Ep. 174 - Bottling the Sky: Aircapture’s Carbon Capture Breakthrough
SHOW NOTES
When you think about climate change solutions, your mind might go to renewable energy, electric vehicles, or eating less meat. These are all of course important. But even if we stopped all emissions today, we’d still have too much CO2 in the atmosphere and would need to pull a lot of our emissions out of it.
That’s the bold mission of Aircapture, a California-based company pioneering modular direct air capture technology.
On this episode, I speak with Matt Atwood, Aircapture’s founder and CEO, about how his company is not only working to reduce atmospheric CO₂, but also profitably supplying it to industries that rely on the gas today—like beverage makers, greenhouses, and more. Instead of relying on fossil fuel byproducts or ethanol fermentation for their CO₂, companies can now get a cleaner, more reliable, and often cheaper supply directly from the air.
Matt explains how Aircapture’s approach differs from traditional large-scale carbon capture projects by focusing on on-site, modular units that can be shipped in a container and installed within weeks. These systems already commercially operate in the U.S., Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, giving customers local CO₂ while shrinking supply chain emissions.
We dig into the economics of direct air capture, the climate math of whether it truly reduces atmospheric carbon, and the criticisms that it could provide a “moral license” to keep burning fossil fuels. Matt also shares how Aircapture recently raised a $50 million Series A—during a tough climate tech funding market—and what gives investors confidence that their model will scale where others have stumbled.
If you’ve ever wondered whether pulling CO₂ out of thin air is realistic—or just hype—this conversation will give you a fascinating inside look.
DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE
Our past episode with Make Sunsets about sulfur dioxide injections into the atmosphere.
We’ve done other episodes on geoengineering, for example on olivine spreading (Vesta and Eion), sulfur dioxide injections (Make Sunsets), direct carbon capture (Global Thermostat).
Al Gore’s skepticism about direct air capture.
Matt recommends reading Ministry for the Future.
Paul recommends Dan Carlin’s The End is Always Near.
Matt reflects on his earlier work with Algae Systems and why he thinks wastewater treatment improvements are so important.
Paul suggests tackling wastewater treatment with Neurospora species, as discussed here, here, here, and elsewhere.
MORE ABOUT Matt Atwood
Matt is a technologist, chemist, entrepreneur and pioneer in the DAC space. He has over 20 years experience in renewable and climate technology development and over a decade of experience with DAC and CO2 utilization technologies.
Matt developed the world's first energy-positive wastewater treatment platform as Founder & CEO of Algae Systems.
He has built and commercialized technologies in CO2, water, AgTech, waste treatment, and biofuels.
TRANSCRIPT
Paul Shapiro: Greetings friend, and welcome to episode 174 of the Business for Good Podcast. I was at a conference this past week where a listener came up to chat with me about what I had said at the beginning of our last episode, the one with Glenn Horowitz from Mighty Earth about my own experiences in fundraising for the company that I run, the Better Miko.
She told me that she also works in an alt protein company and how her company has struggled to raise capital and how my story offered some semblance of hope. I really appreciated that feedback and I always hope that this show doesn't merely inform, but also inspires. And if sharing my experience helped toward that end, then I'm certainly elated.
Of course, as I noted in that episode, fundraising is never a goal. It's simply a means to an end at my own company, again, the better Meco. I feel like we have now shifted from what seemed like a Sisyphean feat of fundraising to now merely the Herculean feet of scaling. We still have to succeed in our scale up if we want to be a, a successful company at all, and that's hardly a guaranteed outcome.
But if ever there were a team that were up for this challenge, I'm confident. That it's ours. Now, the company on this episode has had real success not only in fundraising, but also in actually deploying its climate solution in the world. When you think about climate change solutions, your mind might go to renewable energy, electric vehicles, or maybe eating less meat.
These are all of course, really important, but even if we stopped all emissions today. We'd still have too much CO2 in the atmosphere and would need to pull a lot of our carbon emissions out of it. That is the bold mission of air capture, A California based company pioneering modular direct air capture technology.
On this episode, I speak with Matt Atwood. Air Capture is founder and CEO about how his company is not only working to reduce atmospheric CO2, but also profitably supplying it to industries that rely on this gas today. I think beverage makers, greenhouses, and more. Instead of relying on fossil fuel byproducts or ethanol fermentation for their CO2 companies can now get a cleaner, more reliable, and often cheaper supply directly from the air.
Matt explains how air capture's approach differs from traditional, large scale carbon capture projects by focusing on onsite modular units that can be shipped into container and installed within weeks. These systems already commercially operate in the US, Europe, the Middle East. And Asia giving customers local CO2 while shrinking supply chain emissions.
We dig into the economics of direct air capture, the climate math of whether it truly reduces atmospheric carbon and the criticisms that if could provide a moral license, so to speak, to keep burning fossil fuels. Matt also shares how air capture recently raised a $50 million Series A, that's five zero million US dollars Series A.
During a tough climate take funding market and what gives investors confidence that their model will scale while others have stumbled. If you've ever wondered whether pulling CO2 out of thin air is realistic or is it just type, this conversation will give you a fascinating inside look.
Matt, welcome to the Business for Good podcast.
Matt Atwood: Great to be on Paul. Thanks for having me.
