Spreading the Good Word about Olivine Spreading: Kelly Erhart and Vesta

Kelly Erhart: [00:00:00] Our atmosphere is so full and overflowing of carbon dioxide that it's no longer enough to just turn off the top and stop emitting. We have to unplug the plug and remove carbon from the atmosphere, and unfortunately we need to do it at an incredibly large scales. And soon

Paul Shapiro: welcome to the business for good podcast to show where we spotlight companies making money, the world a better place.

I'm host Paul Shapiro. And if you share a passion for using commerce to solve many of the worlds pressing problems, then this.

Welcome friends to the 96th episode of the business for good podcast, because it is episode 96. That means that there will be an episode 100 upcoming. Pretty soon we have already gotten some pretty cool ideas from listeners about who they want to hear from on that 100th episode, but help us make it special.

So if you have an idea for somebody who you think you'd really love to hear from in that hundredth episode, please send [00:01:00] me an email. You can get in touch via the. Business for good podcast.com. Okay. In the last episode, we got to hear from a really cool company called fungo, which is working on ways to help soil capture more carbon from the atmosphere.

In this episode, though, we will be hearing from another cool company that's trying to help the oceans sequester. More carbon. Sure. We need to stop emitting greenhouse gases, but even if we stopped all of our emissions today, there are still so many that we have already put into the atmosphere that we need to start actively removing them.

Some folks are trying to build massive machines to suck CO2 from the air. But Kelly Earhart has a different idea. Just accelerating the Earth's natural geochemical processes to remove that same CO2 and safely deposited in a solid form at the bottom of our oceans. How to do it. Well, it turns out that when water touches this volcanic rock called Olien.

The rock naturally removes carbon dioxide from the air. This process takes eons normally, but if you grind the [00:02:00] olive rock into a sand and spread it out over beaches, you can greatly accelerate the carbon capturing capacity of the rock while also protecting coastal communities. Now, before you jumped to any conclusions, when I was telling my mom about this idea, she started thinking about walking on volcanic rock beaches in Hawaii and how easily you can cut yourself.

But rest assured to all of you out there thinking along the same lines as my mom. Aine sand is soft, like the sand to which we are already accustomed, and that you have more to fear from climate change than from walking on Allian beach. In fact, there are natural Aine beaches in Hawaii right now. So it sounds like a pretty noble idea.

And when you combine it with the capacity to sell carbon credits, it sounds like a pretty profitable idea too. And that is why Kelly. Founded Vesta in 2019, her company has raised 6 million in equity so far along with an additional 6 million in philanthropic dollars. And they are now poised to raise a much larger series a round so they can get into the Olien sand [00:03:00] spreading business.

They are already conducting pilot programs in the Caribbean, and they say they'll soon be ready for much bigger footprint or sand print projects that will make a tangible dent in the climate crisis. I'll let Kelly tell you all about it herself. Kelly welcome to the business for good podcast. Paul.

Thanks so much for having me. It is my pleasure. You know, it was a weird thing because you and I were in Italy at this like climate tech investors conference and we were chatting and I was really glad to meet you, but I had never heard the word before, let alone did I know that this was something that could help maybe just maybe save the world.

So first before we hear anything at all about yourself, I wanna know for the Wier Kelly, what is olive.

Kelly Erhart: Great question. And you know, it's not your, it's not your fault. Most people have never heard of Aine which is too bad because it's sort of this, it's this incredible mineral.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I appreciate, I appreciate you saying it's not my fault, cuz I am [00:04:00] used to things being my fault.

So in this case, at least I'm exonerated.

Kelly Erhart: So it turns out that many rocks when they interact with water, They remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And Aine is one of the most efficient minerals at doing just that. So something else that's maybe not widely known is that the ocean is the world's largest carbon sink.

And the ocean is vested only by rocks or by the lithosphere as the largest carbon sink on planet earth. Aine is one of the minerals that works within the Earth's natural long term carbon removal process called the carbonate silica cycle to slowly transform atmosphere at carbon dioxide back into rocks over long time skills.

