Green Giants – Episode 43

Aditya Bhandari (01:42)

yeah, that’s a windy road that I took to get to this point, but an interesting one. So my background is in biomedical and chemical engineering, actually. Completed my studies at University of California, Irvine, and then was recruited as an entrepreneur in residence at this incubator called YouWeb in Silicon Valley. It’s a pretty well-known incubator over here in Palo Alto, mostly famous for incubating Discord.

And after they had sort of exited from, you know, their last batch, which was focused on gaming and software, they were looking for young entrepreneurs who had just finished their undergrad studies to, you know, sort of lead the change or let’s just say lead the movement for making and producing technologies which solve climate change. And specifically the incubator was looking at carbon dioxide removal as a key area of interest and I was sort of recruited through my university. It’s been a fun journey. I’m sure we’ll sort of talk about the history of DACLab, how we started, what the incubator was focusing on, really interesting stuff, really big stuff now. But yeah, so that’s a bit of background.

Wes Ashworth (02:51)

Yeah, and feel free to jump right in there just in terms of some of the history, how it all began, how it got to where it is today. I’d love to hear a bit more of that as well.

Aditya Bhandari (03:02)

Yeah, so it’s actually a really interesting story because YouWeb Incubator’s founder, Peter Revin, had this vision in 2016, I think so, that climate change is definitely not going to be just solved by policies and governments because policies take a lot of time to get implemented. Behavior change takes a lot of time. So the only option we have as humans is removing carbon dioxide at large scales directly from the atmosphere.

And he started sort of looking at research universities around the globe who he could fund through his incubator and private family office. And he stumbled across this specialized university in Vienna. So again, this is already like a global story, right? A guy sitting in Palo Alto looking for universities to fund and he happens to find somebody in Vienna who was working with Shell, the big oil and gas company on a point source carbon capture project. And this research group was in, let’s just say in need for a new project. And here comes Mr. Peter and he’s like, “Hey guys, I think carbon dioxide removal is going to be required. What do you guys think?” And they said, “We think so too, but we would need money to sort of conduct research for three, four years and come to a point where we have commercializable IP.” And he said, “Let’s go, let’s go if we can build it.”

And I was sort of, recruited to be, let’s just say, the bridge between the incubator and the private family office and the research group in Vienna. So that’s how the journey began. And over the past four years, the research group in Vienna, Technical University of Vienna has built a bunch of different prototypes, actually built everything that the industry leaders are now commercializing, learning from the mistakes. So actually building up machines, not just like doing lab scale experiments. These are like actual life-size prototypes working in Vienna. We learned from the mistakes. We learned from the drawbacks of current technologies.

And then we finally came to this novel process that we like to call decoupled process version three. It’s on our website as well. And we believe that it is a breakthrough IP. It undercuts the energy efficiency of the industry by almost 50 percent. And it is mass manufacturable. So last year we decided that we have the IP. Why not build a company around it? And that’s where DACLab sort of began. The headquarters is in Palo Alto, but the R&D hub is still in Vienna.

Wes Ashworth (05:20)

Yeah, it’s so fascinating and such a cool story and excited to see where that journey takes you and what’s to come. To break this down a little bit for everyone, so direct air capture is probably still a newer concept for many people, even within the clean energy industry. A lot of people know about solar, a lot of people know about wind, hydro, storage, some of those other pieces. I think everybody’s heard a little bit of air capture and specifically direct air capture, but

to better understand that. can you explain a bit in layman’s terms just how DAC technology actually works and why it’s important?

Aditya Bhandari (05:58)

So I like to use the, or draw parallels with, air conditioning systems because everybody has an air conditioning system at their house or like office, right? A direct air capture is a highly engineered air conditioning system. You have these fans which suck in air into the system and then the ambient air is passed through these specialized filters which then sort of bind to the carbon dioxide molecule on which they were exposed to, and in vacuum conditions, when you apply either high heat, electricity, or any kind of sort of energy that can break the bond between the carbon dioxide molecule and the filter, the CO2 molecule then can simply be just sucked off using vacuum pumps.

So that’s sort of what direct air capture is. And I think this is the most simple explanation for direct air capture. I’m sure that a lot of direct air capture technologists won’t like this because it’s a hard problem to solve. But for laymen, I think this is just the easiest parallel to draw to.

