There was little fanfare when Congress passed a carbon removal tax credit in 2018 — so little that many people still don’t know the credit exists. Some U.S. state governments also have created incentives for carbon removal. And with climate change set to play a more prominent role in the 2020 elections, other legislative initiatives will likely follow. Hear from experts who will explain how the existing credit and future changes will impact your company.

We must deploy technologies that suck carbon from the air if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. Doing so would create a huge new industry: one recent study estimated that products worth an estimated $5 trillion could be manufactured from CO2. This discussion will survey the ecosystem of opportunities in chemicals, materials and infrastructure that will emerge from the growth of this new sector.

According to Project Drawdown, regenerative agriculture has the potential to remove more than 20 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere by 2050 — equivalent to suspending all U.S. greenhouse gas emissions for 3 years. But how do we know the carbon will stay in soils? And what's the best way to keep it there? Dive into the science behind the soil with filmmaker, faculty member and regenerative ag expert Peter Byck.

About Roundtable Lunches: Join interactive lunch discussions, moderated by an expert or thought leader, held at roundtables of up to 10 participants. These are freeform discussions, so bring your own challenges, questions, and ideas to talk through and get to know your fellow conference participants. All roundtable lunches do not have advanced sign-up – participation is first-come, first-served. 

Investing in projects that pull carbon from the atmosphere is a relatively quick way to offset your company’s emissions and accelerate the spread of carbon removal technologies. Yet the offset market can be confusing. What’s the difference between avoidance and removal? How can you be sure that offset projects really remove carbon? This workshop will provide practical advice from offset experts on how to get involved in carbon removal and be confident that your investment delivers tangible benefits.

Thanks to corporate investments, a slew of new forestry projects will help remove significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere in the coming decade. For many innovative companies, making a direct investment in a forestry project can be one of the most effective ways of offsetting emissions. To help navigate these projects’ social, economic and scientific complexities, companies are partnering with top environmental organizations. In this session, key players behind from both sides of the partnerships will discuss how they are working together to protect and restore forests, including planting millions of trees.

Many companies have committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. But could your company one day remove more carbon from the atmosphere than it emits? It seems a daunting challenge, but some companies have already committed to making it happen. Hear from the pioneering executives who are figuring out how to create climate positive companies.

Gasoline, jet fuel, valuable chemical feedstocks—all can be manufactured using a variety of recycled or captured greenhouse gases. In one pioneering test, jet fuel made from waste carbon was even used to fly a Boeing 747 across the Atlantic. As availability increases and prices fall, these next-gen fuels and chemicals have the potential over time to disrupt the market for fossil fuels, impacting businesses in transportation and other sectors. Speakers in this session include entrepreneurs behind the new fuels and chemicals, as well as their first customers.