In this episode of Discern Earth, I speak with my friend David LaGreca, a carbon markets expert at EcoEngineers, about his journey from dirtbag mountaineer living out of a tent to becoming a leading validator/verifier in the voluntary and compliance carbon markets, how his deep connection to nature through mountaineering shaped his moral principles, his 24 years of being a vegan, how he approaches developing rigorous standards for crediting emerging carbon dioxide removal pathways, and his thoughts on the viability of different CDR pathways and emerging biodiversity accounting and crediting frameworks.
David Valerio: Howdy! My name is David Valerio, and this is Discern Earth, the podcast where I ask people who work in nature and climate about why they do what they do. Today I have on my friend, David LaGreca. David is an expert in carbon dioxide removal (CDR), greenhouse gas offsetting projects, and basically everything under the sun related to voluntary carbon markets. He currently works for EcoEngineers where he does a lot of interesting things like new methodology development, things like this. David will give you sort of a more fuller intro to who he is and then we'll dig into some questions. David, take it away.
David LaGreca: Thank you very much, David, and thank you so much for the opportunity to have a conversation with you here. My background is largely in the voluntary carbon market, for the past about eight years now, ranging from some time spent as a validator and verifier for a good smattering of project types across the western hemisphere, the majority of the voluntary registries, and I got to work on some really fun, diverse projects. Everything ranging from mangroves to direct air capture, lots of landfill gas, and oil and gas. This market can take you a lot of places and it certainly has allowed me to travel physically and mentally through a lot of different categories and a lot of different ways to decarbonize.
David Valerio: Awesome. Yeah, that's what's so interesting about this space. I'm an oceanographer by training who’s randomly gotten to carbon markets, but now I get to think about all sorts of other different aspects of the carbon cycle, but from the lens of crediting. So it's very much fun to be able to do that, even if the market can be frustrating at times to say the least.
So this show is oriented to sort of identifying not so much the what and the how of what you've done, but sort of why you do what you do. And so would just love to knowhow would you describe your spirituality, to whatever extent you do have some, how it impacts your view of the natural world, and the things you do to support it.
David LaGreca: Yeah. That's a real good question. I mean, I would say that my involvement with the natural world has really driven me in the direction of trying to preserve it. I grew up hiking and mountaineering with my dad and my brother and friends throughout my life and traveling for that pursuit. You know, hiking through abandoned mines from the 1800s in the Rocky Mountains, walking across completely devastated valleys and burned down forests and some of the most ungodly beautiful places you could imagine. It's really defined my purpose and has drawn me towards a career in which I can help to preserve those places.
I don't really have a spirituality in the same way of a defined religion in kind of a modern context. So what I do have is a purpose and kind of existential drive that has developed within me throughout my life to pursue things in accordance with my value system, and the perspective of maintaining a habitable planet for myself and my children and everybody else to come along after. So it's a little bit less of taking my lead from an established religion and a little more of taking my lead from what's around me.
David Valerio: Amazing. Yeah, so it sounds like to whatever extent you do have it, that motivation comes from the natural world, would you say? And would you say like your values and principles also come from that sort of care of the natural world perspective?
David LaGreca: I'd say largely, yeah. I mean, being relatively humanistic I'd say has helped me to just open up to a sense of empathy for people and creatures in the environment and has kind of driven much of my pursuit. How I look at projects and how I look at relationships with people. And it kind of drove me into veganism for about 24 years ago. I try to align my life with the value system that I portend to associate with
David Valerio: Amazing. I did not know you were a vegan. So you're still a vegan now after 24 years?
David LaGreca: Yeah. I mean, I'd say, you know, traveling internationally, I have to caveat that there it's damn near impossible on occasion, but when I'm domestically, yeah, that's the pursuit. Trying to avoid causing any extra impacts beyond what's necessary. Now it's a habit as much as it is like thinking about avoiding something on every bite of food. But yeah, it's definitely been an important part of my personality and how people have judged me, I'd say, through time.
David Valerio: Did you become a vegan for like ethical reasons with respect to creatures or is it more of the environmental impacts of animal agriculture that led you to that?
David LaGreca: You know, when I was a 13 year old, I was kind of a loving punk rocker. It's 13 years old, so take it for what it's worth. But at that point in time, I read a book called Diet for a New America, and it really kind of opened my eyes. Had some early experiences with hunting and things like that, that were not positive. It seemed to be a very natural, easy thing that I could do to avoid any feelings of guilt and kind of not have any lingering issues. So that's kind of where it started. And becoming older and hopefully some degree wiser. I've tried to temper that from an absolutist view to an understanding, cognitive view of how dietary choices, for instance, impact my overall damage or improvement to the world around me. It's just one part of the process of trying to maintain that balance in life. Where you still enjoy things, you still try to make a statement, but without being a total jerk about it. I'm trying to get better about that.
David Valerio: That makes a lot of sense. I was really moved, when I was in college reading Eating Animals. I don't know if you've read it. You probably were already convinced by this point, so it was probably not a new book to you. But I read it, and I would say, I mean, for a good six months I gave it at vegetarianism, and then, I don't know. I recognize the evils of animal agriculture, and I see the suffering and the impacts of it. But my heart has hardened in a way. I don't know what it is. Like maybe I'm just not moved enough to orient my whole life in that way. But I definitely, like, intellectually it's something that I disagree with at a moral level, but then in practice, it's just something I fail at, you know? So I'm impressed that you've managed to keep it up for 24 years, especially when veganism, I'm sure, was not nearly as popular back then as it is nowadays with all the restaurants and things where you can get vegan food.