It's a volcanic mineral it's found on every continent and it actually makes up over 50% of the upper mantle. So it's a, a really common mineral as well.

Paul Shapiro: Wow. So basically water touches [00:05:00] this rock. That is a volcanic rock called Olien, and there's a chemical reaction that occurs. And basically the rock adds to its own mass by taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, is that.

Kelly Erhart: So it doesn't quite add to its own mass. Actually, the, the process is a little different than that. What happens is when rain water falls on volcanic rocks, a natural chemical reaction occurs. So you're right on that. And what happens is that carbon dioxide actually enters the water. Through this process, because what happens when the olive dissolves is it generates quanity in the form of bicarbonate.

So it basically makes baking soda in local water. And when that happens, the Al that's generated in the water, causes the carbon to flow into that water. Slowly that water will flow into the ocean. And then as it flows into the ocean, as by carbonate, it'll transform into different forms of carbon.

So usually calcium carbonate and it'll be used by Marine organisms to build their skeletons and shells. [00:06:00] And then when they die, it'll fall to the bottom of the sea floor as sediment. And ultimately be subducted by the Earth's crust and turn into limestone. Interesting. So that's how it works when we are not doing the process.

That's the long, millions of years process that that happens on earth.

Paul Shapiro: Got it. And so it's not heating up the ocean. You're not putting CO2 into the water and heating up the ocean. You're basically solidifying this carbon into a, something that then eventually basically goes down to the bottom of the.

Kelly Erhart: Kind of, yeah. And, and so it's, it's definitely working against the heating of the ocean at a macro level. And the ocean is always absorbing carbon from the, at, from the atmosphere. Right. And it's, it's always trying to Basically come to a place of equilibrium with the atmosphere, but since the industrial revolution, the ocean has actually absorbed 30% of our carbon emissions, which has made the oceans about 30% more acidic.

And that's a real problem. It's a real problem for Marine ecosystems. Everything from Dungeness crabs to [00:07:00] fish corals it's a real problem for the, the various. Consequences that come from ocean acidification on the backs of the ecosystem decline. And what we are doing is, is kind of countering that.

So we're adding quanity. So the ocean can store carbon as carbonic acid. That's acidifying the ocean, or it can store carbon as by carbon. When we put it in the ocean as by carbonate, we're actually increasing the ocean's capacity to do what it does best, which is sequester and store carbon.

Paul Shapiro: Very cool.

All right. Well, I, I wanna get all into that, cuz we've done, you know, we've done other episodes in the past on direct carbon and capture from the air. So we add on global thermostat and, and their CEO GRA Chicho Minski we just did an episode with fungo, which is basically trying to enhance the carbon capturing ability of soil.

And so the idea that we can maybe enhance the carbon capturing ability of the ocean is something that I really hadn't ever thought of until meeting you. And so I'm eager to talk about that, but before we do Kelly, I [00:08:00] wanna talk about. Because my understanding is that this is not your first entrepreneurial rodeo.

You did. Co-found this company Vesta in 2019. But before that you were doing some other cool things for the planet too. So what got you interested first Kelly, in the idea of, you know, devoting your life to trying to help the planet, let alone to entrepreneurialism for the.

Kelly Erhart: Yeah. I mean, since I was a kid, I've always been really passionate about the environment.

And I think when I was a kid, it looked cute, like starting environmental clubs and doing like direct action where we'd sticker products in the. Grocery store that had Palm oil in them and, you know, things like that. And then as I got older and I studied biology and got really into understanding the forces that were at play in the global climate system, I got really like many people overwhelmed by the size of the problem.

And at the time I was working on disaster relief projects [00:09:00] and kind of doing some consulting and it became really clear that we could keep treating. The symptoms of climate change, or we could work with the root cause. And to me, carbon removal really stood out as one of the, the main ways to do that.

But before I got working directly on carbon removal and kind of. Decided to turn away from what could have definitely turned into the apathy that I think many people feel when they, when they look at the climate crisis. I worked on a variety of different projects that spanned everything from regenerative agriculture, operations to starting a waterless toilet company where we transformed waste into a liquid fertilizer.