Paul Shapiro: Oh, I'm really excited to be talking with you. I have been thinking about geoengineering and direct air capture for a long time, but I recently was in an audience of a talk that Al Gore was giving, and he could not have been more skeptical of this technology.
I, I was pretty surprised by how emphatically skeptical he is of direct air capture. Why is he wrong?
Matt Atwood: Well, I think fundamentally he doesn't understand the thermodynamics of the process. The, the way that direct air capture works is it's, it is based on the way CO2 diffuses and air. So a lot of people think about direct air capture as a separations process where you have to like, kind of remove CO2 from something that's very dilute, like the air, and it requires a lot of energy.
But that's not actually the way it works. And as we think about. You know, direct air capture as a solution for large scale carbon removal and climate mitigation. Direct air capture definitely needs to advance and become lower cost. We need to get to scale. However, there's so many applications for direct air capture that exist today that.
Aren't solely about climate mitigation, or aren't solely about removing CO2 from the atmosphere. There's many, many companies in the world that put CO2 into their products every day, and they need it for, for many, many reasons. So direct air capture can actually be and is now a very profitable technology for existing markets that currently use CO2.
And over time, director capture will become cheaper and will get to scale and it will be more broadly applied to climate mitigation, carbon removal technologies.
Paul Shapiro: So how do they get CO2 Now, for these products, like if I drink a carbonated beverage, there are little bubbles in there made of CO2. How are they getting that?
They're not capturing it from the air? Where are they getting it?
Matt Atwood: Yeah. CO2 is a byproduct from many industrial processes, and it really depends where in the world you are, where the CO2 comes from. So in the US about 35% of the CO2 comes from ethanol production. So as corn is fermented, CO2 is released.
That's captured and liquified, and transported, oftentimes very long distances to where it's used. But CO2 is off. Is is also a byproduct of industrial processes. A lot of it comes from the fossil industry. From oil and gas refining from ammonia production as a byproduct from ethylene production.
So CO2 really is a byproduct from other industrial processes that has moved to market and sold to companies that
Paul Shapiro: use it. Hmm. So I wanna get into this later, but it seems like you are now then saying that you're competing against a byproduct, which I presume is very cheap, right? Like if you're, if you're competing for your CO2 against, let's say, a product that somebody is making purposefully for the CO2, I would imagine you have a easier time getting to price parity.
But I imagine for a byproduct of ethanol, which is already very cheap, it must be tough for you to get to price parity for the CO2 that you're making.
Matt Atwood: It, it, it really depends on how far away from this, from the source of CO2 you are. So, high grade CO2 that gets often used in food and beverage applications.
This has to be purified. Then it has to be transported. You can, you can economically transport CO2 around 150, 200 miles. But once you start getting further than that the cost of CO2 to the end customer starts getting more and more expensive. And part of the problem with CO2 is that it you know, boils off in transportation.
So as you're moving it, you're losing the volume. And there's high carbon intensity associated with that logistics supply chain. So you know, there are places in the world where CO2 is very expensive and there are places in the world that are getting the same. CO2, it's quite cheap. Like if you're right next to an ethanol plant.
Paul Shapiro: I see. Okay, so how are you doing it, right? Like you're saying that right now your competitors, those who are selling the CO2 to the beverage companies and the greenhouses and other industrial users right now, they either getting it as a byproduct from their maybe let's say ethanol production. You're saying that you're not doing a chemical separation process to pull the whittle amount of CO2 that's in ambient air out of it.
How are you doing it?
Matt Atwood: So, the directive, our, the way we do director capture is we use what's called ultra low pressure drop contactors. So these are ceramic contactors that are typically used in catalytic converters. So there's very large supply chain for these things. And we configure a machine that pulls air through these contactors that have a special assortment on them, and the CO2 binds to the assortment.
And then we remove the CO2 from the assortment by applying a little bit of process heat. Then we capture that CO2 as a high purity gas, typically around 97, 90 8%. And then from there we have to further purify it to meet the to meet the application that we're selling it to. So in food and beverage applications, there's a purity requirement.
And, and certain amount of impurities that can't be in there. So we take a secondary step to then liquefy it and provide it to our customers. But there are other applications, like you were mentioning, greenhouses where they just need CO2 gas. So we don't need that secondary li action step to purify the CO2 in those applications.
Paul Shapiro: Alright, interesting. So at, at your current technology and at your current scale, my understanding is you guys are a demonstration scale or you're building toward demonstration scale now.
Matt Atwood: We're commercial now, so we have commercial applications that we've deployed. We have machines on their way to Asia.
Right now. We have machines currently in the Middle East. We're delivering onsite CO2 production applications for customers in Europe and Latin America and in the USA.
Paul Shapiro: Great. Well congratulations on that. That's really exciting. Is it at Price Parity, are your customers saving money by buying CO2 from you as opposed to buying it on the open market?
Matt Atwood: Yes, we can provide our customers cost savings. Depending on the customer and where they're at. As I was saying earlier we're not at this point going to compete with customers that are very close to low cost supplies of CO2. But what we are able to do today is we are able to provide an onsite solution for CO2 to, to many of our customers, saving them money, providing a high purity, a higher reliability supply and also providing substantial sustainability benefits.