David LaGreca: Oh yeah, man. It's almost like a cheat code to feeling good, honestly. It's like one of the easiest things. It's not really a challenge so much, as I think a lot of people assume. Like, “Oh my god, what do you eat?” I don't exactly starve. I'm not like withering away, much to what my mother was telling me when I was young. You know, growing up, she was raised in Texas with all the best beliefs and hopes for me. And just assumed I was going to wither away, but, you know.
David Valerio: Still here.
David LaGreca: Lo and behold, here I am. I feel like I'm… I was formerly into more extreme athletics and still really want to be into it, but I have two small children at home and I don't get as much time for ski mountaineering, racing, and week-long ridge traverses as I used to. But regardless, if you don't have health and you don't take care of your body, there's nothing else that you can do to make the world around you any stronger than you are as a person. So starting with that strong foundation and trying to align things all the way through life, front and back.
That's kind of what I try to do, but I don't have the mental energy to consciously address each of these issues every day. So, to some degree, it's easier to pick a moral standpoint and to abide by it. Otherwise we all fall into entropy and sometimes entropy drives me into avenues of non-alignment with my own beliefs. I think it can happen to everybody.
David Valerio: Definitely, yeah. I agree with you on this sort of picking a moral paradigm and sticking to it. It releases a lot of brain energy in that like, you just say “That's not something I do.” This is sort of my approach to Catholicism. When I first started, I was like, “This is the way I'm going to live.” I don't have to necessarily think about all these other big questions. And I'm not questioning every time I go and do something. It's very clear what I should do in my day-to-day life. So it opens up a lot more... In a sense, can constraints make you more free in that you're not spending all your time worrying about what particular choice you're going to make one day versus the next.
You mentioned mountaineering. I would love to know how you got into that. Was that a family tradition? Are you from Colorado originally? Tell me more about that and what got you into those extreme sports.
David LaGreca: Oh, sure. And I mean, mountaineering when I was a kid was not what a lot of people would call extreme, right? I climbed my first peak when I was like five years old with my dad and it seemed epic at the time. You know, I was climbing, at the time what I thought it was like a raging waterfall, but looking at the pictures it was just like it had rained a lot and I was climbing up a mountain with water flowing down it. But it was ultimately like most of the pursuits were class one to class three at most, if you're familiar with hiking, so not crazy intense. But you're out there.
I grew up with my dad and brother hiking in Colorado across the mountains and we'd spend about one to four weeks a summer backpacking and most weekends hiking and car camping. It was just a thing I did when I was little and I didn't think positively or negatively about it so much until I had some life-changing experiences that were just... Like the natural world can melt a person more so than most human experiences, at least from what I've encountered. So yeah, and it just kind of progresses. It's like any other sport. You kind of dabble and then you get more and more into it. I had a period of my life where I was devoting all my time to mountaineering and skiing and ski mountaineering and racing. Those were really good times. Then you kind of get serious and the good times turn into like more intellectual pursuits that coincide with those physical angles. Mountains have... there's just something, something inherent in mountains that you can only get from other similarly pure endeavors.
David Valerio: Yeah, I definitely came to appreciate mountains. I'm from Houston originally, which is about the flattest place on earth. As you know, you've been there. But mountains, they just have that spiritual, mystical, whatever you want to ascribe to it. That pure beauty and that elegance, I guess. I like desert mountains in particular, with the aridity. There's something about getting to those higher heights that make you just... I don't know. It brings you to something heavenly, in whatever way you interpret that. So that's cool that you were immersed in that from the beginning of your life. That's pretty amazing.
David LaGreca: Yeah. It's one of those things I kind of hope to instill at least in a soft way with my children, so that they can at least have that as an angle to just, if nothing else, be a foil to everyday life. When you're in nature scrambling on a ridge, or even just walking on a trail, sitting by a lake, there's that moment of reflection of like, this is still here, this is the real world. Every bit as much as our concrete, human-centered existence. It's an important counterpoint. I also like to just get out of my comfort zone sometimes. My wife's not as into the more extreme angles, but being a little bit nervous or scared, for lack of a better word, is helpful. It's helped me in more entrepreneurial pursuits as it has in just finding confidence in other actions.
David Valerio: Definitely. So speaking of entrepreneurial pursuits, how did you get into forestry? It looks like you owned a forestry company for a while, and it sounds like you maybe were a ski/hiking bum at some point. Tell me more about that part of your life.
David LaGreca: So, I mean, the forestry thing, I was reacting to the pine beetle epidemic in Colorado in the early 2000s. I was spraying for pine beetle in Evergreen where I was living with my parents in high school. I was involved with that. But I spent a lot more time pounding nails. Worked construction for like, I don't know, 15 years or something like that. I spent a lot more time doing that than any specific forestry pursuits, but that was like one of the first things that I incorporated, Floyd Hill Forestry. Laughable to think about the scale, or the lack of such, but, yeah, that was that.
