‍

This recent webinar featured a remarkable discussion between host Dominique Airey, Chief Commercial Officer at CUR8, and three emerging leaders building their carbon removals portfolios. The panellists were:

• Sam Booth: Director of Sustainability at AEG Europe
• Cleo Fitzsimmons: Head of Sustainability with Pension Insurance Corporation (PIC)
• Stephen Thompson: UK Offsetting Consultancy Lead at ARUP

In this webinar, you can learn of their experiences educating themselves, traversing the carbon removal market, and defining the use cases within organisations. This blog post covers actionable insights from their growing expertise regarding the pursuit of carbon removals.
‍

Journey into Carbon Removals

Everyone comes into carbon removals from different perspectives.

Your pathway could begin once you realise the need for doing more than checking boxes, like Sam. As fan travel to and from sporting events is a major contributor to their carbon footprint, Sam first began exploring the offset market. However, this space proved to be murky and uncertain. Carbon removals offered true solutions, including “giving artists a platform for engaging with sustainability in a highly engaging manner.”

You might enter from a conservative sustainability strategy, like Cleo, who began by making a bold offset claim. She soon realised that this claim was naive and ran into some questionable characters in the offsetting ecosystem, an arena challenged by the lack of corporate structure and regulation. Cleo expressed gratitude that she found CUR8 and discovered carbon removals to be a more practical solution to achieve her organisation’s net zero goal.

You could also operate in a member-run space, like Stephen. Through different projects, they were able to influence the market with their purchasing power, specifically focusing on greenhouse gases.
‍

Deciding How to Buy Carbon Removals

Once Cleo realised she was a novice, she relied on referrals from trustworthy sources and her own research, reinforcing the importance of challenging bias and developing confidence in one's understanding of the market.

Sam appreciated CUR8’s help because he found himself down a rabbit hole with dishonest providers. He appreciated the efforts of experts in teaching him about the market (e.g. emphasising reduction and removal, never offset), underlining the importance of seeking industry experts' knowledge and finding trusted sources.

The market is always changing and ‌there can be a lack of credible information, so Stephen worked hard to educate about greenhouse gas removal. Their organisation's decarbonisation pathway recognised the need for greenhouse gas removals and consequently shifted towards purchasing nature and tech-based removals.
‍

Communicating Use Cases

It’s important to manage internal communication within organisations, define carbon removals' value, and build a convincing business case.

For Sam, AEG had to reckon with the fact that just one event at The O2 Arena creates 100–140 tonnes of carbon. They began by breaking down the problem, and by engaging with each stakeholder one-by-one: the artists, the caterers, the arena itself, and then the fans. They added 90p per ticket. This provided a cost recovery model that enabled AEG to not incur a cost and helped with building buy-in with the Executive team. Now they are developing a plan to roll this out on a larger scale to all concerts!

Cleo is in the process of scaling investment even further. It began as an intentional story about doing something meaningful. Considering that it could cost £20 per tonne, she was able to get the executives excited. Once she saw what the market was actually like, she realised that what they could offset was a lot smaller. Knowing how to use the funds raised effectively with a reputable partner and reporting back to senior people allowed her to move forward. She then decided not to create a significant narrative about it, and is waiting for the right time.

With regards to communicating with the public, Stephen believes in the significance of internal carbon pricing for decarbonisation initiatives. He hopes to change behaviour across his organisation and strives to ensure that money raised is used properly.

In Sam’s case, having meetings at every level to explain the complex offset market helped: whether already passionate about climate or not, everybody understood the simpler idea that “1 tonne of carbon is going up and 1 tonne of carbon is going down.”
‍

Carbon Removals Portfolios

When it comes to establishing carbon removal portfolios, a balanced approach considering tech-based and nature-based solutions, following the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, and promoting broader social and biodiversity benefits are key.

Cleo prioritised ensuring their projects focused on low risk of reversal and developing a proven track record with CUR8’s help. PIC’s strategy is to buy credits that are already available, in their case biochar, but remain conservative year-to-year.

Sam and AEG’s strategy is to leverage rigorous science. This still means some tree-planting in the UK, but mostly tech-based removal in the Global South where investments can create the most needed jobs in the places where climate change is having the most harmful impacts.
‍

Communication Strategy

Strategic communication and clear messaging throughout the process is imperative. Sam utilises precision and clarity while crafting a press release and prioritises influencing professionals in the industry towards sustainable initiatives.

Stephen’s approach includes transparent reporting of climate change-related actions and purchases — what they’ve purchased and why — so that others in the space can learn from their lessons.

Cleo focuses on genuine actions rather than commercial promotions, underscoring the importance of long-term relationships and scalability.
‍

Conclusion

In summary, across the panellists, we heard of values like humility, openness, honesty, scientific rigour, and allowing for imperfection. In addition to the value of humility, there is an imperative to maintain scepticism and educate oneself. Regulators will start to look at the carbon removal industry, which is beneficial because it will start to bring structure, and with that, more capital. It is also important to align offsetting strategies with organisational ambitions, and subsequently forecast emissions and focus on secure supply and prices in the future. Every step towards carbon removal, be it small or large, is a contribution to a more sustainable global ecosystem.

‍

–

About CUR8: We're a team of global experts on carbon removal, building scalable technology and unlocking finance. We combine this expertise to help organisations act with confidence when removing carbon from the atmosphere. To learn more about how CUR8 helps organisations create a carbon removal strategy, connect with us here.

‍