Paul Shapiro: Hmm. And when I hear waterless toilet, to me, that sounds like a bucket, but I presume that's not what you were doing.

Kelly Erhart: no, it was it was not a bucket. No, I do have respect for the bucket toilets and have sat on many of them. The waterless toilet that we created was, was called a biofiltration toilet.

So we actually used [00:10:00] microbes and enzymes to really rapidly waste and. Both ferment and dehydrated, so that the end product was a liquid fertilizer that could be used on different crops and was able to be brought to large scale events and things like that, where there was a lot of need for rapid.

Human use of toilets.

Paul Shapiro: Mm-hmm oh, that's pretty cool. So what, what happened to your biofiltration toilet company?

Kelly Erhart: You know so COVID kind of happened in some ways. I, I started Vesta back in 2019 began sort of spinning things up and our team was shifting at the biofiltration toilet company.

And ultimately when COVID came around, it became clear. It was the events based company. It became clear. Really wasn't going to find its way out of the, the COVID hole for a while. So I was, I was able to step aside and focus on Vesta, which I had which I had started just be just kind of before COVID and in 2019.

And that was [00:11:00] really An amazing opportunity. So the technology is still out there. Still it's it's again, based on a natural process, it was essentially doing what the forest floor does, but in a box. So nothing's super proprietary but it's still out there.

Paul Shapiro: Yeah. Well, that's very cool. That that's really cool, but.

Let's move on then, because you were doing Vesta at that time too. And my understanding is that it is not just a company that you have started both a nonprofit organization and a for-profit corporation. So first, why do both and what is the difference between them?

Kelly Erhart: Yeah. Great, great question. When it comes to, why do both?

I think you can zoom out and you can again, look at the challenges of really most climate tech companies, which is that it takes a lot of capital to do science and to then bring science to scale. And so we started Vesta actually as a pretty scrappy nonprofit, trying to see first and foremost, if we, as a couple of really concerned entrepreneurs could get [00:12:00] scientists to talk to us about this solution that we'd read about called enhanced weathering which we actually haven't even got, got to yet, but We were able to do just that.

So we were able to bring together groups of scientists to really better understand the field of research that had existed in coastal enhanced weathering before. And see if we could bring. That that 30 years of lab-based research out of the lab and into the real world to test it and see if coastal enhanced weather could be a safe and effective solution to fit into the global climate change solution set.

Yeah. And so the last. Couple of years have been spent on doing just that, doing additional lab based experiments. And now we've just deployed our first field pilots. But the reason that we needed a nonprofit to do that is because again, we are advancing a field of research that had previously been stuck in academia.

There was a lot of good data on this. Because of some of the constraints that exist in the [00:13:00] academic system, especially related to kinda funding and university overhead. And quite frankly, this is a logistically intensive process. It had never gone beyond the lab. It had never gone into the real world to, to see if it, if the process could work effectively in the real world.

And so by us coming in and being able to mobilize philanthropic dollars, we were able to move much more. So with much more agility than an academic institution one but still the work that we're doing is kind of the work that a small oceanographic Institute would normally do. Hmm. We have 13 PhD scientists on staff, full time and a series of Collaborators that work with us from academic institutions and research organizations.

As well as our larger engineering and operating team, that's that's on our staff. And really the work that we're doing right now is necessary to publish into the public benefit. So [00:14:00] we, we need to publish the results of our first field trials to the world so that the world can benefit from understanding what we are coming to understand about this solution.

Nice. And that's why it needs to be philanthropic, but in order to get this solution to large scale and make really big climate impact, it also needs to be a. So we have a relationship with a 5 0 1 to fund our philanthropic work. And then we have a public benefit corporation that can take equity dollars and has raised VC finance to really scale the business, grow our understandings, the technology set, the IP and the deployment type that will be necessary to bring it to.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. So before we talk about what you are gonna be bringing to scale, you mentioned it's already a VC backed company, Kelly. So how many dollars have you raised for this so far? And then let's chat about what you're actually doing. Cuz you've, you've mentioned enhanced weathering, but we really haven't gotten into what that is.