I did spend a number of years primarily living at the edge of society, we'll say. I elected to be living out of a tent, as a dirtbag mountaineer for several years in Summit County, Colorado. I spent about two or three months a year indoors—as absolutely required by the weather conditions—but the rest of the time I tried to save money because it's ungodly expensive up there. I worked at a mountaineering store and climbed 60 peaks a year and skied over a hundred days for four years in a row. That was when I met my now wife, and we moved out to Oregon, continued the pursuit, got our degrees. And now here we are as very happy professionals with more-or-less normal lives. Those were important, formative parts of my life. Everybody has jobs that they've done in their past that, in professional contexts, are maybe less appealing than in your more personal context.
David Valerio: Amazing. I knew there was something interesting there, but I did not know it was going to be this interesting. So you said you were, how long were you doing that for? You said like 10 years?
David LaGreca: No, I mean like really five years. I worked at that gear store for three of them. I was pretty much vagabond style. Some of the best best times of my life
David Valerio: What inclined you to that? What made you decide to do that? For me, when I think about this, I think about like Christian hermits who are like willingly cutting themselves off from society going and living in the desert, but it doesn't sound like that was the motivation for you.1 Was it purely wanting to immerse yourself in nature as much as you could? Like, what, what drove you to do that?
David LaGreca: That's a good question. I mean, it was kind of a long road, but I went to New Zealand after undergrad for the summer. I had a van and went around North and South Island, climbing volcanoes and glaciers and meeting up with friends and doing hut tours. Pretty much just cut off from everybody except for when I randomly ran into friends on the South Island and got on the ropes with some people. But I came back and I spent the summer caving above Rifle, Colorado, on the flat tops. Camped out up there in between work shifts doing construction, just kind of making enough to get by and spent a lot of time underground. Lived in the mountains with somebody for a while and when that no longer was possible, I'm like, you know, I don't want to spend all my life working. I just want to go climbing for a while. I was in my 20s, like what else have you got to do? That's what I did. I focused on getting strong and spending my time and energy planning rad, ridiculous trips. Different angles to tagging peaks and experiencing unique environments and pushing my own envelope.
David Valerio: Wow. And you said you met your wife doing this. Was she also, how'd you meet your wife in this context?
David LaGreca: At that gear store, actually. I sold her some Telemark ski boots and then she came back in for another pair of shoes. I gave her a fat discount. She got me in trouble, came back, and apologized. She got my number from a mutual friend, asked if she could buy me a beer or something to make it up to me. And I'm like, nope it's going to take sushi and I'm going to buy it for you. And we've been together for 12, 13 years now after that.
David Valerio: Wow. What a story, man. So tell me about your life after that. You said you moved to Oregon and then.. Was having a long term partner what brought you out of your ski/hiking bum lifestyle? Like, “Oh, now I need to go professionalize.” How did that shift happen?
David LaGreca: Yeah. I'd say I kind of rounded up on how close I was to getting into grad school when I met her and ultimately she's like, “Hey, I'm going out to Oregon to get my grad degree.” And, I said, “Oh cool. Me too.” So I followed her out there after feeling slightly threatened that it wasn't going to work out if I didn't like kind of step up. She didn't force that in any way shape or form, but just encouraged me to be a better version of myself. We both got our grad degrees and I continued to climb as many volcanoes as I could and ski as much and do as many cool things as possible while out there. We both skiied Rainier together and Mount Hood, all the fun things. Once we got through that, it was kind of go, go, go mode. We've got to pay back these debts and get back to the real life.
So we moved back to Colorado to be near family and lived in Western Colorado, near Grand Junction. Still having an awesome time learning how to mountain bike and doing all the fun things that Western Colorado has to offer. And both developing our careers. I stumbled into the voluntary carbon markets through a raft trip with the great Zach Eyler and his wife on the Colorado River. Somehow whittled my way into a job at a verification company, one of the highest regarded ones out there. Set the stage for what has become a very enjoyable, fantastic career with great people. I feel all these things are tied together for a good reason. Living an outdoors focused lifestyle got me into the voluntary carbon market, which is a strange segue, but maybe not unexpected.
David Valerio: It's not. I don't think it's that unexpected, but I would love to learn more about like, given that you lived this outdoor lifestyle, obviously very non-traditional background, if you will, to the standard white collar professional world. How has that shaped the way that you engage with your work now in a white collar setting? Like, do you just like go to work at your computer every day, dreading it. Obviously maybe not, since you've been there for a while, but like, is there anything about this shift from sort of the more physical manual labor to now applying your skillsets to addressing nature in a more, I don't even know what the term is, intellectual way? Tell me more about that. It's not a well framed question, but I’m curious.
David LaGreca: No, I see what you're saying. Man, verification was much more of a right-angle type of that activity than I've ever been part of in my whole life. I mean, aside from like literally making right angles with two-by-fours and studs and building projects. That was the most rigorous training that I could have had. Grad school was great, but it still allowed a degree of freedom and flexibility and being able to write about theories and conceptualize and convince people of things. In verification you are, for all intents and purposes—without some some deviations—you're either doing it right or you're not. And that was a learning experience for me. I kind of live in the gray areas of life to some degree. So it was fascinating to get to learn that. My bosses Zach and Michael Coté, who recently retired from Ruby Canyon, they were both formative people in my career. They helped me to bridge that gap between being wild and free and then into the professional world where there are actual rules and systems. I studied environmental science and environmental management, and a lot of other different topics and systems thinking. All those things kind of finally came to life while working as a verifier. That was really transformative.
