DAC Mobilization for Climate REPORT

Summit for Direct Air Capture

In July 2020, the Elk Coast Institute pioneered a Summit for Direct Air Capture and Climate Mobilization. At a moment when direct air capture was still largely outside mainstream climate policy, over 70 technologists, financiers, policymakers, and advocates gathered around the defining question: what would it actually take to deploy carbon dioxide removal at scale?

The Summit produced a shared assessment of the technology landscape, identified the financial and policy conditions needed for deployment, and resulted in a report that remains a reference point for the field.

View Report

PDF Document / 36 Pages / 2 MB

PRINT VERSION / 18 MB

Hosts & Co-Hosts

Dr. Peter Eisenberger

Elk Coast Institute & Global Thermostat
Summit Host
LinkedIn

Dr. Peter Eisenberger has studied and worked in the applied sciences field for more than four decades. He started his career at Bell Laboratories in 1968 where from 1974–1981 he was a department head. In 1981, Dr. Eisenberger joined Exxon Research and Engineering Company as Director of their Physical Sciences laboratory. He was a consulting professor at Stanford University’s Applied Physics Department from 1981–1987, chair of the Advanced Photon Steering Committee and a participant in National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and Department of Energy (DOE) studies. He was appointed by the Governor of New Jersey to the New Jersey Commission on Science and Technology and is a member of the GEO2000. He attended Princeton University where he received a B.A. in Physics with honors, and graduated in 1967 from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Applied Physics.

Nicholas Eisenberger

Pure Energy Partners / Global Thermostat
Co-Host & Summit Moderator
LinkedIn

Nicholas is Managing Partner of Pure Energy Partners, a venture catalyst firm that invests in high-potential clean economy companies and partners with innovators to drive profit and impact. He is a Senior Advisor to Global Thermostat, a leading Direct Air Capture company. Nicholas led the effort to raise ~$100MM from a consortium of global energy companies and governments to launch the Carbon XPRIZE and founded the Circular Carbon Network with the XPRIZE Foundation. He co-founded and serves as a director of the CREO Syndicate, a network of family office investors with half a trillion dollars plus of accumulated wealth focused on the clean economy. Mr. Eisenberger holds honors degrees from Harvard College and Harvard Law School.

Nadia Soraya Kock

Elk Coast Institute
Summit Producer & Co-Founder
LinkedIn

Born in Hamburg to a German mother and Persian father, Nadia grew up between Northern Germany and Tehran with an early grounding in chemistry and the sciences. She went on to build an international career as a film editor, working across commercials, documentary, and features. Her path into climate work came through producing content with Peter Eisenberger — translating his research on direct air capture and the carbon cycle for broader audiences. That collaboration deepened into a co-founding role at the Elk Coast Institute, where Nadia organized and produced the Summit for DAC Climate Mobilization: coordinating the working groups, managing the two-day Zoom conference from technical infrastructure through live facilitation, and finalizing the report, website, and print materials that followed.

Tito Jankowski

Impossible Labs
Co-Host; Chair — Sustainable Mobilization

Tito Jankowski is a carbon entrepreneur and Co-Founder and CEO of Impossible Labs, Co-Founder of the BioCurious Hackerspace, and CEO of Negative — a company helping more people take climate action with beautiful products made of captured carbon dioxide. Tito graduated from Brown University with a degree in Biomedical Engineering. In 2016, Jankowski and his friend Matthew Eshed founded Impossible Labs, a consultant company focused on new business opportunities from climate change.

Patrick Furlotti

Projects for Good / Global Mana
Co-Host

Patrick Furlotti applies 16 years of combined experience in geography and marine sciences to finding solutions for human and environmental health. He has launched Silicon Valley startups, an engineering firm that pioneers clean technology, and a nonprofit focused on accelerating global sustainability. Patrick is dedicated to connecting people to viable climate solutions: regenerative agriculture, novel waste-to-energy systems, carbon-negative technologies, and digital platforms to monitor and reduce global carbon emissions. He has directed and produced numerous documentaries, including the short film Carbon Negative (2017).

