Startup Series: Remora
Today's guest is Paul Gross, Co-Founder & CEO of Remora.
Today, heavy-duty trucks move 70% of goods shipped in the United States and account for 7% of the US greenhouse gas pollution. Remora is developing a device that captures carbon emissions from semi-trucks. Its device will reduce emissions from these trucks by 80% without affecting payload, range, or trip time. Remora installs a container between the cab and the trailer of semis, which allows them to collect, store, and then monetize the emissions. It sells the carbon to concrete producers and other end-users, which dramatically reduces emissions, meets climate commitments, and adds a new revenue stream for carbon.
Remora Co-Founder, Christina Reynolds, developed the technology as a Ph.D. student. Paul came across it during his time at Yale and convinced Christina to leave the EPA to start Remora. Before co-founding Remora, Paul conducted award-winning experimental research that uncovered new solutions to collective action problems like polarization and the climate crisis. He also holds a BA in Data Science and Statistics from Yale University.
Paul is an exciting guest, and I enjoyed learning more about what the team is up to at Remora. Paul walks me through what led him to co-found Remora, why he's so passionate about carbon capture, and what the company hopes to achieve in the future. Paul explains the problem Remora is fixing, its technology, and what makes the company unique. We also dive into the trucking industry and the carbon emissions market more broadly. This is a great episode for those interested in innovative carbon solutions and transportation.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 or @mcjpod and email at info@myclimatejourney.co, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded April 14th, 2021.
In Today's episode, we cover:
An overview of Remora and how the company was founded
Barriers to electrifying long-haul trucking and Remora’s approach to CO2 capture
An overview of the trucking market in general
How Remora plans to transport, deliver, and sell CO2 captured offloaded from semi-trucks
Logistical challenges to scaling Remora’s technology
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Hello, everyone, this is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. This show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change, and try to figure out how people like you and I can help. Today's guest is Paul Gross, CEO and Co-Founder of Remora. They have a device that captures the carbon emissions from a semi-truck. They then sell the captured carbon dioxide to concrete producers and other end users, helping companies earn new revenue while meeting their climate commitments.
Their mobile carbon capture system reduces the emissions from these trucks by at least 80%, with limited impacts on payload, range, or trip time. And these heavy-duty trucks are a big problem, they move 70% of the goods shipped in the U.S., and all of this driving amidst more than 7% of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution. At any rate, we cover a lot in this episode about Remora, about the origin story, about early-stage entrepreneurship in general, and about the market and some of the barriers that have been holding back decarbonizing these semi-trucks, and Paul's view on how all of this is going to play out. Paul, welcome to the show.
Paul Gross: Thanks so much for having me.
Jason Jacobs: Thanks for coming. You've been a busy guy so I appreciate you making the time out of your overburdened schedule for our little show.
Paul Gross: [laughs]. It's my pleasure.
Jason Jacobs: What's Remora?
Paul Gross: Remora is building a device that captures the carbon emissions from a semi-truck. So, the device mounts on the back of a truck, right between the tractor and the trailer. It detaches the truck's tailpipes, and then it captures at least 80% of the truck's carbon emissions. And the driver offloads the carbon dioxide while they refuel, and then we take the carbon dioxide and sell it to concrete producers or other end users. And we're able to share the revenue from the carbon dioxide back with the owner of the truck so we can help them dramatically reduce their carbon emissions, meet their climate commitments, and earn this whole new stream of revenue from the carbon dioxide at the same time.
Jason Jacobs: Got it. How did you find yourself building a company like this? And I should ask probably an even higher level question, which is just how and when and why did you come about caring about climate change?
Paul Gross: To answer the second question first, I grew up, like my grandmother was a unitarian minister [laughs]. I- I went to a hippie middle school in San Francisco where we watched An Inconvenient Truth in Physics class. I think climate change has always been on my mind. When I was in college, I got really obsessed with this idea of why aren't capturing carbon emissions from a tailpipe, especially on long haul trucks where it's gonna be really, really hard to have an electric or hydrogen solution. And that's when I came across my co-founder, Christina's dissertation online, and she had basically spent her whole PhD kind of pioneering the field of mobile carbon capture.
So I called her up and we really hit it off. And after a bunch of conversations, I wrote her a business plan and finally convinced her to quit her job [laughs] with the EPA and come start the company with me. So that's really how I got roped in, how she and I got together, and then we actually emailed every [laughs] mechanical engineering professor at the top 15 engineering schools to get them to pass along a blurb so we could find a third co-founder, and that's when we met Eric, who's our other co-founder, and he was a diesel semi-truck mechanic for a decade, and then he got his bachelor's and master's in mechanical engineering, and then built hydrogen fuel cell and battery electric trucks from the ground up. I think he's built something like seven different trucks and buses in his career. And that's how the team got together.