And then it kind of kickstarted my thinking about being entrepreneurial because, Michael Coté was Ruby Canyon’s founder and he was starting up an arm of business in Mexico. So I got to tag along and help him do that, and be a lead verifier for the first like 20 something projects that we did as a company in Mexico and got to go to 13 or 14 different States. Visit many dozens of different facilities, go to Canada and in Columbia as we were expanding service areas. So that just kickstarted me into thinking unique about like, “Oh, what a new market? This is great. Let's address that. These people have a new emissions trading system (ETS). How are we going to involve ourselves with that?” Consulting work started showing up and I began developing scopes of work. And I mean, it's a natural progression, but verification is one of the most like rigorous procedures and one of the best training grounds, I think, to be in in the carbon markets. Because you learn the rules and you're going to know them very well and you're going to know the ways people try to get around them. How to implement them in an effective way for improving quality statements regarding your efficacy at environmental improvement. It was an unbelievable training ground. Absolutely solid place to begin, and I'm grateful for having that opportunity.
David Valerio: Wow. Yeah. What you had described as sort of taking your freedom oriented self—experiential intuitive, if you will—and then going into a field that is the most rigorous box checking, “If this, then that. Follow all of these procedures.” That must've been such a huge shift. As for myself, I've just sort of been digging into the validation and verification body (VVB) world as you know, and by nature I'm more of this… I'm technical, but it's like qualitative technical. Qualitative analysis. It's hard to describe exactly what it is, but when I was digging into that validation and verification process I was like, actually, I just like don't necessarily want to do this. Because this like, seems like really hard work. Maybe this is too much work, I'd rather learn how to talk to people and blah, blah, blah, I can sell stuff. But I guess that discipline and like hard living that you had before kind of prepared you in terms of like work ethic and being able to apply yourself in such a difficult context. I don't know. It's such an interesting way to get into it.
David LaGreca: Yeah. Hats off to all the auditors out there because it's not something that I could do for my entire life. It's a hard and fast life of travel for site visits, which is so cool. I mean, meeting new people all the time, and it was fantastic. But I spent time away from family, like, at critical moments, and I'm trying to spend more time around family. Now I'm working in a place where I gotta be around to support the staff working for me now too. I think it's a great thing, and I don't regret doing it.
David Valerio: Definitely. You've kind of already alluded to this, but what do you think about the validator/verifier/auditor view of the world, if there is one? And then what makes somebody excellent at being one? Because I got to imagine there's some way that it's... I think about this in my own context of being an oceanographer and geologist. That shapes how I go and interact with the world. How do you think that auditor mindset changes how somebody interacts and thinks about the natural world and other things?
David LaGreca: Yeah. It's limiting in so far as you're not going to necessarily open up to new and ridiculous project types that are out there every day around us, trying to implement and improve new solutions to stop the climate crisis. But it's also truly imperative to have somebody be the goalkeeper. Somebody through whom you have to pass your concepts and make sure that they do abide by the highest quality standards out there. It's a different kind of mindset. I don't think everybody can do the verifier thing. I think it's a particular personality where you have to be willing to just not look at the gray area, but like here is what it is. There's no professional judgment able to be brought in here, and it's unbelievably critical. So I think it's really an honorable position to be in where you're in a non-politicized, non-conflicted aspect of the carbon market where without it, there is only personal opinion. Sure, some opinion gets into the verification process to some degree, and you can start out with some skepticism. Following ISO processes there's only so much of that wiggle room you can have. So it's either abiding by the rules or it's not, and it's quintessentially important. Even if it annoys every project developer out there.
David Valerio: What's interesting to me is that validation and verification doesn't really get talked about at all in the voluntary carbon markets. Maybe I'm wrong, but when I going on LinkedIn to follow the news you hear about people angry at Verra, angry at whoever. Not even angry, but just talk about project developers and talk about registries. But like you said, this critical function, this sort of dirty work if you will, is not… You don't really hear the standard VVB names out there. Why do you think that is? Is that just the nature of the work? It being this black or white, yes or no deal. So there's like not as much that is interesting to talk about. Would you disagree with me and my assessment of their low profile?
David LaGreca: No, no, not at all. I mean, I think it's one of the least sexy components of the whole industry. I think monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) is a close second. But it's like probably the least, sexy acronym in the carbon market. It's like VVB, “Oh god, those people I have to deal with to like my credits.” But if you don't have them, then your credits are not worth the thing. It's kind of a double edged sword. And I think a lot of people would like to discount it as a part of the business. And there are some who have taken advantage of... And I mean, there wasn't even an option for verification for a while in the nascent CDR market. There are still credits that are sold just off of, like, the diligence of individual parties based off of their own criteria. And that's largely being mitigated by having more and more registries that are able to handle these types of projects that coming through.