Raymond Chavez

Earth Council Alliance
Co-Host; Contributor — Sustainable Mobilization

Raymond Chavez, a Senior Program Development Specialist at Earth Council Alliance and Senior Advisor at Geographic Planning Collaborative (GPC) Group, has more than 25 years of experience with project design, strategic planning, public-private partnerships, fundraising and communications for U.S. and international sustainable development programs. Raymond has extensive multimedia communications experience including his work as an award-winning writer, director and producer of documentary films for National Geographic, Discovery Channel and PBS.

Working Group Chairs

Dr. Klaus Lackner

Center for Negative Carbon Emissions, Arizona State University
Co-Chair — Technology

Dr. Klaus Lackner is the director of the Center for Negative Carbon Emissions and professor at the School of Sustainable Engineering and the Built Environment of the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering, Arizona State University. Trained as a theoretical physicist, he was the first person in 1999 to suggest the artificial capture of carbon dioxide from air in the context of carbon management. His research spans closing the carbon cycle, carbon sequestration, carbon footprinting, innovative energy and infrastructure systems, and the role of automation, robotics and mass-manufacturing in downscaling infrastructure systems.

Richard Kauffman

NYSERDA / Generate Capital
Chair — Finance

Richard Kauffman is the Chair of Generate Capital, a leading financier and owner of clean economy infrastructure. He is also Chair of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and an Adjunct Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy. He was New York’s lead delegate in Paris at COP21. In 2014, Mr. Kauffman was named by Fortune Magazine as one of the World’s Top 25 Eco-Innovators.

Sasha Mackler

Bipartisan Policy Center
Chair — Policy

Sasha Mackler directs the Energy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. He has worked for more than two decades at the intersection of energy policy and commercial markets. Prior to leading the Energy Project, he spent nearly 10 years in the private sector, first as vice president of Summit Power Group’s carbon capture business and then overseeing market development activities for Enviva, the largest biomass fuel supplier to the global utility industry.

Cheryl Martin

Harwich Partners
Chair — Commercial/Carbon-to-Value

Dr. Cheryl Martin is currently with Harwich Partners, a consulting firm she founded to work with public and private sector entities to identify critical business, technology, finance, regulatory and policy drivers that accelerate adoption of new technologies into key markets. Until November 2018 she was a member of the Managing Board at the World Economic Forum. Prior to the Forum, Martin served as Acting Director for ARPA-E and Deputy Director for Commercialization at the agency, where she led ARPA-E’s Technology-to-Market program.

Jim Giles

Verge & GreenBiz
Chair — Engagement

Jim Giles is a startup founder, journalist, analyst, and consultant working on climate policy and technology. Currently at GreenBiz, a media company and events organizer, Jim is building out the company’s business in the carbon economy and sustainable food systems. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Economist, and The Guardian. Jim is a graduate of the Sulzberger Executive Leadership Program at Columbia University.

Vijay Swarup

ExxonMobil
Co-Chair — Vision

Vijay Swarup is vice president of research and development at ExxonMobil. A 30-year veteran of the company, Swarup leads a team of scientists and engineers developing ways to improve supply options of the world’s energy resources, as well as advance carbon capture technology, biofuels, and alternative energy. He has a PhD in chemical engineering from Rutgers University.

Bill McDonough

McDonough Innovation
Co-Chair — Vision

William McDonough is a globally recognized leader in sustainable development. After establishing William McDonough Architects in New York in 1981, he became Dean of the School of Architecture at the University of Virginia. McDonough is the architect of recognized flagships of sustainable design including the Ford Rouge truck plant and NASA’s Sustainability Base. In 1996 he received the Presidential Award for Sustainable Development. He currently serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Environment and Natural Resource Security.