Jason Jacobs: Mom is a unitarian minister...
Paul Gross: Grandmother.
Jason Jacobs: Oh, grandmother, sorry.
Paul Gross: My mom is a doctor at the VA.
Jason Jacobs: Hippie middle school, Inconvenient Truth, concern about climate, I was following all along with that, but how do you jump from that to capturing emissions from a semi-truck? That seems like a really specific micro solution in a sea of places that you could go if you were concerned about climate change and wanted to help. How did that come about?
Paul Gross: I just looked at what's the largest sector of emissions in the U.S., it's transportation. We've got great solutions for some parts of transportation, like passenger cars. Electric cars are great, they're gonna be a great solution, but what I started to read, Bill Gates wrote a blog post saying, even with big battery breakthroughs, electrification's never gonna work for 18-wheelers or cargo ships or airplanes. And I started to read about why and realized, gasoline is 35 times less energy dense than lithium ion batteries, or more energy dense, I should say, and that just made me realize, wow, maybe electrification's not gonna work for some segments of transportation, which is this big sector of emissions.
And that's when I thought, well, what are some other solutions? And capturing carbon emissions from a tailpipe seemed like a clear alternative, and I was like, why is no one doing this? And that's how I came across Christina's dissertation.
Jason Jacobs: Just so that I understand, where electrification fall short as you climb to bigger and heavier vehicles is that it would take more energy to power them and the cost would be [inaudible 00:06:45]? Is it a cost thing?
Paul Gross: It's actually not a cost thing. So, trucks can only weigh a certain amount, 80,000 pounds, to be on the road. And that means if you're putting batteries onboard to power them and they're much less energy dense, you need a lot more weight of batteries. So, that ends up being 25% of your payload capacity taken up by just a ton of batteries because you also get into this negative spiral where you've got a bunch of batteries, and then to move the weight of those batteries, you need more batteries, and so on. And that's the main reason that it's gonna be really hard to electrify anytime you're moving a big weight a long distance, whether it's a cargo ship or a truck, it's gonna be really hard to do that with batteries.
Jason Jacobs: And there's a lot of talk about the evolution of batteries and different compositions and things like that, that could be quite disruptive to the existing landscape. Do you have a no confidence vote that those types of breakthroughs will occur, or is it a timeframe thing? How do you think about that? Will long haul trucking never be electrified?
Paul Gross: We can't incline to no for sure. My co-founder, as I mentioned, built battery electric semi-trucks from the ground up. My other co-founder, Christina, worked at the EPA and tested electric vehicles there. And they both are not very confident that electrification's gonna be a solution for long haul trucking, at least anytime soon in the next couple decades. And look, like I think the bigger point is our solution's ready to go now. It's really cheap. It retrofits onto existing trucks so we don't have to replace every truck on the road with a new expensive electric truck. And if we pair it with a carbon neutral fuel, like biofuel or renewable natural gas, and capture those emissions, we can actually make a truck carbon negative. So we can do better than electric ever could, even with a big grid overhaul to get to renewable and all the other stuff that we need to do to make electrification truly carbon neutral.
Jason Jacobs: Can you give me a sense just from a timeline standpoint of when it was that you got turned on to carbon capture on these semis, when it was that you started doing that email outreach and finding your co-founders, and then what the first step was as you started assembling the team in terms of how to go from a paper to a company?
Paul Gross: I got turned on to it around the beginning of 2020, this was in my senior year of college, and I called up Christina in February. She and I had great conversations until early in the summer when I finally convinced her to [laughs] join, and then I did that outreach over the summer and we found Eric in August of 2020. And that's when, you know, in the fall, we applied to Y Combinator, which was really a great first step for us, and we got in and we just finished the batch a couple weeks ago. And it's really since the fall that we've now managed to sign on seven different hundred billion dollar companies as our customers to do paid pilots. And we've done in- incredible amount of technology developments. So we've got a prototype in our shop. We've really had the ramp just in the last couple months.
Jason Jacobs: Well, it's amazing that you've got that kind of customer interest, and what about from a product standpoint? Where did you start, and where are you today, and where does it need to go, and what's coming next? There's a lot of questions lumped in there.
