Climate change is making weather events more severe, but some startups and entrepreneurs are working on technology to help remove carbon from the atmosphere to reverse the impact. The Carbon Business Council was launched in order to help those startups get their tech in front of lawmakers, work on solutions to remove and manage carbon, and scale their tech responsibly. Ben Rubin, Executive Director of the Carbon Business Council, joins Closing Bell to discuss the council's goals, its members, and more. 

Closing Bell

Trade Group Advocates for Startups Focused on Carbon Removal to Fight Climate Change

Okay, let's talk to climate because climate change, making weather events worse. But there's a handful of solutions that could help us slow the impact over time and that does include carbon removal and management. And a new group has launched in order to bring carbon focused startups to the table with lawmakers. The carbon business counselors, over 40 member companies that include variety of carbon removal technologies. And joining me now is Ben Rubin, executive director of the Carbon Business Council. Ben thanks so much for joining. Talk to me about how the idea for this council came about. Thanks so much christian, great to be here. Yeah, the idea for the council came about in that we were following the science, their scientific consensus from scientists around the world that we need to remove and manage gigatons of CO two take that carbon out of the atmosphere to help meet the goals of the paris agreement. We are seeing that innovators startups in the space are uniquely positioned to lead that charge. They got that innovative spirit, the dexterity that it will pay to make gigatons scale carbon removal a reality but they did not have a centralized voice or a central forum to come together and speak to policymakers help strategize about solutions and that's exactly the lane and the gap that Carbon Business Council is helping to take. I want you to talk to me about this because we keep hearing more and more about carbon removal, how is it possible. How does the technology work? How might people see this in action? Yeah, yeah. Happy to help expand on that. I think I might say just at the start to give a metaphor if we think of carbon removal. A good metaphor is to think of a bathtub filling up with water. We need to stop adding more water that bathtub if it's overflowing and that is reducing emissions that solar, that's renewable energy, that's electric vehicle. So that's stopping putting new emissions into the atmosphere. But we also need to address all of the water in that tub if we have an overflowing bathtub and that's where carbon removal fits in. That is everything from direct air capture which is vacuums that can take remove CO two out of the atmosphere and then store it underground. But there's also a multitude of other approaches. There's ocean based carbon removal which can include growing help and and sequestering. Yeah. So so a range of approaches there. Okay, so walk me through your member Companies, Ben, who all is on this council And what technologies are they bringing forward? Yeah. One thing that we're excited about is that the carbon business council itself is technology neutral. And so our membership really represents the multitude of solutions and approaches that can help remove and manage carbon. So that includes nature based solutions. And we have companies like drone seed who's helping to expedite how cars can be reforested to help. Trees are obviously a great way to sequester carbon. And then we also have companies that are helping to utilize C. 02 and an example of that as a company like ether which is actually making diamonds out of out of carbon dioxide away to help create a market for carbon. And then there's also companies that are using technological solutions and so it really spans the gamut where we're excited to have more than 40 companies with us. So I want to ask you about the biden administration's commitments to the climate to what you're trying to do here with carbon removal. We know that the president actually campaigned one of his four key pillars during the campaign for president was to improve the climate. Do you find among your council members that the administration is doing enough and what more might you want to see? Yes, we have been pleased with the headway and a lot of momentum going into the weekend as we get closer to maybe a breakthrough in the Senate passing the inflation reduction act there there we benefit from a lot of support currently from the federal government and that support is in turn helping to spur additional private investment and really help to grow and scale carbon removal when the infrastructure act was passed last year, that include more than $12 billion for carbon management. And as another example, the chips act, which is passed both the House and Senate and the President biden is expected to sign into law next week includes $1 billion for research and development of carbon removal. And so really we see the federal government taking a leadership role here, following the science that we need to be removing CO two from the on this year. In addition, in working in tandem with mitigating and reducing it. Alright Ben Rubin, executive director of the Carbon Business Council. Ben, thank you so much.