Paul Shapiro: Yeah, let's talk about that because I would like to know like, how much does this actually reduce total atmospheric CO2 levels, right? So if they buy from you where you're capturing it from the air and removing CO2 from the atmosphere, as opposed to, let's say buying from an ethanol producer, how much is it actually reducing the total volume of CO2 that's in our atmosphere.
Matt Atwood: So as we capture CO2 out of the air and we, you know, sell it to an application let's say like beverage carbonation. Where the CO2 is going into beer or a soft drink, you know that that's opened, that CO2 is is released. So, the amount of CO2 that's reduced from the atmosphere is dependent on the carbon intensity of our process.
The lifecycle of the energy associated with the the CO2 is carbon emissions associated with the energy that we're using to run the process, as well as those that are embodied in us delivering the technology to the customer. But it really depends. On the supply of the incumbent CO2 and where that's coming from.
So there are many cases where the, the carbon intensity of the CO2 that a company is using is greater than two tons of CO2 are released into the atmosphere for every one ton they're putting into their product. So in that case, even in an application where the CO2 is being released into the air, we have a net negative impact on atmospheric CO2.
In those applications. But there are also other applications where we're selling CO2 into where the CO2 is going into like cement or concrete, and that's being permanently removed to the air. So I think the technical answer to your question is it really depends on what the incumbent supply of CO2 is and what the energy mix that we're using with our process.
Mm-hmm. How intensive that is. But the net impact is a reduction against the baseline.
Paul Shapiro: What would lead you to, let's say you're talking about the energy mix, what would lead you to use renewables versus fossil gas or any other energy source for your process?
Matt Atwood: So the majority of the commercial applications that we're working with today are onsite applications.
That means our machines are on our customer site. We're selling them the CO2 directly where they need it. So in those applications, we're using the energy mix that's available at their site, and many of our customers have long-term power purchase agreements for renewable energy. But it's, it's really a geographical context.
In larger scale applications where we're looking to develop like large scale sequestration projects. There, we would use a decarbonized energy supply where we would either it would be renewable or it would be decarbonized fossil energy or something like that, or we put those together to have a a net reduction impact.
Paul Shapiro: Okay, cool. So let's get back to this question, Matt, about making a dent. Right. So for reference, during the Plys and Epic, like three to 5 million years ago, the average CO2 was in our atmosphere, was about 400 parts per million. But for most of the time since then, it's been under 300 parts per million. And around, just for reference, in 1950 we were at like three 10.
And I remember an environmental group, it was called three fifty.org. Maybe they still exist, but it was named after this recommendation of 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, considered so-called the safe opera limit to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate change. Now we're at 425, right?
So well above the three 50 that environmentalists were calling for. 4 24 25 is well above where we've been, you know, for the past million or more years. What's it gonna take, do you think in order to get down, let's say from 4 25, let's just say to three 50, not even to 300, but just to three 50, like how much air capture would we need to do in order to make a dent like that?
Matt Atwood: Well, I think the, I think the honest answer is we don't quite know. The climate science is continually evolving and there's, there's a lot of second order impacts and and, and other things happening in, in, in the, in the kind of human earth ecosystem that I think it's very hard to predict what it's going to take.
At large scale, the IPCC says it's gonna be at least 10 gigatons of removal by mid-century. I think the likely answer is it's going to be more than that. One of the things that we cannot predict is we cannot predict kind of tipping points. I mean, the human earth ecosystem is a, it's a, it's described as a kind of complex, chaotic ecosystem where small impacts in certain areas can have larger impacts than others.
And as you start thinking about things like methane emissions from from thawing, permafrost or other, other things like that, those could have kind of runaway impacts which we can't, we can't actively predict in a, in a good way today. So, you know, I think what's very clear is that atmospheric carbon removal has to become one of the largest growing markets.
Globally in the next 15 to 20 years in order for us to start to reduce the the, the amount of CO2 that we're putting in the atmosphere and start to, and start to bring that number down closer to three 50.
Paul Shapiro: Is there enough industrial use of CO2, let's say in beverages, in greenhouses, and so on, to make all of that profitable?
Or we just do, we just need to sequester some of it somewhere, even if you're not actually selling it.
Matt Atwood: That's a good question. I, I think it's really a time function. So our, our view and what we're doing is we're commercializing the technology in the near term into these existing mature markets of CO2.
And what that enables us to do is it enables us to scale up our production, drive down our costs. So today, you know, direct, direct capture is going to be the most expensive it ever is, and the cost is gonna continue to come down as we've seen in solar and batteries and other technologies. So in the future, as the technology becomes lower cost, we will begin to be able to apply the technology.
Into other commercial larger scale, draw down applications such as conversion of CO2 into fuels. CO2 can be made into jet fuel, diesel fuel, gasoline, things like this, but also ultimately into sequestration. And sequestration is absolutely gonna be required in order for us to draw CO2 down out of the atmosphere and to start to reduce the the amount of CO2 that's impacting climate change.
Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Yeah, I figured that I, I didn't know the answer to that, but I figured that would be the case, that we're just gonna have to put all of this CO2 somewhere, whether under the ocean or under a, a mountain or, or somewhere where it's gonna go. But what about other greenhouse gases like methane that are far more heat trapping than CO2?
