A golden opportunity to accelerate carbon removal and create new revenue streams

Last updated on Jul 26, 2024

Learn more about warming stripes: https://showyourstripes.info/faq

Developed by Professor Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading, the ‘warming stripes’ graphic above paints a simplified picture of the observed changes in temperature across the globe using red and blue stripes. The warming stripes chart indicates that 2023 was globally the hottest year on record by a large margin.

Can we make the red stripes go down? Maybe!

We have a golden opportunity to collaborate and do something about the red stripes

Now more than ever, we have a window of time to take action, collaborate to resolve complex issues, and collectively achieve global sustainability goals.

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The Net-Zero Goal: to meet the targets written in the Paris Agreement and prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change, we should aim to limit global average temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, which corresponds to reducing global annual CO₂ emissions from about 40 gigatons per year as of 2018, to net zero by 2050.

The cost of inaction and not meeting the targets written in the Paris Agreement will be irreversible climate damage that future generations will be unequipped to deal with. However, we now have a clear path to take action, reach our goal, and prevent irreversible damage.

In this article, we will cover:

A summary of our collective progress towards net-zero from 2021-present
Key considerations and significant rate-limiting factors that are stopping us from reaching our collective goal of reaching net-zero by 2050
Reasons why we will likely need to not only radically reduce the new emissions we put into the air, but also remove carbon already in the atmosphere
Why right now there is a window of time for businesses to accelerate carbon removal and increase revenue by focusing on sustainability in their products
How Kahana and Stripe Climate make it easy for individuals, SMBs, and enterprises to repurpose and sell digital products while directing a percentage of revenue toward funding R&D for promising carbon removal technologies

Let's dig in.

A comprehensive summary of our collective net-zero efforts from 2021 to the present

For context, here's a comprehensive summary of our collective net-zero progress and learnings, specifically looking at status updates year-over-year.

2021: WEF reports that we can multiply climate impact by decarbonizing supply chains... but it's hard

When the World Economic Forum (WEF) published its 2021 Industry Report on Net-Zero, there was a simple takeaway:

We need a 'next level' of climate action.

More specifically, the report identified that decarbonization of supply chains is "the next level of corporate action."

We also learned that:

Many companies can multiply their climate impact by decarbonizing supply chains
...But, decarbonizing supply chains is hard

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Many companies can multiply their climate impact by decarbonizing supply chains. For companies in most customer-facing sectors, end-to-end emissions are much higher than the direct emissions in their own operations. By engaging suppliers to create a net-zero supply chain, companies can boost their climate impact, enable emission reduction in hard-to-abate sectors, and accelerate climate action in countries where it would otherwise not be high on the agenda. (WEF 2021)

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Decarbonizing supply chains is hard. Even leading companies struggle to get the data they need and to set clear targets and standards to which their suppliers must adhere. Engaging an often-fragmented supplier landscape is challenging – especially when emissions are “buried” deep in the supply chain, or when addressing them might require collective action at the industry level. (WEF 2021)

While we realized that decarbonization is hard, WEF was able to identify that decarbonizing each unique supply chain will require a different combination of eight major abatement levers:

Circularity/recycling
Material and process efficiency
Renewable power
Renewable heat
New processes
Nature-based solutions
Fuel switch
Carbon capture

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Out of the eight major abatement levers, carbon capture is the least developed so far and the most complicated to bring to scale (WEF 2021)

8 Main Abatement Types and their maturities levels

2022: BloombergNEF reports that startups and innovation see negative funding growth

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BloombergNEF reports a 31% increase in low-emission technology investments in the past year. However, most of the reported funds are channeled into established technology and manufacturing facilities, leaving startups and innovation with negative funding growth (-29%) between 2021-2022. (Bloomberg 2022)

2023: WEF reports that public sector financing alone is not sufficient to reach global net-zero by 2050

Fast-forward from 2021 to 2023 and we have new findings and insights. The WEF 2023 Industry Report on Net-Zero brings us some good news and bad news.

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It is heartening that many businesses have made significant strides towards achieving their 2050 net-zero goals. However, most progress has been observed among companies with emissions that are easier to mitigate, substantial financial resources for decarbonization investments, strong public accountability, or operations in advanced economies with supportive policies. (WEF 2023)

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"A gap remains between [...] abatement leaders and companies experiencing greater emission intensity, operating in emerging economies or lacking the financial means to embark on a substantial decarbonization journey. The challenges facing these companies and sectors are pernicious – and exacerbated by the fact that their technologies, infrastructures, and policy frameworks often fall short. (WEF 2023)

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A successful transition also hinges on substantial financial commitments; an estimated $13.5 trillion will be required to develop clean power and electrification, hydrogen, carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) solutions, and requisite infrastructure to meet future demands. (WEF 2023)

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We learned that public sector financing alone is not sufficient to meet an estimated $4 trillion to $6 trillion a year needed for a global net zero transformation. (WEF 2023)

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Carbon capture is still the least developed so far and the most complicated to bring to scale. (WEF 2023)

2024: it's the hottest summer in the last 2,000 years and possibly the coldest summer in the next 2,000 years

Looking ahead beyond 2024 and into 2025, the elephant in the room is that carbon removal technologies have yet to receive sufficient funds to innovate and ultimately scale to meet demands for this problem.

