Momentum

Stop saying "gigaton" please, there is a better way

Every few days, Evan Conrad, founder of The San Francisco Compute Company runs the best viral marketing campaign in recent memory. He tweets this:

He’ll probably have tweeted again by the time I publish this (…and lol).

He doesn’t tell us what the metric was on July 10th, but it doesn’t matter. What exactly does SF Compute do? Also not critical to understand the tweets. All that matters is growth, progress, acceleration. Startups are hard, so who knows, but the vibe is in the comments is: we’re watching the creation of a massive company, and quite likely the beginning of a massive market. The level of certainty, FOMO, and hype downstream of this is hard to overstate.

Why do I bring this up? Well, to the man with a hammer (me) everything looks like a nail (way that we’re not addressing climate change in the right way).

Gigaton or bust

I think people working on climate change, myself included, specifically those in carbon dioxide removal, spent a lot of time crafting a very sharp sword, and then passed the better part of the last five years hurling themselves on it. Trying to put myself back in 2020, I believe the general pattern of thought went:

• Climate change is a massive problem

• It is important to distinguish between technologies and markets that are of the appropriate scale to have an effect on things like atmospheric CO₂ levels and global temperature, and those that don’t matter because they’re not big enough.

• To make those opportunities investable, we must convey to investors that there are correspondingly large market for the kinds of solutions that address these massive challenges.

• We need shorthand to be able to reference the two ideas above

“A Gigaton” (a billion tons) emerged as the lingua franca to indicate that some opportunities were both financially large and meaningful to real climate outcomes. A gigaton scale business was good; worthy of attention. This meant that in every pitch, founders of CDR companies had to answer the question of how they were going to be a gigaton-scale business. Decks featured slides in which companies captured a small portion of some future billion-ton market. Investors set requirements for the kinds of opportunities they would invest in (minimum 1Gt per year).

“Gigaton or bust!” they shouted!

“It’s a supply problem!” we called back.

Now all we have to do is climb Everest

I remember how important I thought these ideas were. I was sure we needed to convey the right level of ambition, that we needed to demonstrate we were serious. In retrospect, I undervalued a couple things.

First, incremental progress towards a massive public target is slow, and seems ridiculous. And, particularly vulnerable to ridicule. Do you remember the “number of seconds of emissions” thing? Jon Foley took down his Twitter profile, but the essential criticism of CDR generally (and DAC specifically) was “it’s not big enough to matter.”

In his own words:

link

The early deliveries of carbon removal (10,000 tons!) seemed big, and yet, anytime a doubter wanted to put things straight, they could just point at the scoreboard, and, well…

from my dear friends at CDR.FYI, circa Oct 2, 2025

I think now about how demotivating this frame is, and how rarely we do this to ourselves in life. I fear that by framing our work in the context of a gigaton (or ten), we put success over the cognitive horizon, and then were surprised when people had a hard time seeing the future we described.

Second: The graph below is remarkable. A real “J” curve! In any other industry this would be cause for metaphors of rocket ships and calls to get your butt in a seat. Get in now or you’ll miss it! Giddy up, exciting times ahead!

again, CDR.FYI, circa Oct 2, 2025

And yet, there is little urgency in the carbon removal market. The “progress towards our goal” target looms large, and gives the industry a crowdfunding energy that doesn’t scream FOMO to buyers or investors. Compounded by the long term nature of decarbonization goals, the need to buy carbon now, to invest in these companies now, erodes.

That the leading buyers and suppliers in the field crafted a J curve out of willpower and compelling storytelling is an astonishing success in and of itself. And yet, I still think we would be better off if we changed our story — from one that focuses on our end goal, to one that focuses on progress.

Niches to riches

I won’t, but I want to copy and paste the entire “Niche Markets” section from Neil Hacker’s post “How solar energy became cheap” (a CDR-tinted review of Greg Nemet’s book by the same name.) You should read it. The key point in my opinion:

1. Selling solar panels, sequentially, into a small, relatively expensive niche markets allowed solar companies to increase volumes, drive prices down, and access the next niche (which had a marginally lower willingness to pay and marginally higher volumes.) Repeat!

2. Commercially viable niches existed independent of policy, and acted as a durable (albeit limited) source of revenue and scale for solar companies.