Paul Gross: Christina got funded during her PhD by the EPA to test the technology in their national vehicle and fuel emissions lab, so she actually tested an early prototype there, so we're building on her incredible work. Since then, we've now built several more prototypes, and they're all testing various things. We've got the absorbent, we need to... we're actually using heat from the truck's exhaust to power the carbon capture system, so there's a lot of cool work we're doing with heat. It's a complicated system and we're testing a lot of different components. Over this summer, we're going to be doing testing on both our own test trucks and on a few different dynamometers where we're gonna be able to put in lots of different conditions. And then we're gonna be delivering our first units for pilots on customers' trucks by October. So this really is like ready to go. I mean, it's- it's happening later this year. We'll actually be capturing emissions from customers' trucks.
Jason Jacobs: It sounds like although you... recently, you got going on the backs of this work that had been grant funded so that there's a lot that you kind of inherited, built before so that you could hit the ground running in a way that most new companies cannot.
Paul Gross: Oh, yeah. In truth, this work has been happening for seven years during Christina's PhD. I mean, we're totally just, everything we're doing is based on the expertise she accumulated there, and she is a world expert. I mean, her PhD adviser literally sends me, you know, no one on the planet knows more than her about mobile carbon capture. So I just feel incredibly lucky to be working with her and, you know, to have her leading the charge here.
Jason Jacobs: Talk a bit about the semi market and how does it break down into... I mean, is it like short haul, medium and- and long haul, or how is that market segmented, which segment are you focused on? And then, maybe describe a little bit if you can what types of customers you're targeting.
Paul Gross: The trucking market is massive. I mean, it's $800 billion market. And it's very fragmented, so there are a lot of segments. The main three are city haul, the really short roots, then there's regional haul, and then there's truly long haul, hundreds or thousands of mile roots, and we're targeting the longest haul roots. So, you know, electric is probably a good solution for... if you're doing 100 or 200-mile roots, that's all you're doing in a day, you can charge overnight, that's a great solution.
But for those longer roots, if we're going above 500 miles, then it's gonna be really hard to have an electric truck do that well, so that's where we're really coming in. And the initial customers we're targeting are two types, one, really large public facing companies that have climate commitments, have their own private fleets of trucks. We're working two of the Fortune 10, those types of companies. And then we're also targeting these really large trucking companies. So we're working with three of the largest trucking companies in the country, and they have customers that really want them to reduce their emissions. So they're feeling a lot of pressure from the folks that are using them to ship their products to reduce emissions, and that's why they've been some of the quickest to sign on and- and the most excited about the technology.
Jason Jacobs: The ones from the first bucket, those large public facing companies, do they typically own their own fleets?
Paul Gross: Some do and some don't. Typically, they own some trucks and also use third party carriers, so we found is it's actually the fastest to just start with their own fleets because they own the trucks and they're able to retrofit this really easily and just give it a try.
Jason Jacobs: And where do the truck manufacturers fit into all of this, if at all, or even the component manufacturers within the trucks?
Paul Gross: The truck manufacturers are gonna be great partners for us as we scale this up. Eventually, we'd love to partner with them more directly to build this into new trucks. Right now, we're starting with retrofits because we don't wanna throw away every truck on the road, and we think that's a sort of easier starting point. They're gonna be a key part of the solution and they're doing great work on R&D at the moment to try to reduce their emissions. And hopefully, we can team up there.
Jason Jacobs: The companies that you do work with, talk a little bit. So, let's say, I am a large public facing company or I work at one of the largest trucking companies, which functional roles are you typically engaging with, and then what's the pitch when you do get those introductions?
Paul Gross: We're generally talking with the sustainability team and the supply chain or logistics teams because they tend to work together to reduce emissions. And the pitch is really simple. We have a device that you can just retrofit onto your existing assets and we'll help you dramatically cut your emissions so that you can meet these really aggressive climate commitments you've set, and you're actually able to generate a new stream of revenue in the process from the carbon dioxide we're capturing, so you don't have to pay millions of dollars to buy new trucks or pay for offsets. This is a way that you can both reduce emissions and earn money at the same time.
Jason Jacobs: And before you showed up, where were they in terms of addressing this problem? Had they thought about it, had they acted on it, are there any existing alternatives that are at all viable?
Paul Gross: What's really amazing is most of these companies have just made their climate commitments in the last six to 12 months. I'm sure you're seeing this as well. It's just this huge rush to, really, I think companies are stepping up and saying we need to take responsibility and reduce our emissions. It's been heartening to see how seriously they're taking those commitments. Often that are, you know, have a 2025 or 2030 deadline, so they need to do something now. And before us, they didn't really have a solution for their trucks. They can't buy an electric truck that's gonna do the roots that they're doing. So there, I... that's why I think we've seen such huge companies move so quickly to sign on for pilots because they know this is the only solution for this segment of their emissions.