Promising ways to fund R&D for carbon removal

We have learned that exploring ways to advance incremental investment across technology S-curves is a promising approach to maximizing returns. Currently, RD&D investments are increasingly showing upward trajectories toward commercial viability, as market conditions become more favorable to realize returns.

However, to achieve our goals of net-zero by 2050, we must act now to cultivate a supportive environment for startups, explore ways to generate stronger demand signals for carbon removal, encourage investors to identify high-potential carbon removal technologies, and do what we can to pool resources to provide teams of innovators with the funding and support networks they need to scale carbon capture to match the size of the problem.

Today, there is a window of time to increase revenue by selling sustainable products

While businesses must pool upfront time and energy to adapt supply chains, re-engineer products to be more sustainable, and create new sustainable products the payoff can happen quickly.

In short, sustainable products sell well, and the research backs it up.

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Sustainable products sell well. Especially in Western countries, survey-based studies indicate that more than 50% of consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable products. Point-of-sale studies of different consumer goods products indicate that in some customer segments, sustainable products sell well even with premiums of around 40% – far from what would be required to achieve zero-emission supply chains. What’s more, this segment is growing fast. Demand for sustainably marketed products grew around seven times faster than the demand for their conventionally marketed counterparts over the past five years. (WEF)

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Today in 2024, according to PwC's 27th Annual CEO Survey, in 2024, 78% of CEOs globally say "their companies have innovated new, climate-friendly products, services or technologies or have plans to do so soon."

You can accelerate carbon removal and build new recurring revenue streams by repurposing and selling digital products on Kahana

Kahana is a collaborative cloud-based SaaS and marketplace: an all-in-one platform that makes it easy for individuals, SMBs, and enterprises to curate, repurpose, and sell digital products.

By leveraging Kahana's direct integration with Stripe, and by extension Stripe Climate, individuals, SMBs, and enterprises can use Kahana to create and charge access to hubs of digital products while automatically directing a percentage of revenue they earn from sales directly toward funding the research and development of a portfolio of promising carbon removal technologies through Frontier.

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Frontier is an advance market commitment to accelerate carbon removal, contributed to by companies like McKinsey, JPMorgan, Alphabet, Meta, and Shopify. Frontier’s in-house team of science and commercial experts, supported by 60+ external technical reviewers, sources and evaluates promising carbon removal technologies.

Now, you may be wondering about how Frontier vets and selects between promising carbon removal technologies. Frontier's portfolio carbon removal companies are vetted based on the following criteria:

They have lab-scale performance and preliminary stability data showing a proof of concept.
Their Measurement, Reporting, Verification (MRV) approach is outlined, risks are identified, and a method is presented for reducing MRV uncertainty.
Their Technoeconomic Analysis (TEA) is based on a process flow diagram and mass and energy balance.
They can deliver first tons in the next ~1-3 years

Criteria	Description
Durability	Stores carbon permanently (>1,000 years)
Physical footprint	Takes advantage of carbon sinks and sources that do not compete for arable land
Cost	Has a path to being affordable at scale (<$100 per ton)
Capacity	Has a path to being a meaningful part of the carbon removal solution portfolio (>0.5 gigatons per year)
Net negativity	Maximizes net removal of atmospheric carbon dioxide
Additionality	Results in net new carbon removed, rather than taking credit for removal that was already going to occur
Verifiability	Has a path to using scientifically rigorous and transparent methods for monitoring and verification
Safety and legality	Is working towards the highest standards of safety, compliance, and local environmental outcomes; actively mitigates risks and negative environmental and other externalities on an ongoing basis

You can check out the entire Frontier portfolio, including each carbon removal company's biggest risk factors for reaching scale. You can also monitor the progress of the carbon removal technologies' current performance at any time. We encourage you to understand how the processes work and research the companies.

How to take action

Here are some ways to get started accelerating R&D around carbon removal and creating new revenue streams:

Sign up for a free Kahana account or log in to an existing account, create a hub, connect to payment processing with Stripe, set your price, and begin directing a percentage of revenue towards carbon removal whenever you make a sale (it takes less than 15 minutes to get your paywall set up).
Contact us to discuss ways we can partner and collaborate to build profitable and sustainable hubs of digital products that accelerate carbon removal
For larger contributions, there are options to contribute directly to Frontier.

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Disclaimer. Please note that mentioning Frontier here is solely for informational purposes to provide transparent, relevant details within the article. We do not assume any legal responsibility or liability for contributions made to Frontier.

This interesting moment in time

To put things in perspective, right now amidst everything going on in the world, we are forced to additionally confront the crippling challenge of decarbonizing supply chains and tangibly removing carbon from the earth's atmosphere by 2050.

Said differently, we are confronted by a challenge that is so unbelievably complex and convoluted that the world's most renowned scientists and experts have sent a message to corporations that everybody must take action to a degree that can only be described as: "next-level."

Call me a fool, but I see this interesting moment in time - coupled with the fact that we have the potential to win - as a golden opportunity!

All collective knowledge, sources, and research that went into this article are pooled together in this Carbon Removal hub:

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