Are there folks who are working on methane capture, or is that too difficult to do right now?
Matt Atwood: There are, there's a lot of efforts going on and folks working on trying to avoid methane emissions, right? So capping methane wells, things like this. Unfortunately, methane is not something that you can really capture out of the atmosphere.
So what we have to do with regards to that is we have to reduce the amount that's leaking. We have to be looking for it with you know, spectroscopy from the stratosphere or, or space to look down to see where these, where these fugitive emissions are. We have to address those. Hopefully we have to avoid thawing, the prima permafrost.
And there are, there are other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide emissions that are, that are very commonly produced with wastewater treatment. Other things like this where I think more work needs to be done there as well.
Paul Shapiro: Yeah, and presumably eating less meat would also reduce methane emissions quite dramatically as well.
Absolute. Yeah. So, okay. And, and, and the other thing to remember is that methane clears out of the atmosphere a lot faster than CO2 does as well. So the methane is gonna be cleared out in a relatively short time compared to CO2, which is gonna remain in the atmosphere for a century perhaps or so. I I wanna ask you, Matt, like you guys have had a lot of success, right?
You won this XPRIZE competition where you got a seven figure non-dilutive prize there. You recently raised a $50 million series A in 2025. No US when climate technology is not the darling of the VC world anymore. There have been a lot of efforts to do direct air capture that haven't worked, companies that have gone by the wayside.
Why are you guys succeeding? Why are, what do investors see in you that they don't necessarily see elsewhere that has led them to have such confidence in what you are doing as opposed to others who have really struggled?
Matt Atwood: I think, I think it's a combination of. Our technology approach as well as our go-to-market approach.
So, we do direct air capture in a particular way. We've also designed and developed technologies to be able to get that CO2 to market. And we have a modular, highly scalable platform so we can get solutions to our customers that need a hundred tons, a thousand tons. We're working on very large scale projects with in sequestration as well.
I and I, and I think the answer is that we. Have applied the technology in an approach to get to market that enables near term profitability. We are solving problems for our customers today. We're able to compete on cost with the incumbent CO2 supplies, and I think our investors in the investor community understands that the technology at scale.
Will become cheaper, but you have to get to scale. And the question is, how do you get to scale? And our approach is sell the CO2 profitably in the meantime.
Paul Shapiro: Mm-hmm. Okay. So essentially you're arguing that your tech is better and your business plan is better. Is that, is that an accurate way to put it?
Matt Atwood: That's what we think, as well as the way that we've sort of designed the technology. A lot of the direct air capture approaches require these very large plants, um mm-hmm. To be able to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere at a reasonable price. But the problem is if you have a very large capital asset in one location, as I said earlier, getting the CO2 to market is expensive and a lot of the cost is in the supply chain.
So by having a modular approach where we could put the machines, where the CO2 is needed, I think gets, gives us
Paul Shapiro: a substantial advantage. And are these modules small enough that you could easily move them from one site to another? Let's say the, let's say the, the soda maker that you're on site with decides they don't wanna do this anymore, it's not a stranded asset.
Matt Atwood: Yeah, that's correct. We're, so we're designing these into shipping con containers. So each shipping container does about a thousand tons of CO2 per year. And we can deliver them and, and install them in about a week or two on site. So if we need to move them around, if, if there are other places for us to put the technology we, we've designed it so that it kind of fits well within the transportation infrastructure.
Paul Shapiro: Right. Okay. Matt, a thousand tons a year, right? It's a good start. I'm sure you'd be the first to say that we need to do drastically more than that, obviously, to make the dent that you want to make. But what about, you know, there are some critics who say. You know, this would be great if you could actually do it at scale, but nobody's proven that.
Yeah. There's the Al Gores out there who say, look, this is just not you know, not gonna work. There are other critics, maybe including Al Gore, I don't know what he thinks about this, who say. This gives us the moral license to continue emitting, right? If there is a way that you can turn the thermostat of the planet back down by taking it out of the atmosphere, it, it reduces the urgency of weaning humanity off of fossil fuels.
I'm sure that you've heard this discussion before, but what's your response to the people who think that if you actually succeed and you can actually remove the CO2 that we're pumping into the atmosphere, then does it just give us a free pass to keep on emitting?
Matt Atwood: No, I, I, I, I reject that, that concept. I mean, I think if you, if you really think about, just take the oil and gas question.
Oil and gas companies, at the end of the day, they're not oil and gas companies. They're carbon companies. And if they can make the same products from carbon, from the air cheaper than they can make those products by pulling carbon out of the ground, they're gonna do that. They're gonna switch. They have the infrastructure, they can get all that to market.
So we will get there in fact. Pulling CO2 outta the air and making many of the products that are made from CO2 can be done cheaper today than you can do it from oil and gas exploration all the way to the end product. And the cost is gonna continue to come down. I think it really comes down to what are the applications and the.
There's so much work going on right now in converting CO2 into other products. We're not just talking about fuels and beverages and greenhouse applications, but one of the major, I think, future applications of CO2 will be, will be building materials in the built environment. It's possible to turn CO2 from the air into carbon fiber.