Jason Jacobs: And so you mentioned that you're doing some testing now and then there's gonna be some prototypes or some pilots in the coming months. To the extent that you know and if you're still figuring out, that's okay, but what are the key things that need to get proved out between now and these pilots? And then what are the key things that need to get figured out between those pilots and more broad deployment?
Paul Gross: So, in the next couple months of testing, for us, it's all just really about making sure this works in a wide range of conditions. We wanna really be confident when we put this on someone else's truck, for us, that's a big deal. We're asking them to try it. We wanna be incredibly confident in the technology. So, we're gonna be stress testing in a whole bunch of ways. We wanna make sure it's as efficient as possible, so the three things we're trying to maximize are make this as light as possible, make this as small as possible, and make this capture the highest percentage of carbon emission as we can.
Right now, we think we can do 70% to 80% capture, but over time, we wanna get to 99% plus capture. Those are the things we're gonna be trying to optimize before our initial pilots. And then in the pilots, we just wanna prove that this works really well with our customers' use cases because we know that the logistics are complicated and we're not gonna be able to predict everything until we just try it. And that includes how does this work for the truck drivers and how long does it take to offload the carbon dioxide when they get back to their distribution center at the end of the day. It should only take a couple minutes and we wanna make sure we're proving that out. And then, just figuring out the logistics of selling it to a concrete producer and sharing that revenue back with the trucking company. We wanna just prove all of that out before we start to scale it up.
Jason Jacobs: And from a tactical detail standpoint, how much goes in to the actual insulation process, how much should the general oper... other than the offloading of the CO2, is anything else different for the trucker? And then, to the extent that you have figured it out and feel comfortable talking about it, what does that CO2 offloading process and infrastructure look like and who's doing what?
Paul Gross: It doesn't affect any other piece of the operation of the truck. That's one of the things we're really... we really care about. It just retrofits right on to the back. It doesn't affect the aerodynamics because it's behind the cab. One of the really cool things we found in our testing is that it's not affecting the back pressure on the engine, which you might expect, like putting this big device on will, but we found a way to avoid that problem. We wanna make this so simple for the driver. That means making the offload process really fast. And all they have to do is attach a hose to the device, the device pumps the carbon dioxide out into a big offload tank, and then they detach the hose. They don't have to take anything off the truck or put anything new on the truck, so it shouldn't be super hard for them at all.
And operationally, we're putting offload tanks at our customers' distribution centers for our initial pilots. So they're doing round trips and they're offloading right at the end of the day. The offload tank sits in one of those trailer spots, they pull in right next to it, attach the hose and do the offload. And other than that, there's really no operational piece that they need to worry about. That's kind of how we're setting it up now, and then we'll... we're also interested in doing these installations at truck stops so that folks can refuel and offload at the same time as we start to scale up.
Jason Jacobs: And in terms of finding buyers for the CO2, and also just the logistics of that transport and delivery, is that something that falls on the customers? Is that something that Remora takes on?
Paul Gross: We take care of that. We share the revenue from the CO2 50-50 and they get to keep their share, we use our share to cover those transportation costs, we pay for the tank that we install in their distribution center. They don't have to cover that or anything, except for just buying the devices from us. We find the buyers for the carbon dioxide as well, and we ship the carbon dioxide from their distribution center to the buyer in a 22-ton tanker truck.
Jason Jacobs: And give me a sense of what does that buyer landscape look like today, and then how do you think it will evolve looking forward?
Paul Gross: Right now, the market for carbon dioxide is massive. It's a $7.7 billion market, about 230 million tons are used every year, whether that's in fertilizer or greenhouses, concrete production, dry ice, refrigerant manufacturing, it's, uh, used in all sorts of different applications. We are expecting the carbon dioxide market to expand significantly over the next 10 years. I mean, there are so many cool companies working on turning carbon dioxide into vodka or into diamonds, into fuel, and we'd love to partner with as many of those companies as possible. One of the things we're really focused on is finding applications for carbon dioxide where it's permanently stored, so that's why we're so excited about injecting it into concrete. And to the extent we can do that with all of our carbon dioxide, that's definitely our goal.
We also will be increasingly doing [inaudible 00:20:18] sequestration and sailing aqua first in depleted oil wells. There are federal and state tax credits for doing that, so that will be increasingly used for the carbon dioxide. And in the long term, we really would love to offload the carbon dioxide at a truck stop, turn it back into fuel and then sell it right back to the truck and put it into the truck. So, it's a perfect sort of circular solution.