There are many other things to learn from Greg’s book, and Neil’s review, but I want to emphasize this point: Because of our collective story about carbon removal, I believe we prioritized solutions that could scale to gigatons. Emphasizing scale over profitability and utility has left the industry very dependent on policy. In Neil’s words: “Unlike solar, the main future market for DAC, capturing CO₂ to be permanently sequestered basically has no direct utility. That means that governments, who historically have been the parties that are meant to internalize negative externalities, will likely have an expanded role, which just to reiterate they are currently not filling.”

In a world in which generating alignment on climate action is hard, and building supportive government policy is harder, I can’t help but look at Evan’s tweets and think those of us working on climate solutions are under-prioritizing momentum posting.

How many x

Indulge me: Let’s put on our hype-glasses for a moment and surf on over to the twitter profile of a real company, Vaulted Deep. I’m going to Evan-post on their behalf for a moment, using publicly available data. To be very clear: I am inventing this post. But I think it’s helpful to see what it feels like — reading some good news.

I made up this tweet, but not the data 👀

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

What is this feeling?! Hope? Excitement? The beginning of something very big? And while Vaulted is absolutely on a heater, so are lots of other folks! I could make one of these tweets for so many other companies working on climate solutions. Good news isn’t actually hard to find!

And so I plead: Drop “gigaton-scale” for the moment. File it under Important Things We Can Talk About Later. Be like solar. Crush your niche, lower your costs, make money, then post like Evan. Move to the next niche, repeat.

From niches to riches, let’s go.

---

Next week:

I’ll be thinking about teamwork: Where is broad alignment on climate action possible? What does narrow alignment look like? What financial tools fit which kinds of alignment?

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Getting some structure in place

If you’ve made it here and don’t know yet, well then now is the time. I’m now a Co-founder of Structure Climate with Matt Schmitt. If you’re the founder of a climate company or an investor with a portfolio of climate companies and have been waiting for a sign that now is the time to explore philanthropic private credit, consider this it.

We help founders seeking:

• $1-$20 million dollars in debt (on concessionary terms)

We work best with those that have:

• An offtake / PO / equivalent demonstration of early commercial viability

• A clear sense of their project and financing needs

• A corporate entity in the US (best, but not strictly required)

• A network of people that know and trust them

Sound like you? Send me an email at peter@structureclimate.com.

A couple notes on practicality

In which climate tech gets off its high horse and promises to make money this time

Before we begin, a confession/exhortation: I must start writing more. The most obvious reason is that I am starting something new, and the problem that unifies people working on something new is that largely no one knows or understands or cares. Perhaps I can convince you to know, and understand, and care, about the nature of my work. If I do well, it will be our work.

But, if I do not, I will still be glad to be writing more, because of my less obvious, but more pressing, reason for writing: If writing is thinking, then I fear I’ve been thinking less. I find writing challenging. Some people think in structured ways, and so writing is the translation of thought into prose. Do I need to tell you that I do not think in structured ways? I fear I do not. As you can imagine, this makes writing especially valuable to me, and but also painful and laborious; more akin to sculpting in an unforgiving medium. So, in hopes of finding a way to teach you about my work, while also not losing some Good Thoughts to the wash of ubiquitous algorithmic slop, I must write more.

No man is an island (especially me, I’m barely even a peninsula). Send me encouragement! I will do the same. Let us all write more! Let us be civilized together.

Onward!

Whelp, it’s time to be practical you guys

A return to “practicality” is probably the consensus celebratory note trumpeting from Midtown conference rooms and relayed via LinkedIn Climate Week wrap posts. We can all agree this was coming, so I find it quite heartening and meaningful. It is also a little hilarious - the narrative switch putting the excesses of the heyday of climate tech in harsh relief. “We’re going to focus on unit economics, and on markets with proven demand!” we attest, a little too proud of our newfound, externally-enforced, restraint. “Not like before,” everyone echos in sotto voce, the conversation returning quickly to the multi-trillion dollar AI datacenter buildout.

Haha! Haha? In the language of Silicon Valley, our revealed preferences suggest that we just don’t like to be practical. In trying to write this out, I came to the conclusion that the story of “practicality” is actually two related stories:

1. A rejection of the prescriptive and moralistic climate narrative.

2. A prioritization of profitability within climate action.

Stop telling everyone what to do

Over most of the first period I worked in climate (2020-2024) the predominant argument made for climate action leaned moralistic, and ~reducible to a list of “shoulds” and “musts.” As in:

“We must save the Amazon.” “We should decarbonize as fast as possible.” “Companies should buy carbon removal now.”