Wes Ashworth (06:58)

Yeah, you know, simple layman’s terms like, yeah, there’s a lot more to it than that, but that that does paint a picture and help help us understand like what it is, how it works. What is maybe sort of the biggest misconception you’ve encountered when you have to explain DAC to investors or or to other companies out there or individuals out there?

Aditya Bhandari (07:17)

Biggest misconception. Let’s just take a step back and address the elephant in the room. I think most people who look at direct air capture think that it is extremely energy intensive. It’s not scalable and it’s something that the oil and gas industry is just using as a greenwashing tactic. Those are sort of the three big points that people put up when people start talking about direct air capture. So I’ll kind of like address each of these points, right?

First is when we talk about energy efficiency, there’s no hiding it. Direct air capture is extremely energy intensive as a process, right? I mean, think about it, you’re removing an invisible carbon dioxide molecule from a diluted air stream of air, right? So it’s obviously going to be energy intensive, but we believe at DACLab, to address the first point, we have the most energy efficient solution that exists today on the globe, and it is scalable if it is located with waste heat, geothermal energy, or at locations where there’s a surplus of green electrons. So direct air capture can make economical sense. Direct air capture can be scalable if you choose the location of direct air capture plants mindfully.

And finally, to address sort of the big point, which I think we will touch up multiple times during this podcast is oil and gas using it as a greenwashing tactic. I don’t think so. I think there are a lot of oil and gas companies, project developers specifically, who use direct air capture as a tool to sort of buy them time while they are sort of transitioning to greener grids, sort of, know, like displacing fossil fuels from their pipeline, and also to use their current infrastructure to increase their revenue so that they can showcase to their investors while they’re moving away from fossil fuels. There’s still a case to be built for oil and gas companies to keep progressing the way they were.

Wes Ashworth (09:14)

Yeah, absolutely. Thanks for speaking to some of those. I know those questions often come up when you’re talking about it. And I think a common theme of this podcast, you listened to the episodes back, it’s like there’s no one solution to this where you’re like, here’s the technology. This is going to solve all our problems. It is an and. And there are a lot of different pieces that need to come into play with all the technologies that are out there. But also,

I think carbon capture being a big piece of this. I think most people that really understand the industry know that it’s gonna be around for a while. And talking about fossil fuels are not going away overnight. This is gonna be a long transition. I think some people want it to probably be a lot quicker, but we need solutions. And I think this has a long-term impact as well, which we can get into, but it’s certainly cool to learn more about it. So the other maybe, you know, maybe others worry that it’s a distraction from scaling renewable energy, right? Like, how do you respond to that concern?

Aditya Bhandari (10:10)

It is a valid concern, right? Something that I have seen, not just in direct or capture industry, but a lot of sort of industries which are surrounding renewable energy. Everybody faces the same concerns, right? Are you taking away investments or are you taking away attention from the most crucial sort of solution that we have towards sort of climate change, which is transitioning to greener grids and transitioning to them ASAP, right?

I think at least at DACLab our stance is that we all agree as a team that transitioning to greener grids is of utmost priority. Right? But that does not mean that you stop R&D and you stop scaling of these alternative or like portfolio solutions in parallel, because it’s not like one day as a civilization, once we have successfully transitioned to renewable energy, we can just do this and we’ll have a ready direct capture solution or we’ll have a ready BECCS solution or a new like, know, like all those alternative sort of solutions just ready.

They take time, they’re like 10 years, 15 years. It takes R&D pilots, commercial scale pilots, 10,000 ton plants, 100,000 ton plants, setting up a supply chain. So it’s a very complex problem, which if you were to not start today, we won’t be ready for it when the civilization requires it.

Wes Ashworth (11:32)

Yeah, yeah, such a good point there. And something you shared with me previously is you said carbon capture should be treated as a waste management problem, which I love that. I’d never thought about it that way. When you said it, I was like, oh, I like that a lot. So can you explain what you mean by that and talk through that a little bit?