Jason Jacobs: And so, some of... and I know you mentioned different stakeholders, but the buyers of this, you know, to whether, you know, the cement or concrete or the fertilizer or the greenhouses or the dry ice, or any of the use cases that you mentioned, what are the primary sources of that CO2 today and what percentage of it is CO2 that was captured versus other ways?
Paul Gross: So, the primary sources are ethanol hydrogen production. They get their CO2 from big industrial suppliers. I think a lot of folks... what I'm hearing is folks are interested in other sources of carbon dioxide as well. We would love to supply that carbon dioxide. I think there's a really exciting opportunity for us to team up so that we can deliver this kind of end to end solution where we are allowing companies to decarbonize their freight and delivering a really interesting carbon dioxide product to, um, an end user like a concrete producer.
Jason Jacobs: And for those different stakeholders, what is the value proposition and what are the pros and the cons or the trade-offs of capturing CO2 versus from the ethanol or hydrogen or other sources that you mentioned? And also, does it vary a lot within the captured CO2 landscape? Like, is buying it from Remora look very different than buying it from other sources of captured CO2, or is the value proposition of captured CO2 pretty consistent across?
Paul Gross: One of the interesting things about the CO2 market is that it's hard to get CO2 that isn't food grade. So, often, folks that don't need food grade CO2 are actually overpaying for their CO2 because they- they have no choice. So I think for folks like concrete producers and chemical producers who don't need food grade, working with us, we may be able to offer a cheaper carbon dioxide source because there's not an extra purification step there. So, really, there isn't a lot of difference. Our carbon dioxide, when we're not purifying it, is gonna be slightly less pure. It's gonna be industrial grade, but we can also purify it to food grade as well. So, we're still figuring that out because we haven't captured a lot of carbon dioxide yet.
There's a great story to be told as well. Like, I- I think people want to be part of decarbonizing some large companies' freight service. It's just a sort of exciting source of the carbon dioxide.
Jason Jacobs: And when you think about the value prop in terms of the emission reduction and living up to net zero commitments and the branding halo and, uh, employee satisfaction and mitigating long-term climate risk, which is good for everybody, just kind of that. And then on the other side, there's the- the incremental revenue opportunities that you talked about, how do you think that breaks down long term for these customers in terms of where the primary ROI come from or how would that be allocated percentage wise across those two buckets?
Paul Gross: What I've heard is it's almost all the former. The brand halo, the reducing emissions, meeting climate commitments, from a shareholder perspective, from a customer perspective, from just, uh, doing good perspective, that's what's mainly motivating these companies to make these really bold climate commitments. They're realizing that they need to step up, and they're doing a great job of it. They don't wanna lose a... millions of dollars to... and make these solutions happen. So to the extent that... I don't think they're really interested in this because it's gonna generate new revenue for them, but I think what they like about this solution is that they don't have to spend tens of millions of dollars to reduce their emissions. They can essentially breakeven or maybe make a little bit of marginal revenue.
But the main reason that they're jumping to pilot this is not the revenue, it's the climate commitments. We're fully aware of the many reasons that a big company would make a climate commitment, we're just excited that folks are really willing to actually step up and pilot this technology and- and not just kind of make these commitments and then sit back and wait for the perfect solution.
Jason Jacobs: What I heard from you, so there's the device that actually goes on the truck, and then there's the storage of the CO2 that's on customer prem or maybe it's at rest stops down the road, there's the logistics there, there's the finding buyers, and I guess it sounds like a marketplace of sorts, are those the key buckets of the Remora solution or are there any big pieces that I missed?
Paul Gross: You got it. It's the technology, plus the logistics of distribution and selling the carbon dioxide, and- and ensuring that it's permanently sequestered.
Jason Jacobs: And if you look at those areas, is there anyone else that's- that's trying to do this for semi-truck with carbon capture? And also, are there other solutions emerging that have... that- that, uh, those similar criteria but for maybe adjacent areas that are doing carbon capture but not on semi-trucks? Uh, and- and what are some examples, whether it be from a competitive standpoint, or just, uh, you know, companies that are trying to do similar things, or- or even role models for you?
Paul Gross: We don't know of any other companies that are doing carbon capture for semi-trucks. As I mentioned, Christina is a world expert, and- and she really did pioneer in the field during her PhD. It was kind of a topic that was written off by academia. She was the one that took- took a second look at it and realized that it would actually work really well for semi-trucks. So, I believe we're the only ones there. There are other folks that are trying distributed capture approaches that we're big fans of, um, you know, NOIA, for example, is doing direct air capture with distributed cooling towers, which we're really excited about. Aside from that, we think distributed capture is a underappreciated solution and we'd love to see more companies in that space because I think the reason distributed capture is exciting is that it's more scalable potentially than the larger point source capture.