I still believe those things to be true, but in retrospect it’s obvious that this type of argument would be slow to propagate; striking many as more wishful than convincing. That moralistic arguments generated alignment and climate action for some (governments, companies, people) while inciting significant opposition in others suggests that driving broad action via morals has been a failure. In the US at least, the moment for prescriptive moral arguments for climate action culturally (and economically) appears to be over, or at the very least, on indefinite leave.

If climate tech is collectively descending from its high horse, and we’re not going to tell people what to do though, what should we do? What does climate action look like in an unaligned world?

Do what makes money

Whiplash aside, I think this is where everyone in climate is now and why they’re particularly happy about it in Midtown. In absence of broad alignment which allows us to prioritize moral action, we can revert to the world’s best amoral capital allocation framework: capitalism. Why was NYCW a mediation on AI? Because climate companies answer that question in the same way that bank robbers do: that’s where the money is.

This all feels a little easy, but the central idea is this: I think we could do a better job of allocating capital and attention for long term climate success. Which is to say this is something of a kick off. In the next couple weeks, I’ll explore:

• Why I think the story about tackling climate change on ethical grounds proved more challenging than expected in generating alignment. I promise not to give up though, and will discuss where I think broad alignment can work, and where narrow alignment works. And perhaps, how we think about organizing and collaborating on the way toward progress given this lens.

• I’m also curious to put onto the page why I think profitability is a narrow frame, and how we might describe a better frame for pulling the economic levers for climate action, particularly as we reorient from transformational change via invention to transformational change via deployment. As part of this, I’ll try to explain what I think non-hardware people can learn from deployment led innovation.

More soon, and until then,

Peter

the hardest way to definitely get a job (in climate)

the optimal strategy for a non-optimal moment

I got into climate in 2020, so over the last five years I’ve frequently been asked how I broke in, and consequently, how to get a job in climate. I’d like to lay out a process that I think is 1) practical and available now, 2) open to everyone, and 3) primarily based on effort.

Anecdotally, I did versions of most of these things to get my first job in climate, and have seen others use a similar process to 1) start a venture fund, 2) join a fast-growing climate startup, and 3) get into a top grad school.

Photo by Camille Chambefort on Unsplash

“Hey Peter, I want to work in climate! What should I do now?”

I would recommend you:

1. Go to Nicole Kellner’s So You Want to Work in Climate spreadsheet

2. Read through job descriptions until you found twenty you like, and put them in a folder. This might take a long time — budget two weeks and pick ones you would be excited, not just willing, to take.

3. Read them all again. Figure out what binds them together (skills, roles, technologies, markets) and make a list of the characteristics and required expertise.

4. Use this list to write your ideal job description (regardless of current skills or experience)

5. Post your ideal job on LinkedIn (“Here is the job I'm looking for!”) with a list of the skills or connections you’d need to build in order to get it.

6. Send that post and list to ten people who you already know and could help answer the best way for you to get those skills and connections.

7. Have those convos, take notes, and do whatever they say. Ask each connection for a single recommendation of a person who could help you get those skills or build that community. Have an three sentence intro email that your contacts can forward on your behalf ready to go. Talk to at least three new people a week.

8. Everyone you talk to gets added on a bcc’d email list. When people talk to you, they’re investing their time in you. Show them that time was well spent: send a private update on your progress to the group every month or quarter. Gather interesting facts, insights, or intuitions about the world. This is your team: treat them as peers, thank people that were especially helpful by first name. Always include a specific way people can help you.

9. Once a week for 30 minutes, think of the people you’ve spoken to and come up with ways to help them. (“If anyone is interested in talking to an interest XYC company about an ongoing seed raise, I’d be happy to connect.” “Passing along a PDF of the new MRV protocol for that CDR pathway we talked about in case you hadn’t seen it yet.” etc.)

10. You now have a group of people that 1) know what job you want, 2) have seen you build the skills and network you need to get it, and 3) seen your willingness to help them. If you’re diligent and take this process seriously, your momentum, progress, and network will make you a desirable candidate.