Aditya Bhandari (11:46)

Actually, it came out of a conversation that I was having with somebody from a red state who was a climate denier. I mean, look, personally, I believe that both sets of politics have good points when it comes to these solutions. And it’s important to hear both sides. It’s not just important to hear one side. Having conversations with these people who are climate deniers or people who have their reservations about these technologies is really important. And in one of those conversations, I was like, maybe let me try framing this as a waste management problem, right? Like, and I told him, would you as a household, right, if you were generating waste, would you not want the city to move that waste from your trash buckets? Or would you not expect the government to charge you for the waste that you’ve created?

And then he was like, you know what, it kind of makes sense when you frame it that way. Rather than for him, it was important or he agreed that technologies like carbon capture should exist because he was no longer seeing this as a political tool. He was seeing it as, if a factory or if an oil and gas company or if an emitter is creating waste, he should be responsible for managing that waste, so that sort of is an argument that I’ve been using more and more these days because it just fits well with both sides of agendas.

Wes Ashworth (13:09)

Yeah, I love it. I love that so much. And I think it’s so important for this really to work, for this to be successful. It can’t be a political thing. can’t be, you know, this or that. It’s got to have some comparisons where everybody understands, you know, waste management is one of those where I’m like, there’s nobody that goes, waste management just shouldn’t exist. We shouldn’t do anything with waste. Like I think everybody can agree with that. So I do really love that analogy.

Aditya Bhandari (13:31)

Yep, and actually, yeah, just to add to that, Wes, right, I think it’s not just treating it as a waste management problem. I like how you framed it. Instead of it being like completely political, I mean, it always have like a political sort of piece of the whole pie, right? Will always exist, but if you can treat it as a waste management problem, at the end of the day, make it economically feasible for companies to then start looking at carbon capture as a revenue making option, right? It just brings the whole industry to a whole different level and then we can start thinking about scaling these technologies.

Wes Ashworth (14:10)

Yeah, absolutely. Well said. I wanted to touch back on something you mentioned around location. Location matters for DAC. I know some claims out there, the machines can go up anywhere. I know you’ve argued and proven that they need to be placed near sort of waste heat sources or geothermal energy to make economic sense. Can you elaborate on that a bit and explain why that’s critical?

Aditya Bhandari (14:33)

Yeah, so again, I like saying this, location, location, location, right? When it comes to direct air capture, it is an energy intensive problem, right? Now, and in order to sort of find at least at DacLab and for our technology specifically, in order to find that perfect spot, right, in this whole market, where it makes the most economical sense and it makes the most sense for project developers to scale our technology, what we realized was geothermal energy and waste heat energy is just a killer application because 80% of our energy needs are heat based.

So if we can tap into waste heat or geothermal steam, it just reduces the net carbon emission of our technology. For example, if we were to place our machines or power our machines with electrons which were coming out from a natural gas plant, the net carbon that we would have taken out from our machines would just not make sense.

In fact, if we were to place it with dirty grids, we like to call it, like natural gas or like coal-powered plants, there are cases where direct air capture would actually use more carbon dioxide than it would capture. So in order to sort of steer away from it, we were like, okay, let’s find a good sort of place for us in the market and for our project developers to scale the technology with. And just so happens to be like, geothermal and waste heat are killer applications.

Wes Ashworth (15:53)

Yeah, super cool. just expanding on something you’ve just mentioned a minute ago. So the oil and gas sector, and you’ve mentioned it could actually benefit from direct air capture technology while transitioning away from fossil fuels. Can you expand on that a little bit more? How do you see that playing out long term and what’s your vision when you think about that?

Aditya Bhandari (16:13)

Yeah, so the vision is to get the biggest emitters on the planet interested in this technology. It is getting the biggest project developers of such sort of industrial equipment interested in this technology. And one way of doing it is pitching direct air capture as a solution, which allows them to continue their operations or use their existing infrastructure, especially like depleted oil fields, where they can put the CO2 from direct air capture machines which is, by the way, just sitting empty right now.

So it’s kind of like these depleted oil wells can be used as a sequestration, let’s just say, sequestration bucket. And they can buy these direct air capture machines, develop projects around it, and while they’re reducing their fossil fuel production, and we’re not talking about in the next four years, five years, 10 years, we’re talking about long-term as they’re transitioning away from fossil fuels, they can start using direct air capture as a way of still making revenues, right? Because we live in a capitalistic society and stock prices are everything. If they don’t show cash flows, if they don’t show revenues, then there’s no incentive for them to move away from fossil fuels. So I would like people to think of direct air capture, especially when it comes to oil and gas as a bridge between the greener future and their existing operations.

