Partner Profile: Grant Faber | |
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"The unfathomable urgency of the climate crisis paired with the opportunity to build a socially, environmentally, and economically responsible industry from the ground up inspires me every day to work even harder and add even more value."
This newsletter issue features Grant Faber, Founder and President, Carbon-Based Consulting LLC.
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Grant runs Carbon-Based Consulting LLC, a consultancy offering techno-economic assessment (TEA), emissions-focused life cycle assessment (LCA), market research, and related services to organizations working on carbon removal and decarbonization. Previously, he worked at Twelve as a Senior Techno-Economic Analyst and at the Global CO2 Initiative (GCI). He has also worked with Heirloom, XPRIZE, Azolla, and CarbonBridge. He earned an MS in sustainable systems and a BBA. in finance from the University of Michigan. A guitar player, he loves composing quick songs about carbon and related topics. You can see a video of him and his narwhal companion performing one here!
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How did you become interested in your current field?
While environmental protection work with the Friends of the Rouge and early experiences with nature inspired me to work in the environmental space generally, I entered the carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration (CCUS) and carbon dioxide removal (CDR) fields due to GCI. I met Susan Fancy, now the Associate Director of GCI, through the Clean Wolverines group, when I was advocating for the university to sign a power purchase agreement and establish a revolving energy fund. Susan introduced me to GCI and facilitated my employment there. At GCI, I developed a deep interest in CCUS and CDR given their tremendous potential for mitigating and reversing climate change. I felt, and still feel, that these areas are largely neglected relative to many other climate solutions, which is why I work on them.
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Can you explain your connection to GCI?
I started working with GCI as a Research Assistant and then got appointed as a Techno-Economic Assessment Researcher after a couple of years. The vast majority of my publications and one of my most significant contributions to the field, AssessCCUS, was developed while I was at GCI. Working there taught me a significant amount about TEA and LCA along with the science and engineering behind carbon management. While I have learned a lot since my time with GCI, these lessons are the foundation of much of my work today.
What do you do now?
Currently, I work with different companies and organizations and give them advice on the costs and environmental impacts of technologies that they are developing or evaluating. I also spend much of my time learning, networking, and honing my skills, which are all important given how much the carbon management industry develops every day. I also contribute articles, think pieces, or other resources to move the industry forward.
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Why did you decide to start your own business?
I feel a strong ethical obligation to work on climate, and I am always looking for ways that I can personally add as much value as possible. I have found that there is a significant demand for TEA and LCA services but a lack of supply; this gap in the market provided some initial inspiration. I also figured that my accumulated knowledge about the CCUS field would go further if I could work with many organizations as opposed to just one at a time. The nature of the work I do—building cost and environmental impact models and giving advice on strategy—is extremely valuable to companies breaking into the field, but the marginal value decreases quickly once the models are built and the organization is well on its way toward execution. Therefore, I try to maximize the value I add by working with many organizations.
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What do you see as the future for CCUS?
While renewable and low-carbon energy sources, energy efficiency, agricultural transitions, and mass electrification will and should be responsible for the majority of emissions reductions, CCUS is a key component of a net-zero and ultimately net-negative society that needs to start scaling now. Carbon capture and permanent utilization or sequestration is likely necessary to reach zero emissions for industries that inherently involve point-source emissions, such as cement, for which we may not be able to find reasonable, clean alternatives in a timely manner.
Utilization of biogenic or atmospheric CO2 is useful for industries where there are mobile emissions and direct electrification is difficult, such as aviation and marine transportation, as fuels and chemicals made with biogenic or atmospheric carbon can eventually have zero emissions.
Permanent utilization—such as in concrete, solid carbon, or certain kinds of plastics—or geologic sequestration of biogenic or atmospheric CO2 will help us reach carbon negativity as well, which will be important for compensating for hard-to-abate emissions and unavoidable non-CO2 emissions. Carbon negativity is also vital for expanding the carbon budget a bit for emerging economies and ultimately reversing climate change. There are also other carbon removal pathways ranging from afforestation to ocean alkalinity enhancement that can remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere while potentially providing co-benefits to ecosystems.
It is very difficult to imagine a future with responsible climate action that does not involve at least a few gigatons of carbon management of some kind, which is supported by IPCC-cited modeling.
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What inspires you?
We only have about two business cycles to cut global emissions in half, and there are only 28 years until the global society needs to reach net-zero emissions if we want to hit our 1.5 °C warming target. In this time, we need to scale up carbon removal by a factor of 1,000,000—from roughly 10,000 tons per year today to 10 gigatons per year from both natural and engineered solutions. I am also a firm believer that society should aim to go carbon negative to remove our legacy emissions and eventually restore the climate to its pre-industrial state. The unfathomable urgency of the climate crisis paired with the opportunity to build a socially, environmentally, and economically responsible industry from the ground up inspires me every day to work even harder and add even more value.
Is there anything else that I should have asked you?
I can share some things that I think are important for those getting into the space to know or pay attention to.
The first is that it is prudent to think holistically about systems and carbon flows to determine if a given system is truly compatible with a net-zero or net-negative world. Capturing CO2 from a cement plant and making it into jet fuel could help reduce emissions, but it would still add geologic carbon to the atmosphere during combustion and that carbon will eventually need to be eliminated or compensated for. Balancing short- and long-term priorities must be factored into our planning today.
Furthermore, the chances of success for any given technology or pathway are low but can be improved significantly by conducting robust LCAs and TEAs and using good business and engineering practices, including employing diverse and well-rounded teams with the necessary skill sets for success.
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Finally, I would encourage those who are new to the space to stick with it despite how difficult and complex it is. Everyone is learning all the time, and it takes less time than you think to arrive at the frontier of knowledge on specific topics given how new everything is. However, don’t expect to stop feeling overwhelmed. Once you arrive at the frontier, you start heading into uncharted territory!
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