Show HN: An API for CO₂ Removal (docs.cdrplatform.com)

But that doesn't mean we can't also try to accelerate the removal of carbon from our atmosphere.

We do have more info on our partners and the relevant removal methods in the other docs[1] but I'll add some info to the homepage to make that clearer, faster. Thanks for the suggestion.

[1] https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner

0 - https://charmindustrial.com/

https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-partner

I understand your hesitation on tree planting and mineralization however it is optional if you choose to purchase these methods. Others prefer the more nature-based CO2 removal.

We do value the quality of the schemes, only picking removal over dubious credits but we will aim to put more emphasis on this.

Sorry if I'm being harsh here but its similar CO2e platform accounting companies -- theres a million of those and its low cost low effort low return for actual benefits (just putting money in the pockets of the middle men).

I don't see how something like this is beneficial unless its essentially sending hot leads to technologies.

As for hope, it's a mixed message. On one hand we have more emissions than ever. On the other we have more awareness and action than ever. Personally I lean towards hope and want to give it as much of a chance as possible.

We see net-zero as a bridge to a more sustainable future. Reduce emissions and remove the unavoidable.

A forest stores lots of carbon while it exists - there's cycles of trees dying and releasing carbon, and new trees taking their place absorbing carbon, but there is a steady state change in terms of carbon in the trees that currently exist. The carbon is only released by deforesting the area again

And yeah, forestry credits are really fraught with problems, but they’re much, much cheaper than real sequestration, which is why stuff like this always offers them. There is some time-value of sequestration in the short term, though.

The forest, at each time point, contains many trees, growing ones, dying ones, decomposing ones, seeds, etc. But its overall solid carbon mass is strictly positive and larger than, say, a meadow, and if you have the right conditions it can be slowly growing year after year.

So planting trees is a way to store carbon, just not to be thought at the tree scale, more like at the forest scale.

Edit: a lot of carbon is stored in the soil, too, especially in the thick humus of a healthy forest. Even if each individual component of the humus is decaying, disappearing and replaced by new fallen leaves etc, the humus layer itself is not going anywhere.

Even if fossil fuels are used the end result is captured carbon dioxide (net negative).

Tracking is mostly for fast error identification at this early stage and because we're looking to (dis-)prove this as an opportunity.

Thanks for your thoughts.

Side note: A good read to put the 'value' of carbon dioxide into perspective is 'How Bad are Bananas' by Mike Berners Lee. He tries to give the same 'gut feeling' to carbon as we have with money (e.g. Champagne is more expensive than soda).

If only. :( Open air pits in third world countries where the equipment is burned to recover the trace valuable elements from the ash is, sadly, a lot more likely.

This is an interesting way of thinking! On one hand, all of my homelab servers now run on old AMD Athlon 200GE CPUs that would otherwise be considered e-waste in the eyes of some, but now run at 35W TDP and are enough for all of my CI/backup/development needs, in addition to being a cheap x86 option.

To me, it feels like drawing 100W from the wall might be a reasonably energy efficient option, since I don't care as much about uptime (servers can sleep every night when I do), redundancy or failover (apart from additional HDDs for data and backups), cooling (they're all passively cooled with heatsinks, slightly warm up the house in the winter) or other things you'd expect in a data center.

That said, this line of reasoning also implies that many languages would go out the window, if we talk about the back end: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320436353_Energy_ef... (or an article: https://medium.com/codex/what-are-the-greenest-programming-l...)

Python would go out the window. Ruby would go out the window. Same for something like Lua and PHP, maybe even TypeScript in the back end.

You'd essentially have to use C, C++ or Rust. Maybe something like Java, C#, Go or JavaScript for your back end (or some of the other more energy efficient languages, just listed some of the more popular options here).

I think that makes sense at larger scales (hundreds or thousands of instances, or more) instead of your small CRUD app, where you just want to iterate quickly and write code that's simple. Then again, Wirth's law should also not be forgotten about and it's hard for me to reason about the CO2 impact of big tech vs the collective impact of small projects.