11. This step is optional, but helpful: As you build expertise, write publicly about what you’ve learned. If you don’t feel like you have much to say, just write down what you wished you knew when you started this process. If you’re not a writer, then share something; leave breadcrumbs so people can find you.

12. Reap what you sow! You only need one job, but you want lots of opportunity. Do the above and you’ll be opportunity farming, job hunting.

This is all to say, if you really want to work in climate, you can, but it will require an uncommon amount of effort, and more time than seems reasonable. But, anyone can do it. And, anyone can start today.

I would estimate the process above will take three to nine months, faster if you're lucky, well connected, or willing to take a less than perfect job. If you already have a job, do the same thing, but just do it slowly, and give yourself 6-12 months.

Good luck (and welcome to climate),

Pete

PS: I think this process is generalizable. It’s a practical way to build a community and make your life better, and should work in any avenue of life. Or, any professional avenue of life. The first person that posts a description of an ideal husband or wife on LinkedIn and cites me as inspiration will be directly responsible for my death (shame-induced).

Setting it straight

Offsetting, insetting, decarbonization, and emissions reductions

These terms are confusing and I’m often asked about them. So let’s define them. For the sake of simplicity: I’m focusing on corporate (ACME Corp) climate action. I’m leaving aside personal and governmental procurement for the time being. Also: I’m talking about carbon here—even though the examples below could easily be applied to RECs or other certificates. I’m using plain language, and I welcome your feedback, especially where my definitions seem at odds with regulatory and accounting language.

photo by Lalit Kumar

How I think about insetting and offsetting

Both offsetting and insetting generate carbon claims that can be used to count against ongoing emissions. What distinguishes offsetting and insetting is where the work is done. 

Offsetting 

1. Offsets refer to the purchase and consumption of carbon assets: Offsetting consists of buying a certificate (for a ton of carbon, for example) from a company outside your supply chain. These can be removal, reduction, or avoidance credits. Offsets can be verified or unverified, voluntary or regulated. The credits can be used to offset the emissions by ACME Corp to reach internal or external targets for annual carbon emissions. Offsets have a period: they are tied to the particular year in which the removal, reduction, or avoidance took place. They can stretch over long periods; for example, planting a forest will generate offsets over a period of 30+ years. Consequently, claims made with offsets are time-bound. For example, if ACME wants to claim carbon neutrality in 2030, they must use carbon offsets dated 2030 or before, to make a credible claim. 

2. Ongoing effect: Offsetting does not reduce ACME’s direct emissions. For example, if ACME has residual emissions of a hundred tons annually, and buys a hundred offsets, it can claim it is carbon neutral. Buying those offsets does not reduce ACME’s residual emissions, and therefore another hundred offsets will be needed annually, in perpetuity, for ACME to claim it is carbon neutral. 

3. At a basic level, offsets allow for the exchange of carbon assets between companies.

Insetting

1. Insets refer to the generation and consumption of carbon assets: Almost everything about insetting is the same as offsetting: same generation of claims, same technologies, same time-bound nature, same lack of effect on residual emissions. But the activity that generates those carbon claims is now happening inside ACME’s operations or supply chain. 

2. At a basic level, insets allow corporations to produce carbon assets to count against their emissions.

Buy/consume vs produce/consume is a dynamic with some obvious impacts that are worth enumerating. 

Insetting allows ACME to produce credits at cost instead of buying them at the price the market sets. This may have clear benefits: if ACME is a furniture manufacturer with waste biomass, it may be able to produce biochar on-site at a lower cost than a biochar project developer can. The opposite might also be true: if ACME is a steel manufacturing facility running a direct air capture facility as part of its operations, it may not be able to compete on a pure cost basis with cutting-edge DAC plants installed elsewhere. (Also: price might not be the best metric. I make the argument here that there is a lot of value to be derived from insetting, especially in the case of enhanced rock weathering, an argument I make here.)

Proof of work

One piece that both offsetting and insetting share is the need for MRV. As part of making a claim, ACME needs to be sure that the assets it has bought or produced are real. This need for auditable proof requires suppliers to record operational data, manage their inventory, pass third-party verification, develop methodologies to support the activities in question, and account for credit retirement (usually via registries.) This is the realm of the voluntary carbon market, and to a certain extent, part of regulated markets like CORSIA or CARB’s Cap-and-Trade Program. There seems to be a general perception that offsets are likely to have more rigorous MRV processes than insets, though that may be because of the relative immaturity of insetting compared to offsetting.