Wes Ashworth (17:30)

Yeah. Again, another good analogy. I think the bridge in that makes perfect sense. And I think exactly, that’s what it is, transitioning a little bit to understand a bit more about DACLab. So your company focuses on three key pillars, breakthrough technology, a world-class team, and an ideal business model. I love the simplicity and brilliance of that. Let’s break those down.

Aditya Bhandari (17:50)

Yeah, so let’s talk about our mode, as we like to call it, which is our breakthrough technology. Again, this was when we started our research at Technical University of Vienna in December of 2020. We had a decision to make, which was majority of the industry players were focusing on material innovation because what they believed was, in order to reduce energy efficiency, they had to come up with the most efficient material out there that then they can develop a process around.

But a bunch of us in the group of process engineers and believe that instead of pretending to be a chemical manufacturer and finding sort of a needle in a haystack, right, which is like this perfect material, which will just like change the industry overnight, we were like, why not just take what’s already mass manufactured out there by companies like DSF, Daoist Chemical, and we were like, okay, let’s take these materials and then develop the most efficient process around it. So that’s sort of the approach that we took.

Our novel solution is actually using mass manufactured chemicals, mass manufactured parts. How can we make the most energy efficient process? And what we did was not to give too much things away. We keep hot things hot and cool things cool. So the waste, let’s just say the waste heat inside our system is virtually zero, right? And we sort of developed a really good sort of engineering design around it as well, which would enable sort of these units to be mass manufactured anywhere in the world. So that’s sort of our breakthrough technology. The energy numbers are amazing. They’re sort of well below 2000 kilowatt hours per ton. When you compare it to sort of the industry, sort of at least the proven industry numbers, there are a lot of people who can say that they can do even below 1000 kilowatt hours per ton, but it’s just not proven.

Majority of the industry today operates between 2,500 to 3,500 kilowatt hours per ton. So that’s sort of the big difference when you compare our technology with theirs. So yeah, that’s the breakthrough technology piece.

Wes Ashworth (19:51)

Yeah, so covering that, so the next part of the world class team, and that’s something I’m personally passionate about and building teams and getting the right pieces in place. So I guess who are some of the key minds behind your team, how they shape your approach and what are some of the key points of success and how you attract to those people or how you pertain to those

Aditya Bhandari (20:12)

So the most famous person on our team is a gentleman called Professor Klaus Lackner of Arizona State University. He’s actually known as, or at least we like to call him the godfather of direct air capture because he’s the first guy to write a paper in 1999 on direct air capture. So he actually is on our board as an advisor. He helps us sort of with our technology and sort of like the vision planning as well.

And we have obviously Mr. Peter Rellen, who is bringing his financial expertise, sort of company building expertise to the team, as well as sort of his business development strategies that he has used for his previous successful companies. We have a lot of these engineers from Technical University of Vienna are still working with us. My co-founder, Mr. Samip, who couldn’t join us today, but he is a manufacturing wizard, as we like to call him and the true engine of Direct Air Capture.

He worked for Cisco for a really long time before he did his own startups and now has eventually moved to climate change. Florian, head of R&D, again a PhD from Technical University of Vienna and two more people who I would like to give a shout out to, and Gerhard Schony who had worked with Shell before on that Point Source Capture project and are now also part of our team. So it’s names that are very familiar in the industry. A lot of people who have contributed to the research side, but are known for building stuff.

So that’s a key differentiator when you compare our team with the rest of the teams out there. We are not just researchers with lab coats. We’re like actual chemical engineers, mechanical engineers who can build stuff. So that’s obviously being led by Professor Klaus Lackner. So, yeah.

Wes Ashworth (21:42)

Love the focus on team. In terms of just business models, you’ve taken a different path by focusing on R&D and manufacturing rather than project development. And anything else you want to share, none related to that as well, feel free to. But why did you make that choice and what advantage does it give you?