Carbon fiber will be much better at large scale than things like cement and concrete for many of the built environment applications. And I think that will become a very large sink of CO2 and a profitable one in the future. So I actually think that direct air capture, what it does is it creates more markets and it creates more applications for CO2 to go into these other into these other areas.
That we need to develop and scale in order to get to where we need to get to over time. Will there be some companies that say, oh, well, you know, if we can continue to emit CO2 over here, if we pull it down over there, sure that's gonna happen. And in many ways, that's the only way sometimes to address the really hard to abate scope three emissions for many companies.
And we're gonna have to do that no matter what. So I, I think it's a much more nuanced. Sort of soso social economic kind of question to answer. But I think the honest answer is when atmospheric CO2 capture becomes low, like low cost enough, we will switch supplies. And the, the many companies that use this will just do that.
Paul Shapiro: Mm-hmm. So you, so you, your argument is that it, it's not just that it doesn't provide the moral license, but that if you can get it down low enough for the way that, let's say solar and wind have been enabled to get lower than fossil energy, then people will just switch anyway. It won't be like they will be seeking the moral license to use fossil fuels.
Matt Atwood: Exactly. I mean, the National Academy of Sciences published a report in 2019 saying that there are certain direct air capture approaches that could get down to around 25, $30 a ton for CO2 capture.
Paul Shapiro: That's pretty what, for, for, for reference, what is the what is the price that you currently have for air capture?
Matt Atwood: Well, we don't, we don't, we we're selling CO2 to our customers, and so the cost for us to capture CO2 out the air. There's many things that go into it. Cost of energy, cost of supply, all these kinds of things. So we are, we're not in the position of kind of publishing our costs and it wouldn't really be an honest answer if we did anyway, because we're using electricity, we're using heat, and it really depends on a lot of these kind of factors and how they work together.
But if you look at the sort of social cost of CO2. Some of the reports that have come out in, you know, the last 10 years looking at what the real societal cost of CO2 is. It's very high. I mean, we're many of the academic researchers in the US say it's well over a thousand dollars a ton, and we're well below that price today, and that will continue to come down.
Paul Shapiro: Right. And, and to be clear that e even aside from the CO2 emissions, like fossil fuels still cause a variety of other very significant environmental and health problems like air and water pollution, acid, rain, toxic substances like mercury and particular matter, right? Like, it is not, like if you just erase the CO2 emission from the fossil fuel that all of a sudden it's an environmentally benign technology to utilize.
Matt Atwood: Absolutely. I mean, it's a, it, you know, it's, it's fundamentally an extractive process and oil and gas is getting harder and harder to explore for and as we go deeper into the ocean and as we have to go farther into the arctic to get these same energy resources, it has larger and larger environmental impacts, many of which we don't fully understand and are, you know, beginning to understand more and more.
And I think the, the beautiful thing about direct air capture is. We're capturing, you know, CO2 in the atmosphere is not just a threat. It's an incredible opportunity and we can do it where it's needed and we can do it profitably and we can scale that.
Paul Shapiro: Yeah. So one of the things that I think about with regard to that question about.
You know, what happens if we are able to actually make meaningful dents in the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere through air capture? One of the things that I think about is, well, even if we stopped all emissions today, like literally all CO2 emissions end today, there would still be too much CO2 in the atmosphere and we would still need to draw it out of the atmosphere.
It, it's kind of like the plastic problem in that. If we stopped making plastic today, you would still wanna find a way to, to degrade the plastic that we currently have, right? Like you would wanna find ways to biodegrade plastics so that they don't just clog the environment for centuries on end. And we're gonna have to remove emissions from the atmosphere one way or the other, whether we do or don't admit.
So we may as well get good at doing it.
Matt Atwood: That's absolutely true. It what a really interesting. Piece of sort of science here is until about, I, I forget the exact, I think it's 2009 or so. There was a some new information that was, that was looked at relative to the half-lifes of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Prior to that, it was thought that CO2 was, had about a hundred year half-life. But it turns out that CO2 has over a 150 year half-life, and something like 20 or 30% of the CO2 that we emit today is still in the air. 500 years from now. So if you think about the climate forcing impact of CO2 emissions over time, it has a very long tail.
And you know, as you said, even if we had a magic wand and could just turn off all, you know, fossil derived CO2 emissions today, we would still need to remove it from the at.
Paul Shapiro: Where are you, Matt, on other types of geoengineering, let's say like sulfur dioxide injections into the atmosphere? So in an earlier episode on this podcast, we had the CEO of make sunsets on a highly controversial plan to actually seed.
Sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere to reflect more sunlight away from earth, to try to cool the earth down artificially. I feel like there are people who are concerned about geoengineering, which involves adding things to the atmosphere who are not concerned about removing CO2 that we've put in there, although there's certainly people who are concerned about both.
But where are you on other types of non-air capture geoengineering, like sulfur dioxide or cloud seeding and so on?
Matt Atwood: Well, I think. We need to understand how it works in. In case we come to a severe climate crisis where it's very clear that we have to move very quickly to do these kinds of things. So I think there should be research into these areas.
I think we should try to understand the impacts and the unintended consequences of these things, and we should try to understand how we can mitigate. These impacts should we need to go there into the future? I don't think we're anywhere close to needing that today. And I, and I think it's, I don't think it's a commercial technology application that we should be pursuing today, but I do think we need to understand.