Naming rights

Offsets and insets are named according to who uses (retires) the credits, not who produces them. Let’s say ACME develops a carbon removal process in their factory. It can produce carbon claims and use them against its footprint. These are insets. Now, let’s say ACME has a few extra tons of carbon credits, produced the same ways as the insets. They want to sell them. For those tons, ACME is a carbon project developer. The moment they’re sold to another company, the credits become offsets. 

Changing your apparent position

Claims of carbon neutrality are made based on apparent position. If we imagine a curve representing a company’s net emissions, it can also be useful to think of offsets as a way to change a company’s apparent position vertically on the Y-axis for a period. If ACME’s emissions are a hundred tons in 2024, it can temporarily move its position vertically by purchasing offsets or generating insets and retiring them. ACME won’t have changed its real position (actual emissions), or the slope of its line (rate of decarbonization). If ACME wants to change either its emissions or its rate of decarbonization, it needs something beyond insetting. 

Decarbonization and emissions reductions

Changing your real position

Decarbonization and emissions reductions are unlike offsetting and insetting because they refer to real reductions in emissions, not just changes in a corporation’s apparent position. 

I find the two terms easy to distinguish: 

1. Decarbonization is the strategic-level goal. For example: “We must decarbonize ACME Corp.” 

2. Emissions reductions are the material steps made toward our goal of decarbonization.

Replacing a gas boiler with a heat pump or swapping out a traditional delivery fleet with an EV delivery fleet are obvious examples of direct emissions reductions. Indirect emissions reductions are less intuitive and take many forms. Eating less meat, permitting changes to support geothermal exploration, rolling out bike paths, and carbon taxes all reduce emissions indirectly. 

Decarbonization

Decarbonization refers to the broad goal of reducing emissions and is comprised of direct and indirect emissions reductions. 

Direct emissions reductions

1. Direct emissions reductions are attributable and intentional. Improving the efficiency of an airplane to reduce emissions per passenger is a direct emissions reduction. 

2. Direct emissions reductions are relatively durable. When you replace your boiler with a heat pump, or upgrade your lighting to LEDs, your emissions decline, and stay lower indefinitely. 
   

Indirect emissions reductions

1. Indirect emissions reductions are a result of cultural, political, or regulatory changes that accelerate the rate of decarbonization. The most comprehensive indirect emissions reduction concept is a carbon tax.

2. Indirect emissions reductions are less durable. A carbon tax can lose favor, a cultural movement to eat less meat can lose steam, and subsidies to support electric vehicle sales can prove unappealing to the next governing party. 

3. Indirect emissions reductions can be non-correlated and unintentional. Changes in demand, like dramatically fewer people flying during 2020 because of COVID is an example. 

Perfect complements

Last but not least, offsets and insets are complements to decarbonization, not substitutes for it. In the words of the DOE, specifically in the context of carbon dioxide removal (CDR):

“CDR is an additional, critical tool DOE supports to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 and is not a replacement for deep decarbonization. CDR must be pursued alongside aggressive decarbonization. Efforts around CDR will not replace or take away from ongoing work on avoidance and reduction of emissions at DOE.” - DOE FAQ’s

photo by Robin Sommer

Hot or Not

Diagnosing biochar's moment

I probably shouldn’t be writing about biochar anymore. At least, you should be reading Sebastian Manhart and others first. Nevertheless, I’m dipping my toe back in the newly *scalding hot* waters of biochar-as-CDR after a three-year hiatus because I think the current moment is being misunderstood.

Heatmap released a piece yesterday diagnosing biochar’s lack of attention from investor/organizer/storyteller set. I see the same symptoms but have a different diagnosis. Here are my five reasons biochar is still getting so little buzz:

1. Sand in the COGS

   1. It’s hard to put the cost of biomass input into a VC story. Unless someone is delivering the biomass to you by the ton and paying you to take it, it’s not waste biomass. If you’re getting biomass for free now, you won’t be for long. As the market for biomass becomes more competitive, the price of usable biomass will go up. The more a biochar company succeeds, the more expensive its inputs become. No one likes that! Climate VC’s are often ex-Silicon Valley and trained on pattern-matching companies with rapidly declining marginal costs and infinite scale. Biochar is the opposite of that. While we’re not close to running out of biomass, investors can’t unsee that pattern.