Aditya Bhandari (22:10)

Yeah, so I think when we started DACLab last year, again, the second crucial decision we had to make as a group was, so what’s the commercialization strategy over here, right? And what we realized was we, as a group, were really good at R&D, manufacturing, and sorting out the supply chain. But there was no inbuilt, let’s just say, talent that had an experience of developing these large scale projects, right?

And when we started talking to a lot of project developers out there, which also includes like, direct air capture companies, which were already in the market, right? What we realized was everybody over here lacks what we like to call the chip, right? Everybody is making the mobile phones. Everybody’s trying to make the computers, the desktop. But what if we were to be the Intel of this space who just nails down the perfect chip, right? And then enables all of these project developers who’ve already made amazing big commitments have raised enormous amounts of money, but are now going to be looking for a chip maker who is making the technology at a price point that we just simply can’t compete with.

And we have the project development skills, so why not just, you know, like start buying chips from them? And that’s sort of the vision that we were like all drawn towards and that’s sort of our business model, which is we focus on R&D manufacturing and supply chain, sorting out the supply chain, but we like to partner with project developers who can then actually sell the carbon credits, get the grid connections, utilize the carbon dioxide or sequester the carbon dioxide. So we just like to focus on what we’re good at and let other people do what they’re good at, essentially.

Wes Ashworth (23:41)

Love it. And I think it’s so critical, especially in early stage companies and sort of knowing your identity, knowing what you’re good at, sticking to that. You know, and so it’s a cool story. Thinking a little bit more about some of the areas that the product is or technology is. So you’re working with industries like sustainable aviation fuel, oil and gas. We’ve talked about concrete production. Why these industries? Why do those make the most sense?

Aditya Bhandari (24:08)

So direct air capture is obviously removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, right? But then the biggest, the important question is what to do with the carbon dioxide, and then there are two pathways, right? First is utilization, which is you can use that carbon dioxide as a feedstock for multiple industries. You have chemicals, pharmaceuticals, but what we like to focus on when it comes to utilization is sustainable aviation fuel and concrete because we believe it has the most, let’s just say it has the most scalable potential for buying this expensive CO2 from Direct Air Capture because the price point of these products is really high.

So the price of Direct Air Capture CO2 can be then justified, especially when it comes to sustainable aviation fuel. And for concrete, obviously the price of concrete isn’t insane, but concrete is also looked at as a sequestration strategy. Because when you utilize the CO2, it actually binds to the concrete and sort of removes permanently, sort of mineralizes with the concrete mix and removes itself for hundreds of years. So it’s like a, it’s also, it’s a way of utilizing that CO2, but it’s also a way of removing it from the planet.

And the second most, let’s just say, scalable way of using direct to capture CO2 is actually sequestering it underground, right? And the people who are doing it at scale today are oil and gas players because they sort of, do it for their own point source capture facility. So they remove carbon dioxide from their existing operations, fuel gas operations, and then they put it underground. So that’s where we believe sort of sequestration pathway for direct capture CO2 lies.

Wes Ashworth (25:43)

Yeah, are there, I guess thinking about the future, other industries where you see direct air capture playing a role that haven’t been fully explored yet or other things that on your mind?

Aditya Bhandari (25:52)

There are a lot of things that keep popping up actually. I mean, recently I was at a conference and I met somebody who was using CO2, not DAC CO2, but just CO2 in general to create proteins or synthesize proteins, which was just fascinating to me, right? Because it’s like, there’s just endless applications that people are coming up with. It’s like people are building nanofibers, people are building protein now. Like there’s no way of telling where this industry is going to, or like, let’s just say, there are no limitations of this industry, at least at this point. So we still have to, as a company, focus on a few things because focus is what makes startups survive.

So we picked sustainable aviation, fuel, concrete, and sequestration through large scale project developers as like, sort of the three markets that we are focusing on. But let me tell you, Wes, there’s just, if you were to walk into one of these like Department of Energy conferences or like carbon utilization conference, you would be like just amazed with what people are doing with CO2.

Wes Ashworth (26:56)

Yeah, it’s cool to see that potential there, know, something that and I love even that comparison of thinking about something viewed as waste or something viewed as bad, you know, that that can be used for really good purposes. That’s that’s like the dream, so that’s cool. We talked a little bit about scaling, you know, scaling direct air capture is a massive challenge. How does DACLab plan to go from pilot scale to continue that and go to that full commercialization?

