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Partner Profile: Erin Burns

“...(W)e're at a really exciting point for carbon removal: we’re seeing a ton of attention on this topic, we're seeing billion dollar level investments,... and we’re seeing a lot more engagement. Carbon removal has really arrived."

This newsletter issue features E rin Burns, Executive Director of Carbon180

Ms Burns guides the Carbon180 team in thinking about how to equitably scale carbon removal and address the climate crisis. She previously worked on energy, labor, and coal worker transition issues in the US Senate. She is originally from West Virginia and currently lives in Washington, DC with her family.

You did not start out in carbon removal. Can you talk me through your career journey?

I actually started as an architecture major in college, but that wasn't the right fit. Then I found cultural anthropology and loved it! Honestly, I didn't have a very linear path. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do after college and I moved to Washington, DC without a job. Without a super clear plan, I worked at a couple of restaurants and a farmers market and was just thinking about what I wanted to do.

I had chosen to leave West Virginia, where I’m from, for college, and not move back, but I still felt drawn to the state and wanted to do things to help West Virginia. So I went into Sen ator Joe Manchin’s office and asked for a job.

I had to intern with them for a while before I was actually hired. I got assigned to some energy policy work when I first started, and I was really excited about it! In this office, the energy staffer was also the same person as the labor staff person. So my work was really tied up in working with mine workers, which resonated with me.

My grandma grew up in a coal mining company town, and it was just such a big part of being from southern West Virginia. That opportunity to work at the intersection of energy policy, labor policy, and forestry was really exciting. It felt closely tied to what I wanted to do in terms of thinking about policies for West Virginians. As part of that, I ended up working a lot on carbon capture— and eventually carbon removal.

Senator Manchin was on the Energy and Natural Resources Com mittee, so through my job, which required that I help him stay informed, I was able to learn about point source carbon capture. Later I met No ah (Deich, the Carbon180 co-founder and former president), and we worked on some early direct air capture legislation together. I got really excited because it felt like this was an area in which people were talking about things like point source carbon capture as a way to save coal. And that didn't feel right to me. Let me point out here that West Virginians have a very nuanced relationship with coal. Like me, many of them aren't necessarily saying that they want to bring back the coal industry.

It felt like there was this opportunity to think about point source carbon capture and carbon removal much differently. What could it mean for economies like West Virginia? It just felt so full of opportunity to do something new and interesting, which was really exciting. Of all the issues that I worked on in the senate, this one felt like a great opportunity to do something really impactful!

After working in Senator Manchin’s office, I worked at a think tank for a few years, to build up their carbon capture program. There, we did things a little outside of the box, things like stop motion claymation youtube videos. We found ways to communicate concepts to a different audience. While there's certainly value in the white papers that I would write for policy makers when I was a senate staffer, there's also value in showing the personality and the people behind this information and making the information more digestible.

Then I had an opportunity to work at Carbon180 on carbon removal. It was a young team that was really open to thinking both strategically and also outside the box. We have such a terrific communications team that makes these really amazing graphics, and a great newsletter.

It has been so exciting and energizing to work with this group of people who do not come from policy NGOs, so they aren't coming in with preconceived notions about what policy communications look like. It has made us more effective at focusing on what is impactful rather than what we are supposed to be doing.

Can you tell me about Carbon180?

Back in 2015, when Noah and Giana Am ador started Carbon180, people weren’t really talking about carbon removal, outside of very specific climate scientists circles. However, Noah and Giana had been looking at climate models and realized that we were going to need massive amounts of carbon removal.

Our work now is really foc used on developing and advocating for policies to scale carbon removal to the gigaton level and, and in particular, to focus on legacy emissions and to do this in ways that are science based, equitable, fair, and just.

When I joined as the first director of policy in 2018, it was sort of an inflection point; carbon removal was getting more attention. There was a growing recognition that federal policy was the path forward as far as how we get this to scale.There are lots of benefits of focusing this effort from a federal policy perspective; for example, you can advocate for community engagement, biodiversity, and labor standards all being prioritized.