So what type of financing have you raised so far and then what are you gonna do [00:15:00] with it?

Kelly Erhart: so we've raised about 6 million in philanthropic funding, and then we've raised about six and a quarter million in equity finance. Okay. So, and then we are also in conversations with some financing parties about a philanthropic type of investment called a program related investment, which is pretty interesting.

It's a way that philanthropic entities or really impact focused funds can. Somewhat concessionary loans. So a, a loan to a company that will be repaid over time. That's on below market terms. And what that allows us to do is begin to build a structure for the future financeability of the company. That looks a lot like project finance, but for an early stage technology.

Okay.

Paul Shapiro: Well first congratulations you know, 6 million in philanthropy and another 6 million inequity. That is it's no small feat. So congratulations on that, but let's talk about what you're actually gonna do with this, cuz you've talked about a pilot program [00:16:00] you've talked about enhanced weathering, what are you actually doing?

So, okay. I understand that volcanic rock caught Olien when it combines with water can take some CO2 out of the, at. but it takes millions of years. So what are you doing? That's gonna make it better.

Kelly Erhart: So what we do is we take olive and we grind it into a sand. We then take that sand and we bring it into coastal areas where it dissolves with the help of wave energy and tides and ecological processes.

And as it dissolves, it generates quanity again in the form of bicarbonate. So baking soda in the ocean, which lowers ocean acidity locally and causes P. So tens of thousands of years of carbon dioxide removal and storage in the ocean. And we let's see what was the second part of your question? You said, what are you

Paul Shapiro: doing?

yeah. So first, where are you getting Kelly? Where are you getting the olive Levine from? Like, how are you, I mean, do you buy it on the market? Do you go to a volcano and just cut it [00:17:00] up? Like, how do you even get.

Kelly Erhart: Yeah, so we, we can buy it on the market today. The olive currently is used as sort of a refractory mineral for some steel making processes.

So that's what it's, that's what it's mined for today. We are sourcing from a mine in olive. Or am mine in Norway today. And, you know, in the future, we'll expand that and we'll likely need to expand the supply chain to be able to achieve this kind of scale that we're looking at. But another interesting thing about olive is that because it is so abundant, it can sometimes be the waste product or the, the tailings of other mining operations.

Hmm. We're also researching ways that we might be able to recycle and reused waste product of, of mining operations for this purpose. Well,

Paul Shapiro: that's interesting. We, we actually had a past episode with Phoenix tailings, which is a, a startup that is seeking to valorize some of those tailings from mining operations.

So if you didn't hear that episode, you can go back to business for good [00:18:00] podcast.com and check it out, but it was pretty awesome what they were doing, basically going into these liquid pits that are left over from mining operations. Taking out the materials in there and, and making good use of them and who knows, maybe Aine will be a big market from those from those tailing spits.

So that would be pretty cool. But so you're talking about taking this Aine, which you're getting from Norway right now and spreading it onto a beach. So basically blending it up with actual sand of this on there. Is that right?

Kelly Erhart: That's right. So we, we bring it to the beach and it mixes with the, the local sediment there.

And as. As it interacts with the waves it dissolves and, and the process begins.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. And there are already some naturally olive beaches, right? I think in Hawaii, isn't that

Kelly Erhart: right? Yeah. There's a, probably the most famous Aine sand beaches in Hawaii called pople beach or the green sand beach. Because the sand there has a, has a kind of green color.

Paul Shapiro: Hmm. And is all, will all of the Aine [00:19:00] beaches that Vesta is gonna be making? Will they be green sand or will I be looking more like normal sand to us? It'll be

Kelly Erhart: looking more like normal sand to us. So as the olive Eden blends in with the local sediment, it's pretty much invisible to the naked eye. So you can't really notice a difference in, in the sand

Paul Shapiro: color.

Okay. So before we get into how you'll actually make money, like why people will pay you to do this? How much do you need to. Before there's any type of a tangible impact, like is this type of thing where you could do a few beaches or do you need to be using millions or tens of millions or hundreds of millions of kilos of sand?

Like how much do you have to do that? It actually makes some dent in the problem.