Aditya Bhandari (27:21)

Yeah, so we’re taking it step by step. The first step is this year we are sort of working on pilot scale projects, which we have a live pilot in Vienna, actually. It runs completely automated, almost 24-7 with a few downtime days for R&D purposes. But we are looking at at least two projects this year where we’re going to be deploying our pilots, the same pilot that sits in Vienna so that we can test it out in different ambient conditions. One of these pilot units is going to Australia, one of these pilot units is going to Washington state, and we’re also going to be proving like two of our major markets.

So one is sequestration and one is sustainable aviation fuel using direct air capture CO2. So that’s like step one. Step two for us is going to be scaling our technology to commercial scale levels, which would be our first 1000 ton commercial scale module. And what we want to do is pair it up with geothermal energy, specifically, or waste heat, because that’s where we think the long-term vision for our technology, or vision for us as a company is, which is direct air capture. And I think I’ve repeated it quite a few times, with direct air capture with waste heat or direct air capture with geothermal, so we want to do step two, commercial scale level, using those inputs. And then step three, obviously, would be fingers crossed regulations kick in.

Carbon dioxide is, or carbon credit markets start, becoming regulated instead of them just being voluntary. And then we can start looking at scaling these technologies up to mass manufacturing levels for working with large scale project developers.

Wes Ashworth (28:54)

Yeah, absolutely. And you may have hit it on there, but I’ll ask. So you said, direct air captures sort of a 10 year journey rather than an instant solution. Where do you see it in 10 years from now is 2035. Like, where do you see direct air technology?

Aditya Bhandari (29:06)

I know that direct air capture is not going anywhere. Direct air capture as a technology is something that will be required by the planet no matter what we do. It’s really hard to project out a few things given the uncertainty right now. The administration chain sort of, you know, like not having clarity as an industry whether or not it is something that the current administration is going to focus on or not.

But 10 years, I think the industry should have demonstrated direct air capture at least in the 10 million metric tons scale. So today, I think if you collectively look at all the direct capture plans, the capture capacity is of about, like I would say 50,000 tons max. So in 10 years, I am bullish that this industry will be somewhere between 5 to 10 million metric tons of capture capacity. Hopefully, majority of it is using the direct air capture CO2 with geothermal energy, waste heat, and then sequestering it. And hopefully, we’re also a part of that big movement.

Wes Ashworth (29:54)

Yeah, I love it. Big plans, big vision. You have to have it. So you touched on a bit of leadership shift, the Department of Energy recently underwent a leadership shift, as we all know. How do think US policy will impact the carbon capture industry moving forward?

Aditya Bhandari (30:13)

I don’t even know if there is one single human on this planet who can predict what this administration is going to sort of, you know, do in the next few weeks because they are taking this pretty seriously. They’re making a lot of changes on a daily basis. So it’s really hard to track this or predict what is a priority for them. But I think given that the new secretary at Department of Energy has said that climate change is a problem. Obviously, he doesn’t agree with the time scale of climate change, but he is saying that climate change is a problem.

Maybe, again, I’m cautiously optimistic, maybe carbon capture is something that they do see as a solution to climate change and hopefully, if not a solution to climate change, at least waste management and if people start buying into that waste management sort of vision, I think it’s an easier sell then. But hopefully the Department of Energy in the next couple of months can give more clarity where carbon capture and specifically direct capture sort of fits in their priority list.

Wes Ashworth (31:28)

Yeah, absolutely. I wanted to touch on something fun. in a previous conversation, I know this is way out in the future, right? But beyond carbon, could this technology be used to remove other molecules from the atmosphere? And you’ve mentioned you’re talking about future planetary exploration that would possibly be important to have. So tell us a little bit about that.

Aditya Bhandari (31:41)

Yep, this is probably, now this is the nerd talking to me. I’m not talking on behalf of DAC Lab, again, because I don’t know if a lot of people would love this, know, like future prophecy. But I do think because growing up, I used to watch a lot of Star Wars and, you know, it was always something that I looked at, which was people would go to these microwaves and like just press a button and Star Trek and Star Wars and they would like press a button on a microwave and something would just come out from the atmosphere, right? Like thin air.