A lot more about it than we do. So I think it's an area of, of much needed research and understanding, and I think we have to have an honest discussion around, okay, when do, when might we need to do this? What does this look like? When will we have consensus or global consensus, if ever around, around when we might need to do these kinds of things?
And I think that is a very important discussion, but I don't really see direct air capture as geoengineering. I mean, I think we're, it's, it's. It's, it's very different than cloud seeding or atmospheric reflection or even, you know, mining certain types of minerals to put in the ocean, to seed the ocean to be able to capture more.
CO2.
Paul Shapiro: Yeah, I mean, I can, I can see why from a marketing perspective, you wouldn't wanna call it geoengineering, but I think, you know, at least how I use the term, it, it seems like geoengineering, but we're engaged in geoengineering all the time. I mean, we've been engaged in uncontrolled geoengineering experiment for centuries now through mass deforestation and emissions into the atmosphere, right?
Like. Almost everything humanity does is geoengineering at some point. And my view is that if we're doing uncontrolled geoengineering like we have been for a long time, which has resulted in the sixth mass extinction event and a huge increase in atmospheric CO2, why not try to do some controlled engineering of the, of the atmosphere as well?
I, it doesn't seem that crazy to me to think, Hey, we're doing an uncontrolled geoengineering experiment. Why don't we try to control it?
Matt Atwood: Yeah, I mean, look, I totally agree with you. I mean, I think you know, there's a lot, the engineering application you know, in the, in the geologic environment is, is at, it's in everything we do.
It's in, it's in every energy product we use. It's in every, you know, phone and computer, and it's, it's in our food, it's, it's, there's, there's no, you know, there's really no modern human civilization without that. But I think the question becomes, you know, as we talk about climate science, I think, you know, the, the, the con, the quote unquote geoengineering has become sort of associated with these larger scale you know, applications of, of doing things that we don't really understand, might like how this might play out over time, blocking out the sun, things like this.
And it, you know, I, I think it's, it's a very important conversation. I think the unfortunate reality is we're continuing to get closer and closer and closer to really have to be thinking about what might this look like and how might humanity adapt to this? But you know, I, I think we still have a good.
You know, 10, 20 years to scale these other technologies. And we can do it. I mean, we've done it with solar, we've done it with batteries, we've done it with automobiles, we've done it with any kind of infrastructure that's been built, you know, in the last a hundred
Paul Shapiro: years. So you went to, what I was thinking about actually in that very comment that you made, Matt, because you, you earlier said, well, if we get to that point that we have to start injecting.
Sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere. Now you're saying, I was thinking, well, when is that point? Like how far away is it? And now you're saying you believe it's maybe 10 or 20 years away before we're in such a crisis that we have to start reflecting this on. Back out of earth to cool things down. Is that based on a gut feeling that you have?
Is it based on research? Like where does the 10 to 20 years come from? And I asked because I, I recently, interestingly had a conversation with Paul Ehrlich, the biologist who wrote the population bomb. I didn't even know the guy was still alive by the way. You know, he's 93 years old. He is still writing books.
He recently published an autobiography. And Paul Ehrlich became very popular and, and well known in the, in the sixties, seventies and eighties for essentially predicting doom. You know, he said that by 1985, human civilization would end by 2000. The United Kingdom would no longer exist, and all these things just failed to come true.
Right? All these doom state predictions that he had failed to come true. Now, that doesn't mean it will never come true, obviously. But it has made people more skeptical about these apocalyptic scenarios coming to fruition. I'm, I'm not saying that you're calling that you're foreshadowing apocalypse, but if in 10 to 20 years it might be so bad that we need to start engaging in the more controversial types of geo engineering, what does that look like to you?
Like, why do you think that's the timeframe and what will occur that will weed us to say, actually, yeah, we need to do this.
Matt Atwood: I, I think predicting the future is, is a very difficult thing to do and, and, and one that I try to avoid as much as possible. But what I, what I think is what I think the reality is, is the the rate of change of CO2 emissions into the atmosphere continues to increase.
And I believe through a mixture of, research and, and climate science as well as a gut instinct that if we don't turn that rate of change to. Start to re slow down the emissions and reach, you know, net carbon neutrality in the next 15 to 20 years. I think that getting back to the long tail of CO2 in the atmosphere, we'll start the likelihood that we'll start to see.
These tipping points emerge of large scale permafrost melting and the massive reduction of, of ice in the arctic starting to reduce the albedo effect of the earth and, and, and less sunlight reflection. I think that gets into a place where we might no longer be able to sort of. Avoid the worst impacts of climate change and I don't believe that, you know, we're, we're going to reach a point in time where humanity is just going to die off all at once.
I, I think that you know it, the environment will start to change much more rapidly, which mu with much less predictable outcomes and it's gonna have strong negative impacts on the global economy. It's gonna require large populations of people to move around the world, and it's going to require a massive mobilization of infrastructure that we could otherwise avoid to get there.
Paul Shapiro: Okay. Okay. Yeah, I mean, I, I I'm actually reading Dan Carlin's book right now. The, the end is, the end is always near. I don't know if you've heard of this but I'll, I'll link, I'll link to the book in the show notes for this episode at business for Good podcast.com. That's you know, people have been calling for apocalypses for thousands of years, right?