So, what I mean is if you're building a system for a big power plant, you're gonna have to spend millions of dollars and years planning for that specific power plant. You have to tailor the system to that power plant to capture its carbon emissions. And then when you've do- done that, great, you've got one power plant, but you can't copy and paste that to another power plant, you have to start all over. Whereas for us, we're making a modular device that works on any truck. So if it works for one truck, we can just churn a whole bunch more off of an assembly line and we can start scaling up a lot faster than you can with sort of larger point source capture.
Jason Jacobs: And is it one size fits all with all the different trucks and models and sizes and things like that, or will you need different versions to get broader coverage?
Paul Gross: Actually, it's one size fits all. The box will be exactly the same. The only difference is the way it mounts onto the truck. Each truck has kind of its own special exhaust system, so we'll have different mounts, a little bit like a roof rack company has to mount th- those sort of rooftop luggage carriers in slightly different ways on each different car. But the core technology is exactly the same, and the box itself is something that we can just mass produce.
Jason Jacobs: When Christina was doing this research, you mentioned that academia had largely written off this area, why?
Paul Gross: I think folks did the calculations for passenger vehicles and it didn't make sense. It's... and- and, you know, we did those calculations as well. After doing those calculations, they just said, well, it's... mobile carbon capture is not gonna work. But she said, well, what about semi-trucks? And she actually took the time to evaluate a whole range of absorbents in the conditions of these exhaust and realized after doing a whole PhD's worth that, actually, this is gonna work for semi-trucks. And I think that she just had the insight that people had maybe written it off a little bit too quickly.
I think the other piece is she just saw what I saw and- and what Eric had seen, which is that maybe electrification isn't gonna be a silver bullet for every form of transportation, and maybe we are gonna need some other solutions as well, especially solutions that are ready to go now and can actually help decarbonize operations starting this year.
Jason Jacobs: How important is policy for what you're trying to do? And- and if it's important, what aspects are important and how do you think about that?
Paul Gross: This is a great company regardless of whether or not we get policy support. We don't need policy support to be successful, but it could really, really help. What we're mainly looking at is the 45Q tax credit, which incentivizes carbon sequestration, and that will really help us. There are a bunch of changes being proposed right now to make it more valuable, to make it direct pay. Those will be incredibly helpful, you know, if they pass in Congress. The other piece that we need help with is the 45Q credit, the... it has minimum requirements for the number of tons you're capturing, which makes it really hard to start with a pilot because you don't get the incentive until you get to a certain scale. So, decreasing those minimums is also gonna be essential.
And then, just more support from both federal and state governments for putting extra weight on a truck. Uh, you know, there are weight exemptions for other emissions reducing technology, and th- those weight exemptions would be hugely helpful to us for scaling this up. And the nice thing is we've already talked to both folks in the federal government and in the state governments, and we're hearing a lot of excitement about this, and people have just been amazing. So, we're really excited for that to team up with- with people and try to scale us up even more quickly.
Jason Jacobs: So I know you don't rely on future policy, but given it would be helpful to you and that there's certain things that would not just be helpful to you but would be helpful to accelerate our de-carbonization efforts as well, how do you, and- and really, how should anyone as an entrepreneur in early stage company with a tiny team resource to putting energy into influencing and advocating for that policy, if at all? Is... I mean, is it realistic to put any efforts there, or is it really just more of a- a hope that other people do that work?
Paul Gross: Yeah, we're still figuring out the answer to that question. You don't have the resources to, you know, have a lobbying shop [laughs]. And- and we're definitely leaning on the amazing work that's been done by folks like Carbon180 and the Carbon Capture Coalition. We're so grateful for the work they're doing. We do wanna be involved. The way I think about it is let's prove this technology out in our pilots, and I think once we have that data and that... those proof points, that will make the case a lot stronger and we can then take some of that data to those conversations.
The other thing that I think we'll lean on is our amazing early pilot partners. You know, they're really powerful companies. They have a lot of contact with the government. So, to the extent that they can also help us, I think we'll try to do some partnership with them as well. But it is a tough position to be in, and our goal is just to make the technology work, to prove that this is a solution that can add value and reduce emissions. And then hopefully, we can start to dig more into those conversations with policymakers.
