Carbon Removal’s Real Bottleneck Isn’t Technology. It’s Demand. Artwork

Climate Confident - Practical Climate Solutions That Cut Emissions

Climate Confident is for business leaders, climate professionals and policymakers who need to understand what is actually cutting emissions—and what it takes to make those solutions work at scale.

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Climate Confident - Practical Climate Solutions That Cut Emissions

Carbon Removal’s Real Bottleneck Isn’t Technology. It’s Demand.

September 23, 2026 • Tom Raftery • Season 1 • Episode 295

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Carbon removal is often framed as a technology problem. But what if the harder constraint is demand, and what if waiting decades to remove a tonne of CO₂ carries a climate cost of its own?

My guest is Barclay Rogers, founder and CEO of Graphyte, a durable carbon removal company using agricultural and timber residues in a process it calls Carbon Casting. He brings a practical operator’s view of what it takes to move carbon removal from credible tonnes to meaningful scale.

We examine the “time value of carbon”, challenge the assumption that removals should wait until every possible emissions cut has been exhausted, and look at what really constrains scale once the underlying process works. We also get into measurement and verification, project finance, community acceptance, wildfire mitigation, and the uncomfortable question of where biomass carbon removal stops making sense.

Listen now to understand what could turn durable carbon removal from an emerging market into infrastructure — and what still stands in the way.

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