And verification is only as good as the standards you're verifying against. So it's not the deal of the verifier, to some degree it is of the validator, but certainly not of the verifier to confirm whether the standard is good. You're just assuming the value system embodied within that verification paradigm, the methodology, and the registry. You're just adopting their belief system and imparting that on the project. So it's not surprising to me that it is not the most well discussed. It is imperative and everybody talks about we need verified standards and the ICVCM has it as a checkbox. But it is so much more than a checkbox operation. Looking at it that way is actually problematic.
David Valerio: Could you expand on that? What makes it problematic? The sort of checkbox like, “Oh yeah, verified.” What makes it a makes it a problem?
David LaGreca: Well, I think, because I think if a verifier is too... If a verifier and a project developer both have it as, “Oh, I'm just doing my job, I'm just checking boxes,” and then the project developer is bringing a project that's just having its boxes checked, that it's, like, “Done XYZ properly,” then there's not going to be any room for quality improvement. There's not going to be any curiosity as to why they're doing things this way. One of my favorite parts about verification was just asking why. Like, why was your system set up this way? How did you determine this monitoring plan? Who is responsible for this? Have them just talk, kind of open the floor. Ask the questions and hear what they have to say. And then you determine, as a verifier/validator, whether their systems were properly suited to the standard. But if you just look at it with a narrow, like I'm going to get through this activity... Some of it is just box checking, right? Did you calibrate your equipment on the right dates per manufacturer's recommendations? That’s the standard issue desk activity on a Tuesday for a verifier. Like checking the calibration certificate. But if you think that's all verifiers are doing, you're you're missing the larger perspective of ensuring that there is that quality adherence to the letter and the intent of the program standard. And validation is even a step farther of ensuring that the project does actually have the likelihood of meeting the mark of the industry, and of the quality standards, that it purports to.
David Valerio: Yeah. I want to go back to, you made a comment about validation. Like in verification that you're just taking on the mentality of whoever made the methodology, right? Like you take on their worldview. “Ex-post, did this meet the requirements of the standard?” But then you had a comment about how validation is somewhat different. How is it different? Isn't validation qualifying whether a project should be able to go forward under a methodology? So wouldn't you just take on the mindset of whoever made the methodology there as well? Could you expand on that?
David LaGreca: Yeah, I think you do. There's more qualitative angles. The area that you said you kind of thrive more at there, David. There are more qualitative aspects to the review of the project. Even when you're evaluating a carbon curve for a project, you're looking at it with the eyes of somewhat skepticism. Because if you've ever spoken with a CDR startup company, there's not a one of them that's not a gigaton scale company. So to look at like the project design document (PDD) and see like one gigatonne off of a design spec of 500 or 5,000 tonnes per year. You're like, “Okay, well, how are you going to get here? What's your actual likelihood of success?” And you're not trying to knock people down. You just want it to be realistic. Like you don't want to have validated a project for half a million tonnes, and then it produces 500. That means there's a fundamental design flaw, or financing in the background could be certainly an issue, but... It's that initial gatekeeper that shows it's not just some renegade project developer who's just going to multiply times three to get the number of credits they want. There's a bit more of, I don't know, realism that's brought into it, I would say.
It's kind of a complicated activity to validate one's assertions based off of like quantitative estimates and models that are sometimes produced by the developer or by others, engineering sorts. The validation of a energy efficiency project at a refinery that we did in Columbia was not the same, was not the same at all as… That was a hardcore math problem and adhering to like a whole bunch of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) methodology steps in a more closed system, versus validating enhanced rock weathering projects, that my team's working on now for some of the registries. We did some ISO validations and verifications earlier on as well. It's not the same in an open system as a closed system. The assumptions are more on science and chemistry, as opposed to closed system energy flows. Getting into the project details is what is actually quite fascinating about this industry. There's no shortage of new complexities to address, and validation is just like confirming that those complexities have been properly brought to the table in a legitimate manner, that should be verifiable in stage two.
David Valerio: Interesting. That makes a lot of sense. So it's like there's more creativity, in a sense, in the validation stage because the individual project you're identifying the key risks to the project not actually meeting the methodology before hand. And that inherently is a more hypothetical, theoretical, “do you buy what they are projecting” exercise versus once you've already gotten past that validation step in the a project, there's already been that level of sort of creative diligence conducted under which you're now checking out to see if it actually happened. That makes a lot of sense to me.
I'm glad you brought this up. You're not at a validator anymore, well, I guess Eco is a validation/verification shop now, but you moved there a few years ago and it seems like you're doing a bunch of creative stuff now. At least from the outside. Tell me about that move from what we were talking about as being more of a black or white, yes or no problem set to now, you're going and writing new methodologies and developing new concepts. What was that like? And how's the work different and or similar?
David LaGreca: It's different, but it's also the same. I kind of take that cynicism of a verifier by kind of assuming... I'm not assuming that the project developer is malicious, but I'm kind of assuming that there's something done wrong here, as a verifier. And trying to poke holes in my own work when you're writing the rule set, such as drafting a new methodology, and trying to look at it with that reverse engineered approach of writing a rulebook for a new kind of technology or a new approach to carbon removal that hasn’t been addressed yet. I had a little bit of exposure to that while doing some methodology validations in my first job for some energy efficiency, early well closure, and orphan well projects, and some other methodologies for recycled plastics and things like that. But that was more on the validation side of somebody else's work, confirming whether it was good or not. I still really like doing that kind of work.