Our team has more than tripled since then and we now work in many different areas: technological carbon removal, land based carbon removal, foundational science, innovation, emerging solutions, environmental justice, etc. Noah and Giana deserve a lot of credit for their vision in this space; they have had such a huge impact. Right now, we're at a really exciting point for carbon removal: we’re seeing a ton of attention on this topic, we're seeing billion dollar level investments from the private sector, we're seeing billions of dollars from the federal government and additional policies, and we’re seeing a lot more engagement. Carbon removal has really arrived.

Our focus at Carbon180 is to continue to develop and advocate for those policies that will ensure that carbon removal is scaled to a gigaton scale, and that it is done in a very thoughtful, intentional way.

You wrote in the Hill abo ut “net zero” versus “net negative”. Could you explain what you meant?

Absolutely. There's been a lot of conversation–especially in policy circles–about long term climate goals. A lot of the focus is on net zero. We want to make sure that net negative is also part of the conversation. When we look at climate models, we see that we're going to need massive amounts of carbon removal. We need to get to negative emissions. The amount of CO₂we have in the atmosphere today is already too much. So we need to be thinking about scaling carbon removal solutions so that we can not just get to net zero, but we can get to net negative.

In the same piece, you mentioned that drawing down legacy emissions and ensuring community engagement are priorities. Could you explain why?

A lot of our work focuses on legacy emissions, or the carbon that is already in the atmosphere. Carbon removal is really the only way to address legacy emissions. We need to have less CO₂ in the atmosphere than we do today, but we need to remove CO₂ in addition to really aggressive mitigation. CO₂ removal is not a replacement for mitigation, nor is it something that should slow or delay mitigation.

Also, as we scale carbon removal, we need to think about community engagement. Carbon removal projects should be sited in communities that want them and they should be done in a way that provides benefits to the communities that host them. Host communities need to be empowered to decide what those projects will look like. Community engagement is essential to the success of all carbon removal solutions.

What do you see as the relative advantages or disadvantages of carbon capture and utilization (CCU) over carbon capture and storage (CCS)?

Carbon utilization is something Carbon180 has worked on for a long time. The Glo bal CO₂ Initiative has so many amazing resources in that space. The vast majority of CO₂ that we’ll need to capture in the long term will have to be stored. However, carbon utilization has an advantage in that it enables you to create a tangible product, which is more exciting and engaging to people. The fact that you can create products with captured CO₂ has important implications when you look at the value side of this issue.

Also, as we're doing more work on hard to decarbonize sectors, things like building materials or aviation fuels. We don't necessarily have a ton of near term options to decarbonize these areas. Over the next couple of decades, I think these areas will provide a really important role for carbon utilization.

You are inspirational to many people. What inspires you?

Honestly, the people I work with everyday at Carbon180 inspire me. They're so passionate about what they do and they're so genuine about their engagement in this area. It's really energizing to work with a team that is so enthusiastic about scaling carbon removal, in a thoughtful, equitable, science based way.

They work on this issue with such a fresh perspective and bring so many new ideas. When I started in this area, I was drawn to it because it felt like an opportunity to do things a little bit differently, but it often felt like I was pushing against the grain. Now, however, I get to work with a team that is constantly looking for new solutions: “What if we did this thing? How about if we approach it from this angle?” People frequently come up with so many creative ideas that I would never have thought of myself and these ideas become core pieces of our work. They come up with all of these amazing ideas because, across the board, the staff at Carbon180 are so dedicated to thinking about this issue and doing it really well. The people that I work with are so inspirational to me!

Learn more about Carbon180’s work:

White pa p er on DAC hubs implementation
We binar recording on DAC hub innovation
Environmental justice regranting effort

U-M is seeking emerging CCU companies to participate in "Innovation for Impact - Climate Change", a company-in-residence program, offered through U-M's Center for Entrepreneurship. This program offers emerging companies the chance to work with student teams for two semesters on a project defined by the companies. There is no cost to the companies but a company mentor must be available to meet (virtually) with their team weekly for progress reporting, feedback, and guidance. Please contact Tasha Beery for more information.