And I think there's more evidence to support it now, given that we are actually. Causing a mass extinction event as we speak. Biodiversity is crashing. Dozens of species go extinct every single day. Every day. Dozens of species go extinct because of human action. Not, not by year, but literally every day.
Dozens of species go extinct because of human action, and I, I feel like at some point. There is a consequence to us as well, right? Like human wellbeing is at its highest point ever right now than it ever has been. But there's only, like, you know, to use the analogy of the airplane, like there's only, there's only so many screws and rivets you can pull outta the airplane before it can't fly anymore.
And it's a, it's a pretty quick, it's a pretty quick drop once the, the final straw is pulled. So, I, I don't have a prediction as to when that might occur, but it does seem logical to me that. We can't keep on doing so much environmental degradation for in indefinitely, right? Before something really cataly to our species happens, not just to those who were causing to go extinct.
Matt Atwood: Yeah. I, I, I mean, I agree with you. I mean, I, I think, and, and I think we're seeing it today, I mean, you know, if you just look at the epidemiologic studies in the us I mean, you know, I think, I read recently that the, the life expectancy in the US is declining for the first time largely due to these kinds of environmental factors.
And, and I think we're starting to see that emerge much more rapidly and and, and it's going to become a larger and larger problem unless we do something to counteract it and, and we build this infrastructure scale. I think that there's, and there's no silver bullet that like, there's no one solution that's gonna solve this.
We have to. Reduce fossil emissions. We have to eat less meat. We have to engage in much better regenerative agricultural practices. We have to treat wastewater. We have to protect biodiversity. We have to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. We have to do all these things and we have to do them together.
Paul Shapiro: Yeah.
I, I know wastewater is a particular area of interest since you ran a wastewater treatment company for a decade also. Mm-hmm. Prior to this company called Algae Systems, outta curiosity, what happened? So, algae systems was a, a wastewater treatment company. The website still was up. Is it still in existence today?
Matt Atwood: We, the, the, the technology is being licensed to other kind of companies that are interested in, in building these larger engineering solutions for wastewater treatment systems. Mm-hmm. But you know, what happened to the company? Is it, it. We built this great technology. We were taking raw wastewater treating it with algae removing all the nitrogen phosphorus in that water making a very clean water to put back in the environment.
And then we were taking all the algae that we, that the biomass we were growing and converting it into fuels and biochar. So we built what we understand to be the world's first sort of energy positive, carbon negative wastewater treatment system. And that's actually how I got introduced to direct air capture to begin with because we were looking for CO2 supplies to feed to the algae.
But unfortunately it turns out. That building a startup where your customers are wastewater, utilities that take 10 years to make a decision about what they're gonna do with their next infrastructure is a very difficult place to be. And had I thought about that when I started the company early on I might have taken a bit of a different approach.
But it, the technology remains it's a much lower cost way to treat wastewater and produce energy products that are, that, you know, that, that have a low carbon impact. And we hope to see it, you know, scale. Yeah. But it's it's, it's work that's better applied to these, you know, engineering companies that, that build wastewater from.
Paul Shapiro: Got it. It, it leads me to wonder about you personally, Matt, you've been a startup founder for a couple decades now. Like this is your chosen profession which is a very abnormal thing to do. You know, it's very difficult to create something from nothing. Nearly all startups fail, and you have now a very long tenure as a startup founder for about two decades or so.
Do you think there's something that is different or abnormal about you as opposed to other people? Like, so if you think about how many people care about the climate issue, but don't go start a company and try to raise tens of millions of dollars to create a new technology to solve it, what do you think it is that pushed you into the pool?
Like other people might be standing on the edge, they're, they're too nervous to get in. What led you to do it?
Matt Atwood: Well, I've been working in, I've been working in climate technology since around 2002. I started working in first generation biofuels, looking at building large scale, you know, biodiesel, plants, fig, trying to figure out new lower carbon, lower environmental impact supplies of, of feedstock oils for these.
And then also looking at new technologies, what other new ways to make biofuels. And that got me into algae. We were looking at all these different technologies and, and algae was the fastest growing biomass, and you can convert it into bio biodiesel and captured CO2 and, and I think I was, you know, young and somewhat naive enough to say, let's do it.
Let's go out and, you know, start this company. And I had a co-founder, a guy who was fascinating guy. He, he was a cattle rancher in Wyoming growing up, you know, for, for a very long time. Was a songwriter for the Grateful Dead, started the Electronic Frontier Foundation and one day we just said, let's do this together.
We saw a technology at nasa. It was this little plastic bag floating in a, in a sink. And they said, imagine this in a very large format filled with sewage on the ocean. And for whatever reason, the light bulb went off in our heads and we said. This is a great idea. After spending many years looking at different ways to algae, many of which I thought were just totally not gonna work.
And you know, we, we did the work, we, we made it work and. As you evolve through, I mean, I'm a technologist and a climate scientist, so as you evolve through the paces of understanding what it takes to build a company, commercialize technology, do the kind of engineering that's required to get to scale and iterate you know, I, I kind of looked at direct air capture and I, at some point I said, this is a much more scalable solution and this is what I wanna work on.