But drafting methodologies… I'll just have to say that I underestimated the extent to which that was going to be a life suck when I started on it. It's such an undertaking. The first methodology that I sold, I assumed it was going to be somewhere in the range of like 35 days of labor, and that I was going to be the only one on my team working on it. So I was like, “Okay, I'll just focus on this for the next month and that'll be it.” Little did I know that the complexities of... That was a project related to some ocean-based CDR that we're still working on with the project developer for release, but I didn't recognize the complexities of an entirely new ecosystem and how impacts in the deep sea would be encountered by this particular project type. Speaking with the client who were renowned PhDs and professors in the space, that even they had disagreements with their compatriots in academia about how these projects interact with with deep-sea ecosystems and with how permanence would be affected. Just the overall overwhelming complexity of open-system projects was absolutely fascinating, and kind of insane to get into. It's eye opening to see how much goes into these things.
And now with my team, we've published—I should probably have this number—I think it's eight now, but probably worked on a dozen or 12 to 15 of these things in the last two years. And I've just found that they're not the same. I'm kind of grateful that every single CDR methodology is no longer a brand new thing. So people come to us saying “Hey, I want a brand new methodology.” I'm like, “What about this other one we wrote, or what about this other one that Puro or Isometric has that is pretty close.” And when people want us to write a methodology it's frequently tailored to their specific implementation of a broader methodological approach. So there's certainly not nothing new under the sun, but we now have, like, a toolbook of approaches and theories on additionality and concepts for how to approach permanence and uncertainty in these different ecosystems and different storage categories. It's no longer like a purely scientific meets creative approach to how do you limit the uncertainty risk for carbon capture and sequestration in saline aquifers compared to surface storage of bicarbonates. They're wildly different and each one has its own tailored approach.
There's not a universal field theorem for quality, but I think taking the ISO 14064 approach is about as close as you can get to that universal theorem for adhering to at least the minimum standards for what it takes to make a good claim. I really think that MRV, as dorky as this might sound, might be one of the critical pathways towards actually scaling carbon projects and the carbon markets. If you don't have that detailed MRV plan, then you're just making things up, to be honest. You're just making claims, and might be doing some good work, might be contributing to betterment of the world, but you shouldn't be selling a credit on it unless it has a very robust manner of proof. I think the CDR market is starting to come around to that, and that's a change from two years ago.
David Valerio: Nice. You’ve already anticipated my next question, which is like how you even go about learning about all these different approaches. And it sounds like it was through practice. Okay. You signed your first deal to write this methodology. “Oh gosh, there's more complexity here than I thought,” but now you've written enough methodologies with these very different systems to have like a categorization scheme, or at least a way to understand the lay of the land to say, “Okay, this methodology follows under this subset of the Earth system. Here's how I could potentially approach X, Y, or Z,” but would love to learn more.
How do you learn about all these, all these systems? There's so much going on. Like, are you relying on outside experts to provide you context? Or is it more like, because you're looking into how these claims can be validated, verified, and how they can be turned into a methodology, like that's a good constraint on like what information you do and don't need to know about the projects. Would love to learn more about how you even try to tackle these problems.
David LaGreca: Yeah. The introduction to every project is a project evaluation or feasibility study, so that me and my team get paid to conduct a mini masters seminar on the category and connect it to things we've already learned. But that's really been it man. In addition to just reading and researching incessantly, and mandating that across everybody who works with me, is just having the opportunity to be exposed to these project types. We've evaluated several dozen project types and only some of them have actually been—for other reasons than just technical abilities—but there's only been some that we've accepted as being a viable process that has the potential to have enough quantifiable certainty to generate the benefits that it claims. But yeah, it's just exposure. There's no other way around it.
And then tying in with expertise. That's the coolest thing about the network of the carbon markets, is that there is somebody for every niche. I, as a people person, I really love finding new people who know so much more about a topic than me, and helping bring them along in the carbon markets if they're a very scientific person. And then having them help advance my knowledge and my team's knowledge. Ultimately the market benefits when you bring the right people to the right project. For instance, we are partners with a company called Soil Sage, out of the Front Range in Colorado here, with whom we've worked on a number of soil related projects—getting their keen insights on how projects, how soils actually work, how the dynamics work, how storage of carbon works in that ecosystem. Having that like, very aligned scientific know-how gained through their decades of experience in academia and groundwork to incorporate into our authorship for projects is critical.
Anybody in this industry who thinks they know everything about any topic… You might be the foremost expert in one of the small verticals, but there's somebody who's going to know more than you when you take one step to the left or right. I love that. I love that there's just so many brilliant people who can bring to light the uncertainties marine environments and soil dynamics and the deep sea, deep-saline aquifers and every medium of storage out there. It's phenomenal to me.
David Valerio: Yeah. That's another thing I like about working in carbon markets. Like you said, it gives you an angle to think about basically everything in the Earth system. And, as you note, the more and more I've been in it, the more I'm just like… I don't know anything about so many of these other systems. Because you just dig into the complexity. Oh my gosh. No. I just like know carbon markets, maybe. I might know something about ocean. Somehow I'm doing forest stuff now, but I really don't know anything about that. But it's fun. Like you said, I get to have this conversation with you. I get interact with all these other people who know a lot more so I can learn a ton.