Contributors

Roger Aines

Lawrence Livermore National Labs
Contributor

Roger Aines is the Energy Program Chief Scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Since joining LLNL in 1984, Roger has worked on nuclear waste disposal, environmental remediation, management of carbon emissions including separation technology, and monitoring and verification methods for sequestration. He leads an initiative evaluating the role of negative emissions technologies to address carbon emissions that cannot be controlled at their source. He holds a B.A. in Chemistry from Carleton College and a Ph.D. in geochemistry from Caltech.

Nikki Batchelor

Carbon XPRIZE
Contributor — Sustainable Mobilization

Nikki Batchelor is Director of Operations and Impact for the $20M NRG COSIA Carbon XPRIZE, a five-year competition to develop breakthrough technologies to turn CO₂ emissions into valuable products like building materials, bioplastics, carbon fiber, and fuel. Previously she served as a Senior Strategist at NationBuilder and as an Innovation Advisor to USAID on their Grand Challenges for Development initiative. She holds an MBA from George Washington University.

Sydney Bopp

Bipartisan Policy Center
Contributor — Policy

Sydney Bopp is the Associate Director for technology policy at Bipartisan Policy Center, following more than 10 years of public service at the state and federal levels. Previously she was at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office leading business development for more than $40 billion for innovative clean energy projects. She holds a Master’s degree in Comparative Politics from Northeastern University.

Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky

Global Thermostat / Columbia University
Contributor — Finance

Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky is the co-founder and CEO of Global Thermostat, and co-creator of a carbon removal technology chosen by MIT Technology Review as one of the Ten Breakthrough Technologies of 2019. Dr. Chichilnisky is also a Professor of Economics and Mathematical Statistics at Columbia University. She acted as lead author on the IPCC, which received the 2007 Nobel Prize, and worked extensively on the Kyoto Protocol, creating the carbon market that became international law in 2005.

Christoph Gebald

Climeworks
Contributor — Technology

Christoph Gebald is a co-founder of Climeworks, the world’s first company to install a commercial, operational plant for the capture of carbon dioxide from the air. At Climeworks, Christoph is responsible for sorbent development and for the management of the company. He studied Mechanical Engineering at ETH Zurich and UC Berkeley and holds an MSc with distinction and a PhD from ETH Zurich, with more than 7 years of experience in CO₂ capture from air.

Jan Hartke

Earth Council Alliance
Contributor — Policy

Jan Hartke helped to internationalize the environmental agenda and is recognized as one of the founders of the sustainable development movement. He is President of the Earth Council, formed by UN Secretary-General Maurice Strong at the Earth Summit of 1992. He served for 12 years as the global Director of Clean Energy for the Clinton Climate Initiative. He is a co-founder of Ceres, a network of institutional investors with $10 trillion in assets, and helped establish the Global Environment Facility, the largest environmental grant-making institution globally.

Geoffrey Holmes

Carbon Engineering
Contributor — Technology

Geoffrey Holmes has worked on Direct Air Capture of CO₂ since 2008, both in an academic capacity and at Carbon Engineering. He focuses on designing technologies and innovating business models to enable economically-viable extraction of atmospheric CO₂. Carbon Engineering is considered a global leader in the “air capture” and “air to fuels” fields, with work frequently featured in The Economist, NPR, New York Times, and Fortune Magazine.

Joseph Hezir

Energy Future Initiative
Contributor

Joseph Hezir is a co-founder of Energy Futures Initiative (EFI), a non-profit organization dedicated to driving innovation in energy technology, policy, and business models. He served as the Department of Energy’s Chief Financial Officer from December 2014 through January 2017, and also worked as a Research Engineer and Executive Director of The Future of Solar Energy Study at MIT’s Energy Initiative. Joseph attended Carnegie Mellon University, where he received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.S. from the Heinz School of Public Policy.

Chris Jones

Georgia Tech
Contributor — Technology

Dr. Chris Jones directs a research program at Georgia Tech focused on catalysis and CO₂ separation, sequestration and utilization, with a major focus on the development of materials and processes for direct air capture (DAC). In 2013, Chris was recognized by the NACS with the Paul E. Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis. In 2016, he received the AIChE Andreas Acrivos Award for Professional Progress in Chemical Engineering.