Jason Jacobs: Given where you sit right now in the journey, what are you most worried about?
Paul Gross: I want the device to work in our pilots. That's what we're laser focused on. Christina proved that the technology works. We know that mobile carbon capture works. We're not reinventing the wheel. I mean, carbon capture is a mature technology that's actually worked for decades. There's some novel stuff we're doing in- in our device. We're really confident this will work. I think the thing I just wanna... I want it to be working on our customers' trucks. That's the thing that I'm thinking about in addition to the logistics of transporting the carbon dioxide and getting it to a concrete producer or another end user. Really, in the longer term, I think we just... we're gonna be relying on others to develop great new uses for carbon dioxide, uses where it's permanently stored, returning it into something valuable. That's the thing that I'm just hoping to see more of because we're really excited to partner with any company that's doing that kinda work.
Jason Jacobs: And when you think about the different buckets of what's involved, I mean, I know you want it to work in the pilot and that's usually important, but you also talked about the logistics and you talked about the sale of the carbon, is it 1/3, 1/3 and 1/3 on the complexity scale, or are the hard pounds heavily weighted to one of those buckets?
Paul Gross: I think the logistics is going to be the hardest problem as we scale up. We're really confident that the technology is gonna work. That's the lucky thing about coming out of seven years of amazing PhD work. I think figuring out the logistics is going to be the- the big deal, but this is something that we need to figure out to make not just our solution work, but all types of carbon capture solutions to work. We need to figure out how we're gonna transport carbon dioxide from one place to another and- and how we're gonna get it to the right end users. Like, we're excited to be trying to tackle that problem because hopefully, then we can share our expertise with other folks and help not just our solution work but other carbon capture solutions as well.
Jason Jacobs: I don't know how much you've dug into that already but are there certain dynamics with transporting CO2 that are different than transporting other types of things?
Paul Gross: Well, you need to do it in a refrigerated tanker truck, that's slightly more complicated, but it's pretty standard. There are a lot of companies that transport CO2. I mean, as I mentioned, it's already a massive market. The big deal is you can't emit more CO2 while you're transporting it because then you defeat the whole purpose, and I think that's where we have a nice advantage, which is that we're developing a technology that can de-carbonize the transportation method for our CO2. So we're gonna put our device on the trucks we're using to transport the CO2 as well.
Jason Jacobs: [laughs].
Paul Gross: That's a big concern I think for a lot of other folks because defeating the purpose if you emit more CO2 in the transportation process than you capture. That's one of the challenges that people often raise. And then to the extent that we can build pipelines for CO2, that's gonna make this so much easier and cheaper, and luckily, there are some great bills being introduced, like the bill by Senator [inaudible 00:34:00], that would do that kind of infrastructure building.
Jason Jacobs: If you could change one thing outside of the scope of your control that would most accelerate your efforts to make this a reality, what would you change and what would you change about it?
Paul Gross: I would make the changes to the 45Q [crosstalk 00:36:39]...
Jason Jacobs: I knew you were gonna say that [laughs].
Paul Gross: [laughs]. I just... the... I just can't tell you how essential that would be. If we could make that more valuable, if we could lower the annual minimum volume and if we can make that direct pay, that would just be transformative for us. As I said, we're gonna be great without that, but I just can't tell you how much that will accelerate what we're doing.
Jason Jacobs: Last question is just for other entrepreneurs or aspiring entrepreneurs that maybe feel like you felt before you emailed Christina, maybe before you had even locked in on doing carbon capture, on long haul semi-trucking, what advice-
Paul Gross: Mm-hmm [affirmative].
Jason Jacobs: ... would you have for them on how to find their spot if they're looking to build a company that's climate focused but feel overwhelmed with the vast landscape and their lack of domain expertise?
Paul Gross: Yeah. Well, I mean, I didn't have domain expertise when I came into this. You know, I just had to do a lot of research myself, and thankfully, I came across someone with a lot [laughs] of domain expertise who agreed to join me. I think two things, one, I would say I'm really glad that I chose something that's so difficult. I- I think one of the counterintuitive pieces of advice that I read is that hard startups are sometimes easier, and that, I found to be really, really true. If you're doing something hard and ambitious, you- you just get people coming out of the woodwork to help because exciting, and we've gotten tons of people who wanna come join the team and got tons of people who wanna invest, and p... you know professors who wanna reach out and help, and that- that kinda tailwind is amazing.