Given that in this position, done this diligence and reviews, basically, you're getting paid to do some qualifying work on all these different pathways. Which of these pathways, within carbon dioxide removal in particular, are you most bullish on?However you want to take bullish. Open versus closed, specific verticals. I'd love to get your opinion about this because I encounter all these different approaches, and I don't really know what to say. Other than that I'm kind of skeptical of a lot of the ocean ones, because I'm an oceanographer. But yeah, would love to hear your take.
David LaGreca: Yeah, you gotta be careful because most of these project types have some kind of potential. There's like near-term, mid-term, long-term potential. You gotta start with the tried and true of shorter duration permanence, but quicker scalability of nature-based ARR type projects. There's not any project type that's more infinitely, rapidly scalable than that with regards to taking carbon out of the atmosphere. I would say that as a broad category that's just the scientific reality. Once you go into the carbon market specific focus of durable carbon removals, engineered solutions, most of those have some nature-based overlap.
So in that context, biomass is going to fuel the future in the carbon removal market, in my opinion. At least in the short term, there's no shortage of a variety of feedstocks for sustainably sourced biomass, and that sustainable sourcing is absolutely the critical path here. In the short term, I think the most scalable things, just by tonnage, you can look on like CDR.fyi leaderboards and the registries for kind of confirmation of this, but in the very short term biochar is kind of winning as far as just how many tonnes have been been delivered. That's been relatively quickly surpassed by just the validation of the Red Trail Energy project that we got to work on. Single project, the largest one to be registered independently with active production to date at close to 200,000 tonnes a year of carbon removal. So that one is bioenergy carbon capture broadly. Whether you want to get into semantics of which BiCRS, BECCS, CDR type framework you want to categorize each of these in. But it's a bioenergy carbon capture project a la Stockholm Exergi and Drax, which we were fortunate enough to work with on their carbon crediting methodology.
Stockholm's been rewarded well, domestically through kind of grants and also through Microsoft purchasing. They're not even delivering specifically yet. But the scale is in the millions versus a lot of other project types that are still in the single digits to low thousands, and scaling up quickly with billions of dollars in government incentives. The scalability is in biochar, then BECCS, and I think enhanced rock weathering. It's just the simplicity of that project type, maybe not on a scientific standpoint and with chemistry, but you get sustainably sourced rock, you crush it, you put it over agricultural fields. You have proper discounting for any kind of long-term outcomes of those bicarbonates and carbonates that are in the soils and transported. I thinkthose three are kind of taking it away.
But other things with biomass and BiCRS are certainly on the move. Everything to do with pyrolysis and torrefaction, making oils and making chars, burying biomass. That's certainly one that has some promise. But there's a lot of projects with a secondary utility that I think has some real investment interest. It really drives some investment interest where there's both CDR and some kind of other utility as well. So it's not a pure play market angle, but that's CDR though. It's a phenomenal array of project types. Like a year and a half ago, two years ago, I swear every single day I'd get off calls, and run upstairs and talk to my wife. “You know, what kind of project I just talked to a developer of? Can you believe how cool this angle is?” So there's so many approaches that like, I wish most of them success. Some of them I've not been as excited about, but the vast majority, as we can get to a point of certainty, like I'm excited to work with most project types.
David Valerio: Gotcha. Yeah. Well, I'm glad your assessment matches up with mine. I'm also like photosynthesis derived CDR approaches, whatever form you want to take that, whether you call it nature-based or not. Biomass-based I should say. Leveraging the biosphere that has been around for a long time and using that to do it just seems to me like the way that this is going to happen, because you can't really can't out-nature nature when it comes to figuring out how to sequester CO2. That's my own take.
I have a question. More of, I guess, a philosophical question on the demand/incentive side of CDR. Like, what is your view? Is anybody actually gonna pay for this or do we need compliance markets to make this a thing? What's your take on this at a high level?
David LaGreca: Yeah. I mean, that's why I brought up the kind of instrumental means for CDR. I think BECCS, like bioenergy carbon capture projects, from a variety of sources is promising insofar as it produces energy while it also has a carbon removal benefit. It's similar to how, like, renewable natural gas produces energy for transportation or electricity while it also avoids emissions that would have otherwise been vented to the atmosphere. So there's like a dual purpose and that's what's really driving some of these projects quicker than others. I think that that might be an instrumental tool to getting the finance into this network, so that investors are kind of not just reliant on one market but on a couple of angles. And even forest restoration projects that can have some sustainable harvest, or they can have access for sustainable development goals that are advancing local local aims. But, yeah, I probably stepped away from your question a little bit there.
David Valerio: No, I think you, like, so you're saying that CDR are as a co-product is perhaps the most commercializable version of it at the moment, in terms of figuring out ways that we could take CO2 out of the atmosphere that are not only relying on like carbon removal credits or voluntary initiatives to purchase them, but, oh, there's actually a valuable service being provided in addition to that. And the carbon revenue is sort of the bump on top to get you over the line to actually implement the project. Is that what you're saying?
