Founder’s Field Guide
Episode 25 Capturing Carbon
Founder’s Field Guide

Episode 25: Capturing Carbon

Capturing Carbon

Jonathan Goldberg is the founder and CEO of Carbon Direct, a company focused on advising and investing in carbon removal at scale. We cover the state of the carbon problem today, the importance of global carbon standards and carbon taxes, and the future of carbon capture.

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[00:03:25] - [First question] - Overview of his career

[00:06:02] - The start of his commodities trading strategy and its evolution 

[00:09:08] - Key strategies for making money as a commodities trader

[00:10:41] - Opportunity to trade commodities today 

[00:11:39] - Making the shift to carbon capture work

[00:15:04] - Range of consequences for elevated carbon emissions and biggest buckets of carbon

[00:18:52] - An outline of the Paris Climate Accord and other agreements on climate change

[00:20:26] - Ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere

[00:23:46] - The technology to remove carbon and incentives to invest in this technology

[00:26:19] - Corporate participation in the carbon trade 

[00:28:35] - Balance of natural vs man-made solutions 

[00:31:53] - Making money without the altruistic goals

[00:33:43] - Trends in the fossil fuel industry 

[00:36:41] - Convenient ways for consumers to switch to clean energy products

[00:39:57] - The geopolitical will to shift towards cleaner energy

[00:41:58] - Primary consequences of not making this shift

[00:44:25] - The important role of regulation 

[00:46:01] - Thinking through the investing side of combating climate change

[00:48:59] - Kindest thing anyone has done for him

Capturing Carbon

Introduction

Patrick
My guest today is Jonathan Goldberg, the Founder and CEO of Carbon Direct, a company focused on advising and investing in carbon removal at scale. Jonathan started his career in the commodities division of Goldman Sachs and then went on to start a commodity hedge fund, BBL Commodities. In our conversation, we covered the state of the carbon problem today, the importance of global carbon standards and carbon taxes, and the future of carbon capture and removal technologies. This was a master class on all things carbon related. Please enjoy my conversation with Jonathan Goldberg.

Jon, we've been trying to do this for a long time. I'm so jacked to do with you finally. You've taught me most of what I know about the topics that we're going to cover today. I think an interesting place to begin would be with setting up why you're such an interesting person to be attacking this topic and this problem with your career and with this conversation today.Give us just a thumbnail sketch of the major stops of your career. Then I'll probably ask some follow up questions on each just so we can lay good groundwork to then talk all things carbon.

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