The Wall Street Journal explores whether a new industry can scale up carbon dioxide removal from the atmosphere. With emissions still rising, scientists say billions of tons of CO2 may need to be pulled from the air each year to meet climate goals. The piece highlights how Nan Ransohoff, formerly of Stripe, pushed the idea of guaranteeing future demand at high prices to spur innovation, borrowing a model from vaccine development. This is a key question for carbon markets. Right now, carbon removal is expensive and unproven at scale. The article points out that how to actually do it and who pays for it remain open problems. For anyone tracking carbon credit quality or direct air capture companies, this is worth reading for the framing around demand signals and investment risk.