And one of the major reasons why I was drawn to this industry was because I was like, wow, we can just start pulling stuff directly from the atmosphere, right? Like I hope that obviously today we remove nitrogen and oxygen as molecules and at scale for feedstock purposes over the globe. Now we’ve started removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

I would like to believe that before I die, I get to see all sorts of molecules being removed from the atmosphere, maybe even for space exploration purposes, like machines that you’re shipping or building on different planets in order to remove molecules from there and then generating resources that you wouldn’t have access to over there, right, would be a dream for, I think, this industry. And then you can truly look at direct air capture as direct air capture because you’re just capturing stuff directly from the atmosphere.

Wes Ashworth (33:13)

Yeah, hey, it starts somewhere, right? I love it. It’s super cool. I’ll take a little bit more time just around any other misconceptions that come to mind around direct air capture, anything that you hear, anything that you wish more people understood and take your time. can speak to any of those that you would like.

Aditya Bhandari (33:29)

Yeah, so I think the biggest misconception people have when it comes to direct air capture is, is that it’s not scalable, right? That you can’t do it. At DACLab, what we are offering to people is a solution, pathway, right? With an extremely energy efficient solution that when paired with great locations, which are full of waste heat or geothermal, we can already make a case for direct air capture to be economically viable, right? And scalable.

I think that’s something that sort of, it’s me a lot, industry, there are a lot of players in the industry who have so, so as to speak, poisoned the well, right? They have made a lot of claims. They have raised a lot of money and they haven’t like done nearly even 10% of what they have promised, right? And the technology. They’ve always been super protective of their technologies. They’ve not shared their numbers honestly with the rest of the industry, which sort of hurts the industry in general, right? But we at DACLab are taking sort of the slower approach. Like I said, it’s a 10 year journey for us. We don’t believe that direct air capture is going to offer us benefits or rewards as an industry just now, like just tomorrow.

It’s gonna take time. It’s gonna, but it’s gonna take time. We’ll have to keep working on the R&D, on commercializing the units, deploying these pilots, but we believe that DACLab has a straightforward solution. And again, it would be really interesting to start talking to project developers and sharing with them how we believe our technology can already make DAC economically viable.

Wes Ashworth (34:59)

Yeah, love it. One other thing too, just thinking about listeners, taking this in, hearing what you’re sharing, wanted to dig more into it. If you had one key takeaway, or key message that you wish everybody’s gonna walk away from and know a bit more about this, what would that be?

Aditya Bhandari (35:18)

DAC is not the end-all be-all solution when it comes to climate change, but DAC is definitely a really, really important piece of the puzzle. And it needs to be, I think, used as a bridge. Again, like I mentioned at the start of this podcast, it needs to be used as a bridge, right? It’s something that you can’t stop today and just expect it to be ready when you need it. You need to, in parallel, to the green energy transition, keep doing the R&D, keep commercializing it at small scales, medium scales, and get the large scale project developers, or give the large scale project developers an opportunity to make revenue while they’re transitioning to a greener future. I think that’s the key takeaway message.

I know it’s a long key takeaway message, but I hope people truly, don’t look at DAC as the enemy, but as a bridge between two sets of, or two sides of the coin, right, which both need to work together in order to lead to a better future. And I genuinely believe that can be that bridge.

Wes Ashworth (36:17)

Yeah, absolutely. I’ll switch to just some broader industry quick questions. Just thinking about all of renewable energy, all the things that connect to it. Every piece of that, you know, if you’re looking at coming years, just curious, like what are your thoughts, what are your feelings, sentiments in terms of where things are headed, you know, this year and beyond.

What are some things you’re excited about? What’s got your attention?

Aditya Bhandari (36:42)

So this is a question addressing the whole industry, right? Not just DAC but just like the green energy, clean tech industry, right? I think that there’s a lot of paranoia right now amongst technologists, startups because of the administration change, lot of global policies changing. But I think a lot of private companies are actually stepping up, like Microsoft, Google, Meta, who have their own carbon net zero sort of initiatives. Even oil and gas companies who have their own net zero commitments are all stepping up to sort of in the midst of this paranoia, right? Like stepping up and signing carbon credit deals or like announcing that they’re doing large scale renewable energy projects, even if the government does not have them in the mandate. I think it’s definitely a great area right now.