David LaGreca: Yeah, partially. I don't think that's exclusively the case. The voluntary market has been around for, depending on how you argue it, but like at least what, where are we at? 30 years, something like that? Take a few years here or there from the Kyoto Protocol in the early nineties. And it's continually evolving. The reasons why people buy credits, and now that like nations can purchase credits on behalf of themselves to meet their own goals. That's going to change things. It has already started to with the Global North purchasing Global South carbon carbon credits. I think that's going to drive things. The European Union ETS incorporating removals from farming as well as engineered removals. I think that's going to certainly drive demand once they can get that off the ground. California is doing the same. And then, global demand for more defined net-zero claims, that's certainly driving demand in this area.
I do think it's problematic that certain carbon market players are trying to drive wedges with other parts of the carbon market, because without avoidance and reduction we have no possibility of ever reaching global net-zero. So finance needs to somehow get to those projects as well. We are not on a ladder with one step, which we all stand on or we all fall. It's a global climb to a place where we can live a sustainable life. So internal market strife is the biggest detriment to the carbon markets, "My project’s better than your project.” Differentiation is super imperative in a market economy, and same thing in carbon markets. The real goal that every project developer I've worked with is having is like, let's reduce emissions now. I think if you want to do a get-rich-quick scheme, you're probably not going to the carbon markets. There have been some examples of some very nefarious players, and I'm not discounting that, but the vast majority of project developers are trying to make a living, yes, while also driving the most rapid improvement to the world around them that they can.
So I think the carbon projects that are out there, who are gonna have the most value are the ones that can meet the mark of either a specific sustainability goal that is prominent in the corporate world, or nationally determined contributions (NDC)s, or you have the right sustainable development goals. Or you have that co-benefit, which is the energy production or something like that, where you can… For example, hydrogen production. Equatic has something like that where you can sell a side benefit. I think that's certainly helpful if you're talking to investors. How do you make your money back if the carbon market fails? There's a lot of ways that these projects can go forward, and the market, I think, is ultimately going to succeed because it has to.
David Valerio: Yeah, this is what makes working in this space, and climate more generally, so interesting. The amount of future thinking, just like high-level philosophical questions you have to think about. Who's going to do what? How? It's a rapidly evolving, crazy, uncertain space that can be annoying to work in sometimes. But it also makes it very interesting, and not not boring, for sure.
Side question. Well, I guess adjacent. How much have you been hearing about biodiversity? Or what's your take on some of the rumblings around like corporate biodiversity reporting and biodiversity projects? Of course, I'm a big nature guy. Love trees, birds, bugs, bees. What are your thoughts on that as a thing, maybe, given where we're at with addressing climate?
David LaGreca: I'm very hopeful for it. I mean, the United Kingdom has what I would call a successful pilot for biodiversity crediting. Cercarbono is the only one, or there's two registries. Cercarbono, and who's the other one with a biodiversity crediting standard?
David Valerio: I only know Cercarbono right now.
David LaGreca: Maybe it's just them. Yeah. Vut either way, it’s new and there's not an instrumental usage for biodiversity credits. So that's that's the hard part about carbon credits. When SBTi and others take out the like functional use case for it, it’s like why do it at all? How would you convince a CFO to purchase a credit? It’s like, hey, is this is going to benefit us in a marketing, a sustainability, or a practical way? Does it subscribe to our values as a company? Biodiversity is something that few people in the world probably actively dislike. Most people are passive, ambivalent, or positive about the subject,I would assume.
With that said, in projects that I advise for, I don't know how to directly package that in except for as a hopeful additional credit type. I do know that there's projects developing phenomenal, complex monitoring, reporting, verification systems and technologies for adherence to those standards. And there are some large corporates who are dabbling or actively purchasing credits from projects. I think it's great. I think every credit type that you can stack on a project means that you're probably doing that much more good. I think that having biodiversity credits as a complement to carbon credits is a good hedge for if the market does go more towards a contribution claims approach where you're not trying to necessarily quantify every single tonne of benefit, but more so directionally how you're improving an ecosystem or the global climate. I think it's a good hedge and I really enjoy digging into the dMRV underlying proof cases for biodiversity. I think it's new and there's some answers to be found, but I'm hopeful for it.
David Valerio: Definitely. Super interesting stuff. Before we sort of wrap up here, one, this has been super interesting to me. Thank you for all the information and knowledge. I feel like I've learned a ton already.
I have a question. Going forward, recognizing you have such an interesting path going from mountaineer over to validation/verification. Now creating new methodologies, things like this. What's next? What is the next thing you're going to be striving to work for? And where do you think you're going to try to make the most impact going forward in your career?
David LaGreca: Yeah. My take on it is the role of a consultant and the role of my team at EcoEngineers and what I'd like to take anywhere in the future, is to provide the integrity underlying the claims used in this market as a tool for rapidly manifesting the scale of change that is so important. More instrumentally, just really keeping up with the market changes right now is beyond a full time job and having anybody try to know everything that's going on without just being glued to LinkedIn and Carbon Pulse all day long. It's a fool's errand to try to keep up with everything. But, if I can align my efforts to help companies and project developers and investors to find the best opportunities for the most helpful climate related projects, then I feel like that'll be a very good career spent and a life well lived.
David Valerio: Amazing. Well, it was so great to have you on David. This was awesome. Really appreciate the time, and we'll talk again soon.
David LaGreca: Yeah. Thanks. Thank you, David, very much for this. It's a great platform you have here. I appreciate it.
I was specifically thinking about the Desert Fathers here.
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