And then there's something like comparing how much energy crypto used vs data centers.

Bitcoin: approx. 127 TWh/year (source: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/cryptocurrency/bitc...)

EU data centers: approx. 77 TWh/year (source: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/library/energy-effi...)

If nothing else, it's curious to see the numbers.

It's mentioned as we see it as a meaningful removal method (and will hopefully have a partner soon!).

At this stage our vision is primarily buyer focused to spread CDR integrations. We work directly with verified suppliers with the aim to help the buyer bring carbon removal to their business and their customers.

In future this could evolve into a marketplace however we'd need to ensure the quality (permanence, additionality etc.) of the suppliers.

Plus for customers where it's not relevant we'll offer a fully on-demand model where nothing is sent but available for generation through the customer account.

We know that carbon removal (and climate change in general) is a controversial topic so we really appreciate your kind words.

We're trying to make CDR as accessible as possible with the hope of the side effect of raising awareness, increasing demand and causing more people to vote for leaders who value sustainable policy.

To a certain group of people, "carbon offsets" are more or less the old church "indulgences" - permission to {sin, emit} with the consequences covered. And if that money is doing nothing but enriching some people in the middle while not actually doing anything useful ("We'll not cut down this forest... that we we weren't planning to cut down anyway", or "Sure, we'll protect this land... and go clearcut the next mile over because we don't care where the ranch goes"), it's worse than nothing - because you've now "granted permission to emit" while not actually offsetting anything.

That's not how it should be, but it's certainly how a lot of people perceive it to be. "Oh, it's fine, it's carbon neutral, I have an offset subscription" vs having to actually face that their carbon emissions aren't being offset.

So I don't think it's fair to say that people asking questions about "Is the money being paid doing what it's supposed to actually do?" are pro-carbon or something. There's a lot of outright fraud in that space, and an API that smooths the friction of larger fraud isn't something useful. If you're going the wrong way to your stated destination, going that wrong way faster isn't helpful.

Now, can I have all your surplus money to put into solar farms somewhere? Don't ask if they're in coal heavy territory or somewhere with a bunch of nuclear /hydro, it doesn't matter, right? We have to do everything we possibly can!

... except the one thing that would make a difference, which is consume radically less.

It seems to be more and more appearing that the problem is that we consume too much energy. And so the solution is to do less, not more.

We look forward to crossing paths again on the journey to a sustainable future :)

If you'd like to try us out, need help or just want to chat sustainability my direct email is in the OP and I'd be happy to hear from you :)

There is a fundamental conflict of interest with this as most corporations are trying to buy as many offsets for as little of an investment as possible to present themselves as net zero, so whoever is good at marketing and manages to provide a better (and likely impossible) ratio of offset/pay will get most business. As such it's a feedback loop that rewards competent scammers and cuts out fair parties for being uncompetitive.

Without proof that you can see for yourself as to where the funding is used and what the actual physical results are I wouldn't trust anything. Perhaps that's something that OP can provide.

    * We use an average CO₂ sequestration rate of 10.875kg of CO₂/tree/year.
    * We only take the first 5 years of the trees' carbon sequestration into account. What gets sequestered after this is a gift to our planet and we don’t sell that.
    * To mitigate chances of loss due to disease or fires we double plant (meaning we buy double the number of trees that we need to).

For one tonne of carbon that is (1000kg / 54.375kg) * 2 trees = 37 trees (rounded). At $0.15 per tree that's $5.5.

[1] https://docs.cdrplatform.com/docs/removal-method#forestation

We know Wren and in fact have a similar project for carbon removal called "Carbon Removed"[1]. We love the idea of a subscription to remove your footprint or even just a one-time removal to compensate for a long-distance flight.

On the conversation of personal versus corporations - we agree that a system/societal change is required but believe this will only with all of us beginning to change our ways and have these conversations with our networks. Society is made up of individuals after all :)

Thanks to you for contributing to a sustainable future.

[1] https://carbonremoved.com