Jan Mazurek

ClimateWorks Foundation
Contributor — Policy

Jan Mazurek, PhD directs ClimateWorks’ Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR) Fund. She has worked on energy and environmental policy at the federal and state level for more than 25 years. Prior to ClimateWorks, Governor Schwarzenegger appointed her as Senior Policy Advisor to the California Air Resources Board. Before CARB, Mazurek was a member of the Obama-Biden Presidential Transition Team. She holds a doctorate from UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Colin McCormick

Georgetown University / World Resources Institute
Contributor — Report Synthesis

Colin McCormick is Partner and Chief Technologist at Valence Strategic and Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He works with the Climate and Energy programs at the World Resources Institute. Previously Colin served as the Senior Advisor for R&D to the Under Secretary for Energy at the US Department of Energy, coordinating R&D programs across the applied energy offices including renewables, energy efficient buildings, vehicles, carbon capture, and the grid. He holds a PhD in atomic and optical physics.

Jigar Shah

Generate Capital
Contributor — Finance

Jigar Shah is the President and Co-Founder of Generate Capital. Shah was the founder and CEO of SunEdison (NASDAQ: SUNE), where he pioneered “no money down solar” and unlocked a multi-billion-dollar solar market, creating the largest solar services company worldwide. After SunEdison, Shah served as founding CEO of the Carbon War Room, a global non-profit founded by Sir Richard Branson and Virgin Unite. Jigar holds an MBA from The University of Maryland and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois.

Professor Matthew Realff

Georgia Tech
Contributor — Technology

Professor Matthew Realff completed his Bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at Imperial College London and earned a Ph.D. from MIT in 1992 as a Kennedy Scholar. He has been a faculty member at Georgia Institute of Technology since 1993 and is currently the David Wang Senior Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is Associate Director of the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute with responsibility for advanced materials and separations applications for energy systems.

David Elenowitz

Zero Carbon Partners
Contributor

David Elenowitz is the President and Founder of Zero Carbon Partners, an investment and strategic/operating firm focused on emerging companies in the low carbon space, funded with $50 million of capital. Mr. Elenowitz is also Senior Advisor of Global Thermostat, engaged in carbon dioxide removal from both the atmosphere (direct air capture) and industrial flue gas emissions (point source capture). Mr. Elenowitz is a graduate of Tufts University with a degree in Economics, summa cum laude.

Jonathan Goldberg

Carbon Direct
Contributor — Finance

Jonathan Goldberg is the founder and CEO of Carbon Direct, working with consumers and businesses to fulfill demand for negative emissions, and with the negative emissions industry to scale to combat climate change. Mr. Goldberg has over 15 years of experience in energy investing and project finance. He founded and launched hedge fund BBL Commodities and started his career at J. Aron, the commodities division of Goldman Sachs. He graduated with honors from Yale University with a degree in economics.

Additional Summit Participants

Edgar Bronfman

Global Thermostat
Participant

Edgar Bronfman Jr. is a Managing Partner at Accretive LLC. Mr. Bronfman invested in Global Thermostat in 2010, becoming its first investor, and serves as Executive Chairman of Global Thermostat LLC. He is also a co-founder and General Partner of Waverley Capital. Mr. Bronfman is the former Chairman and CEO of Warner Music and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Brent Constantz

Blue Planet Ltd.
Participant

Brent Constantz is a serial entrepreneur and the inventor on over 100 issued US patents. He is a Consulting Associate Professor at Stanford University, where he teaches biomineralization. In 2007, he launched efforts to address climate change by sequestering anthropogenic CO₂ as building materials, specifically concrete. In 2012, he brought a new discovery of basic biomineralization to practical reality with a scalable solution that can address climate change in an economically and technically sustainable manner.

Sahag Voskian

Hatton Research Group / Verdox
Participant

Sahag Voskian is an MIT researcher who co-published a new technique on carbon capture using electro-swing absorption, and co-founded the leading sustainability company Verdox. He holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from MIT (2019) and is primarily focused on electrochemically mediated separation of gases and stimuli responsive separation of small molecules and nanoparticles.