So, I would say try to find something really ambitious. Try so... find something really hard to work on because counterintuitively, that's gonna be the best way to succeed. And- and we also need way more ambitious startups that are trying to do something big. The other piece is try to go out and find some great co-founders. That's what I did. I think if you can be the hustler on the team, the person who finds customers and works really hard to fundraise, you can get a really amazing... I mean, that- that's how I convinced Christina to join is I said, look, I'll do all of the stuff that you don't wanna do so that you can do the, you know, science that- that you love doing, and that's a great deal.
So, go out and try to find someone who's done an amazing PhD and- and see if you can team up with them. Like, that would be my advice. It's worked really well for us. And yeah, just go do something hard [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: Given how young you were when this came together and also, just how far removed your prior experience was from what you're doing now, what reaction did you get from the people closest to you, your oldest friends, your loved ones? Were they supportive, did they think it was a good idea, did they think you were crazy? Like, how did that all go down?
Paul Gross: They were really supportive. I think they just really believed in the reason that I was trying to do it, just trying to reduce carbon emissions as efficiently as possible. And it was really concordant with the stuff that I was doing before in a sense that I thought I was gonna go into politics, and that was because I thought that was the best root to impact. Decided, well, maybe starting a company would actually be a sort of faster, more immediate way to make an impact. Everyone was really supportive. I'm very grateful I have great family and great friends that were just sort of cheering me on. I think I definitely got some skepticism from people [laughs]. I think that's just to be expected. What? You're gonna really... you're gonna capture emissions from a truck?
But people are really supportive, and I think that's the thing about hard ideas is sometimes, people are skeptical because it's worth pursuing because you're gonna just ultimately get people so much more excited when you actually make progress toward doing it for real.
Jason Jacobs: I know I said last question but I'll poke on this one, just in case, do you have any freebies in terms of if you weren't building Remora, things that you wish would exist in climate tech that you hope someone else hears and goes and pursues?
Paul Gross: I really hope people find more ways to use carbon dioxide. We're gonna need so many technologies in that area, um, especially turning carbon dioxide into fuel, which I know some great people are already working on. To the extent that there are more technologies there, I think there's just always room for that. And to the extent that you can create some kind of carbon capture that is distributed and scalable where you can make a modular unit that we can scale up really easily, I think that's the other piece, um, that I would try to think about. But really, uh, you know, you don't have domain expertise, I'd say go out and find someone that does, try to support them and bringing whatever they've invented to- to market.
Jason Jacobs: It sounds like, in terms of CO2 use, finding a market for the CO2 is the primary way to eliminate the need to rely on future policy? I don't know how consistent it is across CO2 uses, for example, if there's parallels, but I could almost envision like a- a studio that gets the infrastructure in place, and then just kinda spins out different ideas to put CO2 to use to build valuable things and build a portfolio of-
Paul Gross: [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: ... either companies or product lines that are utilizing CO2 to build high value products.
Paul Gross: Absolutely. I... that would be so valuable to us and we would love to work with any startup that's working on that. So, you know, please reach out if [laughs]- if you're- you're working on something like that. We'd love to share some of our CO2 with you.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome. I'm gonna go register the domain right when we finish [crosstalk 00:41:51].
Paul Gross: [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: Now this really is the last question, which is just for anyone listening-
Paul Gross: [crosstalk 00:41:55].
Jason Jacobs: ... that's inspired and wants to help, since, as you said, you're working on such a hard, challenging and important problem, who do you wanna hear from and how can listeners help you?
Paul Gross: A few ways. I mean, one, if- if you're interested in joining the team, you know, we're gonna be hiring more mechanical engineers and chemical engineers in the next couple of months. Please go to our website and sign up for updates. You'll be the first to know when we open up new positions. And our website is remoracarbon.com, and then you can go to remoracarbon.com/updates to get- get updates. The other piece is if folks know anyone working in sustainability or supply chain at any big company that has a physical product, is using trucks to move it, I would love any connections that folks are willing to make. So feel free to just reach out.
The other piece is we're... we are gonna also be hiring some nontechnical folks over the next six months to help with operations. If you're interested in joining our team in that capacity, like, please let us know.
Jason Jacobs: Awesome. Is there anything I didn't ask that I should have, or any parting words for listeners?
Paul Gross: I think that's it. You're..., go do something hard, that's [laughs]- that's the theme that I'm gonna harp on here.
Jason Jacobs: Great. Well, Paul, this was awesome.
Paul Gross: Thank you so much.
Jason Jacobs: Hey, everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note, that is dot co, not dot com. Someday, we'll get the dot com, but right now, dot co. You can also find me on Twitter @jjacobs22 where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The [inaudible 00:43:52] say that. Thank you.