Kelly Erhart: Yeah. So it's, it's multiple, very large beaches. Olive is again, one of the most efficient minerals at performing this process, but it still takes about. It's a little less than a ton for a ton. So it's about per, per one ton of olives sand.

We can remove anywhere [00:20:00] from, from three quarters to a ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And so that means that, you know, it would take. A little over a billion, tons of olive to remove billion, tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. And

Paul Shapiro: is that, is that what's needed is the, like, I, I don't know how many tons of CO2 we need to remove in order to get to like pre-industrial levels here, but do you know that is

Kelly Erhart: the scale that we're aiming for.

So we're aiming to be able to remove a gigaton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year. Full scale. What we need to get our climate back to a safe and stable place is anywhere between 12 and 18 billion, tons of carbon dioxide removal per year. So we'd be contributing a sizeable chunk if we were able to achieve our full scale as a company but more is needed.

Yeah.

Paul Shapiro: Okay. And, and presumably there would be other things that are happening. It's not gonna be all on Vest's shoulders obviously, but which I hope so okay. So let [00:21:00] me first ask you, do you consider this geoengineering, like you are taking this rock and you're gonna put billions of tons of it onto beaches and that will be modifying the S atmosphere.

So when you think about direct carbon capture, What companies like global thermostat are doing. Everybody recognizes that as geoengineering. If you think about you know, trying to increase the carbon, capturing capacity of soil, people don't think of that as geoengineering, even though it is sucking carbon from the atmosphere.

So do you think that creating all of the beaches is geo engineer? So we

Kelly Erhart: don't see it that way. We don't see it as geoengineering, because again, we are enhancing and accelerating a natural process. Mm-hmm so just like the company you're talking about is enhancing soils capacity to sequester and store carbon.

We're doing that with the ocean by introducing a naturally occurring mineral. Now it's true that we're kind of increasing the surface area of that [00:22:00] mineral, which expedites the process, but we're not introducing anything foreign. To the oceans, to the ocean system or to the earth system.

Paul Shapiro: Mm-hmm okay. Yeah.

I'm not suggesting that geoengineering is bad. I just wonder about it. I mean, people seem, you know, some people seem to be concerned about geoengineering when it's used to try to solve the climate crisis. But when we're geoengineering by removing mountain tops for coal, what nobody's saying, oh, you know, what's going on.

So

Kelly Erhart: yeah. And there's an argument that we've been geoengineering since the Dawn of civilization. I mean, for sure we've been geoengineering and uncontrolled experiments. Yes. That we are now bearing the brunt of the consequences of, but you know, when, when we, when we met in Italy, you can see the hillsides.

Right. And they've been geo engineered for, for C. Right. There is no, there's no untouched hill side that, that you know, where we've been growing grapes and olives for hundreds of years. That's a, that's a really different environment than it was before humans started altering it. So it is an [00:23:00] interesting question of kind of what's the beginning and what's the end of our definition of geoengineering because in, in many ways, our, our industrialized civilizations have, have been geoengineering.

We decided to move beyond nomadic structures.

Paul Shapiro: Yes. I, I totally agree. I think that everything that we're doing pretty much is geoengineering from paving to mountain topped removal to yeah. Converting mountainsides to vineyards. And so on. We are creating a, an uncontrolled experiment. I, I totally agree with you.

One of the other things that I learned from you, Kelly, about geoengineering, speaking of by the way is how beaches are made today. Because I was wondering when we were chatting about, you know, you're gonna take all this Aine sand and put it all over the place, like, isn't that gonna affect the local beaches?

But you told me that beaches are not as natural as at least I had thought so help me understand how do we make these beaches for tourists today and why is what you're doing better.

Kelly Erhart: [00:24:00] Yeah. So in many parts of the world, our, our coastal cities and our island nations are eroding. And that is especially true.

As climate change forces as sea level rise gets worse. And as storm surges cause more intense more intense sort of. King tides and things that are eroding our coastlines. And so in response to that many coastal cities and, and islands are bringing in foreign sand to replenish their coastlines. And this industry is broadly called coastal nourishment or shoreline protection.