And I, I think it really comes down to. You know, having the support of people much smarter than you to give you wisdom along the way. You know, as a founder you know, it is very hard work and, you know, I often say if I knew how hard it would be, I might not have done it to begin with. And so I think, I think it does require a certain amount of naivety to like.
To push forward into that. But it, it's also the work I wanna be doing and climate change and climate technology is really all I wanna work on. And, you know, if there was somebody else that had a better idea than what we're doing, I'd probably think about joining their team and, and, and
Paul Shapiro: contributing to that effort.
It is funny, what you said reminds me of a line that I heard one time when somebody was asked, you know, what words of wisdom would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs? And the response was, if, if you need words of encouragement, you probably shouldn't do it. Like, you know, you know, like, yeah. If you need, if you need a morale boost, this might not be for you.
Okay. Well you're talking about the, you know, maybe like the psychological abnormalities of founders, these people who are. You know, too dumb to not even know the hardship that they're bringing upon their lives by doing this. So what would you recommend if there's somebody who you think fits into that category, who is listening right now and they're thinking, Hey, you know, this guy, Matt has done this for a long time now, like a quarter century or so, of trying to improve the situation that we find ourselves in with the climate.
But they wanna do something and presumably you're busy. You just raised a $50 million series A, so presumably you're gonna be at at air capture for a long time. What do you hope that they'll do? What's a idea that you hope that they'll start, that you don't see enough of right now?
Matt Atwood: I, I think really wastewater is, is.
Is such a global problem and, and I think it's a very hard problem to solve. I think it's moving way too slowly. It really has a massive impact on the environment in people's lives. Fresh water supplies recovering wastewater and reusing it even for drinking water. I think this is something that really I wish people would.
Would, would lean into and spend a lot more time on. You know, I tried, it was very difficult, but I think it's re it's, to me it's something that I think is, is just, it's, it's such a global need and and, and it's one area that that I really think that is ripe for disruption. Mm-hmm. And folks with the right ideas and the right tenacity and the right support could have a, a, a major impact on the world and build, grow a great business in doing it.
Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Well, you know, one thing about wastewater that I will mention while we are convened here on this topic is, so I, in my day life not for this podcast run a company used utilizing the filamentous fungus called neuro rasa to make edible protein. And this water research on the use of neuro spoa to transform wastewater into either safe or even edible proteins.
And it's pretty remarkable. And so I'm gonna augment you. You're saying get into wastewater. I'm saying somebody look into using neuro across a for wastewater treatment. So I'm not the first one to recommend this. Lots of people who have looked into this. So it's not like I'm giving out an idea that nobody's ever thought of.
But I actually would be quite. Riveted to see something in this. So I'll include a link in the show notes for this episode at Business for Good podcast.com for those who want to look into that research. And who knows, maybe you will be a guest on the show in the future talking about your wastewater treatment solution that you came up with.
We'll see finally, Matt. I love that. Yes. And that's happened before where people have given out ideas in the show that have led directly to company founding. So, hopefully that'll happen here as well. Finally, Matt what resources do you recommend? Anything that's been useful for you in your entrepreneurial journey that you would.
Shout out for those who are listening.
Matt Atwood: There's what's coming to mind right now is is a book by Kim Stanley Robinson called Ministry for the Future. And it is, it kind of ties into what we've been talking about. It's, it's a, it's a look into what the future could look like with runaway climate change.
And, and, and I think for, for folks that are thinking about getting into climate technology and getting into the challenges. Of thinking about how to develop technology and how does global climate policy. Look, could look like in the future. It, it's, it's really just an incredible read and, and I think it's, you know, it's maybe less of a, of a resource for, for somebody who's an aspiring entrepreneur and more a, I think a very useful look into the future of like, what might this look like and how can we think about the future differently and how can we organize ourselves in a way.
That can have these, these much larger impacts. And it's it, it's something that I've, I've really been enjoying reading recently.
Paul Shapiro: Cool. Yeah, fun fact. I actually lived near Kim Stanley Robinson. I don't personally know him, but I I did read the book and liked it too, so I'll, I'll link to that as well.
But for now, Matt congratulations on the closure of your series A. I'm, I'm really thrilled for you and for the future for the. Planet because of it and we'll be rooting for your success and I hope one day to drink a canned beverage that has your CO2 in it. That would be pretty awesome.
Matt Atwood: Well, we'll, we'll be able to do that very soon.
Come down to the Bay Area and, and we can give you a beer of, with CO2 in it. I look forward to it and I, and I really look forward to listening to the podcast sometime in the future when somebody's applied the new technologies for water treatment and is producing. Food from very exciting new materials from all these crazy nutrients.
We're just pouring into the ocean right now.
Paul Shapiro: Oh, well that's awesome. I really hope that happens. I was actually at a wedding last night where somebody came up to me and said that they're a listener to the show and that they're thinking about starting their own company right now, actually. So, I might if they email me, I give 'em my email.
If they email me, I'm gonna really push them on this so that you can listen to that episode too when it comes out. That's
Matt Atwood: awesome. That's great. Thank you so much for having me. I've really enjoyed the conversation and and I look forward to sharing a cold beer with Atmospheric. See you too, in it with you soon.
Paul Shapiro: Thanks, Matt.