Nobody knows where the whole clean tech industry is headed towards. But these are exciting times, right? Because there’s a lot of chaos, but there’s also a lot of promise for opportunity and growth, right? And personally, I’m really enjoying, sort of this nuclear renaissance that’s happening over here in the United States. I’m a big believer of nuclear energy, and I think it’s getting the push that it deserves now.

Nuclear energy is probably the cleanest form of energy that we have today at our disposal and now the government is sort of pushing it. And globally, people are making a push for nuclear energy as well. So yeah, there’s this promise, there’s paranoia. It’s chaos, but it’s chaos that I think we have to get used to because we’re transitioning as a society to a cleaner future.

Wes Ashworth (38:11)

Yeah. And I think it’s normal, right? I mean, I think any time there are these big transition or breakthrough technology and things like that, it’s a bit chaotic. Like it’s kind of a normal part of the process, but I echo that what you shared and, and the leaders I’ve talked to, I mean, it’s a very similar sentiment. Like, yeah, there’s some concerns. Yeah, there’s some challenges, but, overall, like a lot of optimism, a lot of confidence, a lot of like, yeah, it’s not going anywhere, you know, like we’re still headed there. It’s not like you can stop it.

So it is, I think it is a very, very exciting time. Sure. And I think those challenges become a piece of that, right? Like solving the greatest challenges of the world. What’s more exciting than that? So, that’s, that’s what we get to be a part of, which is cool. Thinking about, so, you know, your, your legacy when you’re done with all this, you’re kind of at the end of your career, end of this journey.

Fast forwarding to you down the road. What do you hope your legacy in the space will be?

Aditya Bhandari (39:07)

So I’m laser focused on DACLab right now. I think I am a big believer of what we’re doing. I have a stellar team behind me, really great backers from a financial perspective as well. I know that DACLab is going to work out. I know direct air capture industry is going to work out. And we will hopefully have a really, really big part in this sort of journey in this industry as well pretty soon.

But moving forward, fast forward, think if we’ve solved this problem or if this problem is at a point where there are new challenges that I would like to solve, I think I’d still defer back to deep tech or like clean tech industry because it’s just something that I’m passionate about. I think waking up and sort of solving problems that are really hard to solve or complex to solve, you don’t really know if they’re gonna work out or not. It kind of like sort of moves me, right?

Yeah, I think I’ll naturally, if I was not to do direct air capture, come back to something in the deep tech industry, specifically for clean tech.

Wes Ashworth (40:02)

Love it. final question, thinking about other startups in the space, you know, and maybe ones that are really at the very beginning stage, you know, haven’t gotten to where you are yet. What are, I guess maybe some of those early lessons or encouragement that you would offer to, other entrepreneurs out there or, you know, those early stage startups.

Aditya Bhandari (40:23)

Don’t over promise. The industry is full of people who have over promised or, you know, like really not gotten the technology piece right first and then start claiming. So get the technology piece right first, prove it at scales where project developers get a high level of confidence or you as a company get a high level of confidence that you can, you know, like scale this technology and then start raising capital or then start taking on projects. Don’t jump into this too quickly before you get the tech piece right.

I think the whole industry, not just the new people entering this market, need to hear this, right? We as an industry need to get the tech right because we’re at a point where people have started putting direct capture under scrutiny. A lot of people have started going against the industry. And now is the time to get the tech right, show that there’s an economical case for this industry. And then, yeah, hopefully we as an industry survive. Not just DACLab, but we as an industry survive.

Wes Ashworth (41:24)

Yeah, absolutely. Sound advice and good words of wisdom there to wrap up with. Aditya, this has been incredible to hear about the innovative work you and your team are doing to make direct air capture a scalable reality. Your vision for a cleaner future, your approach to making direct air capture both cost effective and commercially viable is truly inspiring. If you want to learn more about DACLab and follow their journey, you can visit daclab.us. I’ll also link that in the show notes.

To our listeners as always, thank you for tuning in. And if you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe, share it with your network. Stay tuned for more great conversations with leaders in the renewable energy and clean tech sector. We’ll see you next time.