, a JD from Lewis & Clark college, and a B.S in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Arkansas. ​About Hannah: ​Dr. Hannah Murnen is a proven leader in developing and scaling industrial technologies. She served as Managing Director of Activate Anywhere and Chief Technical Officer at Compact Membrane Systems. Hannah also spent several years with McKinsey and Company, advising industrial companies on growth strategy and operations. Hannah holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California Berkeley and a Bachelor of Engineering from Dartmouth College.

This week we are pleased to welcome Dr. David Hughes of Penn State University to present his work with PlantVillage and discuss how we can advance biochar carbon removal to gigatonne scale. ​PlantVillage: https://plantvillage.psu.edu/ About David: ​David Hughes is the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Chair in Global Food Security at Penn State University and Director of USAID Innovation Lab on Current and Emerging Threats to Crops. David is additionally founder of PlantVillage; the for-profit enterprises Carbon4Good and PlantVillage+; and the Village Youth Fund. PlantVillage is a public good research enterprise at Penn State that leverages AI to help smallholder farmers adapt to climate change and leverage their farms to mitigate climate change via AI. PlantVillage is one of the fifteen teams to have won an XPRIZE Carbon Removal Milestone Award and is now competing for the Grand Prize. PlantVillage has developed a digital monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) system which is available to co-development partners including Biochar Life, Carboneers, and others via PlantVillage+ and the company's Biochar App.