And so dredged sand or mind sand will come to the shoreline and there's different techniques for protecting and and sort of. Re supporting the, the shoreline protection efforts of a place. And so Vesta sits very squarely in those regulatory frameworks and in those sort of type of deployment techniques.

So for our first. Site. We actually worked with a [00:25:00] community in the state of New York, in long island, where they had an existing plan for a coastal nourishment project because they were facing some severe erosion of their beaches that were threatening their, their homes and the coastal infrastructure there.

And we replaced a portion of the sand used in that project with Aine sand to really test and see if there's a way that we can integrate all Levine's sand as a climate friendly way to do shoreline protection.

Paul Shapiro: Hmm. So essentially what you're arguing is there's not only a, a climate benefit to making an Allian sand beach or at least AIAN olive sand.

O sand containing beach, but that there are also some benefits to the coastal communities themselves here as well.

Kelly Erhart: That's right. That's what we are. That's what we're investigating with coastal carbon capture.

Paul Shapiro: Right. So what happened you're you did this pilot that you just mentioned, you're doing one in the Caribbean right now.

What are you testing out? Just, are you measuring the amount of carbon that is being removed? Are you even able to [00:26:00] measure that? Like what is a successful pilot test look like for.

Kelly Erhart: So we're measuring the amount of carbon that's removed at the project. We're also measuring the rate of carbon dioxide removal.

We're measuring for any ecological changes. So both positive ecological effects. And then if there are any negative ecological effects, we're closely monitoring for those. And. Really the, the carbon removal rate is super important here. So we, we know based on the, the geochemistry and lab based studies, that carbon is removed from the atmosphere through this process, but we don't know exactly how quickly it is.

And and then establishing a way to measure that carbon removal is something that we're developing as well. You can kind of think about, you know, when we first started planting forests and we found out. Turns out trees remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but we had to figure out how to measure how trees were doing just that.

We're now doing that for the ocean and developing [00:27:00] sensors and models to be able to, to measure and report on carbon removal rates in the ocean.

Paul Shapiro: So you're, you're leading perfectly Kelly into my next question, which relates to the proprietary nature of this, because so far you've been talking about grinding up this rock and spreading it over a beach, which sounds like something that anybody could do.

So what is the moat that Vesta has? Like, why can nobody else replicate what you're doing and you know, why should somebody invest with you rather than anybody else who's interested in Aine spreading. Yeah.

Kelly Erhart: So before I get to the actual note, there's the obvious kind of first mover advantage that we have, which is to say that we truly have some of the best scientists in the world working on our team to develop this technology.

And they are the, the leading experts, scientists. Have never really been able to work across disciplines on coastal carbon capture like they are today at Vasa to be able to [00:28:00] create a way to deploy Aine, to remove carbon from the atmosphere and provide these other benefits. So the, the fact that we're the first to ever do this.

And the first after 33 years of research to, to only exist for three years and be able to deploy a field site after many years of, of non success is pretty huge. And so we're getting the first ever field data on this. So that's kind of the one thing to say, but the, the Mo that we have is, is three things.

So one it's the Vesta blend, which is our specific sand the sand blend that we use for different deployment techniques and types. Another is the. The technique. So how we deploy is very important how we place the sand for which purposes and at specific sites is, is really unique. And it takes a complex integrated suite of models to be able to understand exactly how we do that.

And then last is the vest of technology, [00:29:00] which is how we monitor report and verify carbon removal rates. So again, we know that this process works, the chemistry is incredibly well understood, but what doesn't exist yet is a robust and integrated network of sensors and models that can be used to verify carbon removal and then sell carbon.

On international registries. And so the technology we're developing around all three of those things are going to allow us to, to do just that, to actually unlock the business model, where we can tie economic benefit to carbon removal.

Paul Shapiro: And, and so the main method of revenue generation is carbon credits.

Carbon credits.

Kelly Erhart: That's right. Yes. Carbon credits and ultimately licensing the technology as well

Paul Shapiro: to hotels who have their own private beaches, or who, who would, who like, who would buy that license from you?