   2. For biochar folk, biochar is the focus. But people with biomass will sell to the highest bidder, meaning that biochar is competing with ALL other potential uses of the same biomass. Are some of those other pathways potentially higher-margin? I would bet on it, meaning potential competition for biomass with deeper-pocketed entrants from other industries.

2. Less dangerous curves ahead:

   1. A steep learning curve portends a paradigm shift, exponential growth, massive value creation, and big returns. Biochar, being an old (perhaps the oldest) technology, doesn’t have a steep learning curve. So when people think and write about it they call it a “mature” technology. The remaining gains to squeeze from a flattening learning curve look likely to be in manufacturing efficient equipment at scale (an opportunity that is still available, imo). It’s hard to find a potential transformation of the technology - something like quantum mechanics for computing, or better fundamental chemistry for batteries - that still involves making biochar (more on this next.)

3. Please sir, can I have more technology?

   1. One feature of the biochar community is that there are amazing biochar OGs that love to weld and have been building pyrolyzers for decades. Unfortunately, this loveable feature is actually a bug. The kind of technology play that VC’s can pattern map to 100x returns is hard to find: where do AI, machine vision, sat imagery, synbio, and robots come in? The co’s with the most rizz are those who have figured out how to look more like tech and less like welding. Not coincidentally, they also have the best investors in the space: for example, CarboCulture (new pyrolysis tech) and Climate Robotics (infield robots) have had rounds led by smart and respected climate VCs.

   2. But really, if you want to add more technology, the more exciting comps in biomass are *outside of biochar.* Instead of turning biomass into biochar, you use synbio to replace petrochemicals, you process it into fuel for the white-hot SAF market, or you turn it into CDR + an option on green steel. If you’re an investor looking for a paradigm shift, the risk for biochar is that it’s not *the best use* of biomass, and the paradigm shift is away from biochar, not toward it.

4. Biomass is, well, hard.

   1. Procedural complexity can be unpleasant to think about. Trucks, double handling, logistics, loading times. For the main stage, there isn’t anything like the narrative simplicity of a recyclable sorbent. 

   2. Biomass processing is the stuff of nightmares. Everyone I know in biochar talks about feedstock heterogeneity, gravel in the woodchips, and moisture content management. They don’t smile when they talk about these things.

   3. And, it’s worth saying, these are *good* reasons to invest in biomass companies, actually. Pain makes a good moat. But, narratively, it’s more “urgh” than “oooh”. So much schlepping and troubleshooting big machines.

5. Long-term, who owns the margin in the biochar industry?

   1. There are things the best, most sophisticated companies can do to preserve their margins: lock in long-term advantageous contracts for biomass, develop proprietary sourcing relationships, automate and innovate into competitive positions on processing, land meaningful offtake contracts for the biochar itself, and build a strong enough brand to differentially price a commodity, etc. But, it will be hard, and most companies will struggle to do them. I expect the downward pressure on the value of carbon offsets to continue until regulation sets a floor. 

   2. Long term, I expect the companies that benefit most will be those that control the biomass itself: farmers, timber companies, and processing facilities, either by doing the work of developing carbon projects themselves or contracting it out to biochar producers on low margins. 

VCs look at biochar and see companies that are hard to operate and expensive to scale, likely to see rising input costs, and will find it challenging to build durable long-term profits. I don’t blame them for seeing this! And, there are exceptions! But, I don’t think most biochar companies have a reasonable shot at delivering 100x returns. 

Funding rounds create the buzz in climate tech, so until VCs love biochar, neither will podcasters or conference organizers.

Objection your honor, biochar is gonna rip. 

This is the right take. VC money isn’t the only kind of money there is. I’m starting to see lots of financing deals for biochar pop up. And, because biochar fits nicely in portfolios, biochar suppliers may well have what they need to skip VC altogether: bankable offtake contracts. So, to my friends in biochar, work mules of CDR (you’re a legend for this one Josiah), don’t worry about the buzz-gap; a hot project finance summer awaits. 

time to cook, friends