Tracy Wolstencroft

National Geographic / Heidrick & Struggles
Participant

Tracy Wolstencroft is Chairman of Heidrick & Struggles International, a premier global consultancy advising on talent and leadership. He was previously a Partner at Goldman Sachs where, over a 25-year career, he led businesses in the United States, Asia and Latin America and served as Chair of Goldman’s Global Clean Technology practice. Wolstencroft is Co-Chair of the International Rescue Committee and Vice-Chair of the National Geographic Society.

Stay in Touch

For inquiries and updates about direct air capture and climate mobilization.

Summit Participants

Representative participant list — July 21–22, 2020

Roger AinesLawrence Livermore National Labs
Nikki BatchelorCarbon XPRIZE
Sydney BoppBipartisan Policy Center
Remi BouteilleClimate Pathfinder Foundation
Jonte BoysenVerdox
Adam BraunWeWork (former)
Edgar BronfmanGlobal Thermostat
Ben BronfmanElektric Tree
John BruceCarbon Engineering
Wim CartonLund University Centre for Sustainability Studies
Etosha CaveOpus 12
Raymond ChavezEarth Council Alliance
Ron ChanceGlobal Thermostat
Graciela ChichilniskyGlobal Thermostat
Gabriel ConstantinAir Liquide
Brent ConstantzBlue Planet Ltd
David CraneiSquared
Amy DavidsenClimate Group
Noah DeichCarbon180
Suparna DuttaVirginia Commonwealth University
Nicholas EisenbergerPure Energy Partners / Global Thermostat
Peter EisenbergerElk Coast Institute / Global Thermostat
David ElenowitzZero Carbon Partners
Kristin EllisCarbon180
Marcius ExtavourCarbon XPRIZE
Patrick FurlottiProjects for Good Foundation
Christoph GebaldClimeworks
Jim GilesGreenBiz
Jonathan GoldbergCarbon Direct
Scott GosselinkGenerate Capital
Alexsandra GuerraNori
Axel HaazenPure Energy Partners (intern)
Jan HartkeEarth Council Alliance
Amy HebertHaldor Topsøe
Joseph HezirEnergy Future Initiative
Edward HillCircular Carbon Network
Geoff HolmesCarbon Engineering
Rory JacobsonCarbon180
Tito JankowskiImpossible Labs
Chris JonesGeorgia Tech
Richard KauffmanNYSERDA / Generate Capital
Nadia KockElk Coast Institute
Zachary KoserCircular Carbon Network
Klaus LacknerCenter for Negative Carbon Emissions, ASU
Phil LarochelleBreakthrough Energy Ventures
Sasha MacklerBipartisan Policy Center
Ari MarderOpen Air Collective
Cheryl MartinHarwich Partners
Dan MatrossCREO Syndicate
Jan MazurekClimateWorks Foundation
Colin McCormickGeorgetown University
Bill McDonoughMcDonough Innovation
Fred MoeserGlobal Thermostat
Sean MulderrigNYSERDA
Chris NeidlOpen Air Collective
Steve OldhamCarbon Engineering
Steve PetranekRadia Media
Eric PingGlobal Thermostat
Sameer RashidPure Energy Partners
Greg RauUC Santa Cruz
Matthew RealffGeorgia Tech
DR RichardsonVision Ridge Partners (former)
Anirudh SharmaGraviky
Robert SchuetzleGreyrock Energy
Jigar ShahGenerate Capital
Volker SickGlobal CO₂ Initiative
Vivan SorabCREO Syndicate
Vijay SwarupExxonMobil
Eric TooneBreakthrough Energy Ventures
Christina TopsøeHaldor Topsøe
Sahag VoskianHatton Research Group / Verdox
Frances WangClimateWorks Foundation
Tracy WolstencroftNational Geographic / Heidrick & Struggles
Daniel YawitzClimate Pathfinder Foundation

*Affiliations for informational purposes only. Individuals may be participating in their personal capacity.