Kelly Erhart: The, who would buy the license would be any other company that wants to deploy coastal [00:30:00] carbon capture or use our technology for measuring reporting and verifying mm-hmm

There's also a potential that we may be able to sell the sand. So the sand's providing coastal protection benefits. In certain locations, we might be able to sell the sand to those, those coastal communities as well.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. Well, that sounds exciting. You, you call it enhanced weathering. And you've said that this happens in, in nature over millions of years, but you can make it happen much faster.

I know that you're measuring this now, Kelly, so you'll have better data as time goes on, but how much faster do you think that it will happen?

Kelly Erhart: So we're looking at the order of decades. So similar to how long it takes a tree to grow. But something that's interesting about olive is that it, it dissolves in half lives, which is to say that it's not an equal distribution over the entire course of the Olive's lifetime of dissolution.

You get more dissolution in the first half of its lifetime, and then there's this exponential decay. And that's actually. [00:31:00] Beneficial to some carbon credit financing, because it means that we can likely capture the majority of the revenue in the first part of the lifetime. And then we'll have this sort of long tail of additional carbon removal that will happen.

But over a longer time period.

Paul Shapiro: Cool. So let me ask you then a provocative question, because you know, what, if somebody were to say to you, Kelly, it's awesome that you're figuring out ways to accelerate weathering of all beans. So you can capture the carbon that we are putting in the air. But does this just give us a license to keep on emitting?

Like why would we stop emitting if we could just suck it out through Ave beach. Totally.

Kelly Erhart: I think that's the main question that, that most people ask when they come against carbon dioxide removal technologies. And it's a good question to ask, because we do need to be aware of the incentives that we're putting in place in a system.

Unfortunately. We are not at a point any point anymore where we can exist in a, in a [00:32:00] world without carbon dioxide removal. At this point, again, we need anywhere from 12 to 18 billion, tons of carbon removal a year to get ourselves back to a, a stable climate. And even if we were to stop emitting today, there's so much excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

That we wouldn't see the kind of change that we need to see in the global climate system. And you know, there's this, there's this metaphor that's often used around the bath, the bathtub, I think maybe it was Al gore who first used this metaphor where you wake up in the morning and you're gonna go take a luxurious bath.

So you turn on the tap and you go to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee. You come back and you find out you find that you forgot to turn the tap off. And now there's water flowing all over the floor. In order to fix this mess, you yes. Need to turn off the. But you also need to unplug the tub before you can get in it.

Otherwise you're gonna keep having a mess everywhere. [00:33:00] And it's a, there's a, there's a comparison to be made to our atmosphere. Our atmosphere is so full and overflowing of carbon dioxide that it's no longer enough to just turn off the tap and stop emitting. We have to unplug the plug. And remove carbon from the atmosphere.

And unfortunately we need to do it at an incredibly large scales and, and soon, so that's really why we're invested in coastal carbon capture because it can scale to gig a ton or billion ton planetary scale impact. And there's just not that much available today that can contribute that much to the problem.

Paul Shapiro: Well, I'm persuaded by that analogy. And I think it's not dissimilar to the plastic problem as well. So if you think about the companies that are working to create compostable or biodegradable plastics, that's fantastic. We should be doing that. But there's still a lot of plastic out there in the ocean and in [00:34:00] the environment that we have to remove, we need to get rid of it somehow.

Like it's not enough to stop making new non biodegradable plastic. It is, we have to actually remove the plastics that we've already created. And so there's there are a number of companies that are seeking to do that. Now, in fact I saw an effort recently to start removing. Plastic from the Pacific garbage patch recently, which was a, a pretty cool a pretty cool thing to see.

It's very rare that you see humans trying to undo some of the damage that we have done. So I, I appreciate that very much. And Kelly, I very much appreciate what you are doing and want to ask you, as we begin to wrap up here about what resources you think might be useful for somebody like you have started your own companies before.

You've started a nonprofit organization. You've started now this for-profit organization for which, or excuse for-profit company, for which you have raised millions of dollars. You're doing really cool pilots, and hopefully you will be spreading billions of pounds of Aine across speeches around the world.

But were there any resources that were useful for you? [00:35:00] Any podcasts or books or speeches or anything that you would recommend to somebody who is looking at you and thinking I really admire what she's done. What can I do to have some of that type of success as.

Kelly Erhart: Gosh, that's such a great question. And I think it's so different depending on who the person is and what their specific interest is and the space or their proclivities.

But I won't, won't give that cop out answer. Certainly for me, I'm the type of person that really loves spending my weekends, digging into scientific papers and journals and, and. Guiding myself through curiosity through them. So if you've never tried that, give it a try. But more specifically, I actually had I went to Ted this year in Vancouver and there was a talk in the climate section by Dr.

A Ayana Elizabeth Johnson. And it was really fantastic. It mainly focused on how each individual can apply themselves to the climate crisis for their. Personal [00:36:00] abilities and interests. And so she walks people through this whole framework. That's similar to the icky guy framework. If anyone's ever heard of that, which is a, a framework where you kind of map what you're good at, what you like doing.

And I think what you're doing, what makes money or something like that. And she asks participants to walk through a similar framework, sort of a Venn diagram framework to figure out how they can really apply themselves to the issue. And I think. Fantastic because it goes beyond the turn, off your lights or change your light bulbs or ride a bike.

And outside of the, I think. I think very misguided frame, that individual footprints are the real issue here. I think that much of the issue in, in climate is, is corporate and, and government action. But all of that, to say that she guides you through steps that you can take to actually do things that are meaningful whether it.

You know, getting, getting more involved in a company by volunteering [00:37:00] with, with different efforts or, you know, supporting research and, and government outreach and things like that. So would Def definitely recommend watching that watching that Ted talk. And then there's a number of online resources that I think are great.

If someone wants to get geeky about carbon removal and the, the climate tech space carbon plan is a great online resource. They do some really cool research as well.

Paul Shapiro: Great. Well, we will link to both of those carbon plan as well as that Ted talk that you're referring to@thewebsitebusinessforgoodpodcast.com.

So people can go check those out. So finally, Kelly, you're obviously devoted now to Vesta and trying to spread the good word and actually spread out Lev in itself. Now you're not just spreading the good word about Alvin. You were trying to spread the ion itself all over the world. So let me ask you you probably have other ideas.

Companies that you wish existed, that you aren't going to do yourself cuz you're devoted here. So if somebody is thinking that they really wanna do something for the climate or [00:38:00] any way to make the world a better place, but they aren't sure what type of a company they may wanna pursue. What ideas do you wanna throw out there for folks to think about starting their own company for.

Kelly Erhart: I think there's so much innovation happening in the ocean space right now, I would say as many people as we can get looking at the ocean and, and doing rigorous science based research and development on ocean based solutions, the better. And because it's such a nascent space and because we are constantly just beginning to understand the ocean, I think there's just so much potential.

So I would definitely say. Do some research on the ocean space. There's lots of ways to facilitate carbon removal and the ocean. There's lots of ways to do ecosystem restoration and regeneration of our really, really critical and fragile systems in the ocean. So I would definitely say to, to dive into that.

Paul Shapiro: I love your pun to dive into this ocean of opportunity that there is in carbon removal using the world's seas. We have done other [00:39:00] episodes in this vein before for example, with coral Vita, which is creating ways that they hopefully can rehabilitate dead or die in coral reefs before. And we'll link to that at the website as well for people wanna go listen to that back episode.

But Kelly, I really appreciate what you are doing. I think it's extremely cool. And I would love to go lay out on an AIAN beach sometime. And when I do, I will take a photo of Tony, who, as you know, as my wife will, we'll take a photo of us on an AIAN beach and we're gonna text it to you. So you can see that we are enjoying the fruit of your labor.

So thank you very much, Kelly. It's great to talk with you and we will be rooting for your success.

Kelly Erhart: Thanks so much, Paul, great to talk to you as well.

Paul Shapiro: Thanks for listening. We hope you found use in this episode. If so, don't keep it to yourself. Please leave us a five star rating on iTunes or wherever you get your podcast.

And as always, we hope you be in the business of doing good.