
Scrubbing the Sky - Episode 2: Bill Gates & Building a Climate ‘Miracle’
03/11/25 • 28 min
Host Ed Whittingham continues the story behind the development of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology and its potential role in helping to fight climate change. Ed explores the early days of Canadian cleantech company Carbon Engineering, and how it drew the attention of both Bill Gates and Occidental Petroleum.
Guests include:
- Ken Caldeira, senior scientist at Breakthrough Energy
- David Keith, professor at the University of Chicago and a DAC pioneer who founded the company Carbon Engineering
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or on your podcast app of choice.
Learn more at www.scrubbingthesky.com
Follow us on: LinkedIn | Bluesky
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Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts.
The podcast is part of the Carbon Herald’s podcast network.
A special thanks to our friends at the Challenging Climate podcast which is available wherever you find your podcasts.
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Energy vs Climatewww.energyvsclimate.com
Host Ed Whittingham continues the story behind the development of Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology and its potential role in helping to fight climate change. Ed explores the early days of Canadian cleantech company Carbon Engineering, and how it drew the attention of both Bill Gates and Occidental Petroleum.
Guests include:
- Ken Caldeira, senior scientist at Breakthrough Energy
- David Keith, professor at the University of Chicago and a DAC pioneer who founded the company Carbon Engineering
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or on your podcast app of choice.
Learn more at www.scrubbingthesky.com
Follow us on: LinkedIn | Bluesky
__
Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts.
The podcast is part of the Carbon Herald’s podcast network.
A special thanks to our friends at the Challenging Climate podcast which is available wherever you find your podcasts.
___
Energy vs Climatewww.energyvsclimate.com
Previous Episode

The USA vs Climate - Trump's New Climate & Energy Policy with Dr. Jesse Jenkins
Jesse Jenkins, David Keith, and Ed Whittingham break down the key policy reversals, their impact on U.S. emissions, and the broader geopolitical and economic consequences—for Canada and beyond. Plus, audience questions!
Full Show notes with links to references on our website
About Our Guest:
Jesse D. Jenkins is an assistant professor and macro-scale energy systems engineer at Princeton University with a joint appointment in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and the Andlinger Center for Energy and Environment. He leads the Princeton ZERO Lab (Zero-carbon Energy systems Research and Optimization Laboratory), which focuses on improving and applying optimization-based energy systems models to evaluate and optimize low-carbon energy technologies, guide investment and research in innovative energy technologies, and generate insights to improve energy and climate policy and planning decisions.
About Your Co-Hosts:
David Keith is Professor and Founding Faculty Director, Climate Systems Engineering Initiative at the University of Chicago. He is the founder of Carbon Engineering and was formerly a professor at Harvard University and the University of Calgary. He splits his time between Canmore and Chicago.
Sara Hastings-Simon studies energy transitions at the intersection of policy, business, and technology. She’s a policy wonk, a physicist turned management consultant, and a professor at the University of Calgary and Director of the Master of Science in Sustainable Energy Development.
Ed Whittingham is a clean energy policy/finance professional specializing in renewable electricity generation and transmission, carbon capture, carbon removal and low carbon transportation. He is a Public Policy Forum fellow and formerly the executive director of the Pembina Institute, a national clean energy think tank.
Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts
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Energy vs Climatewww.energyvsclimate.com
Next Episode

Scrubbing the Sky - Episode 3 - The Carbon Gold Rush: Tech's Next Frontier
Host Ed Whittingham delves into the early days of another pioneering Direct Air Capture (DAC) company, Switzerland’s Climeworks, and its innovative modular approach to deploying its technology. Ed also looks into the developing synergy between the tech sector and carbon removal.
Guests include:
- Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder of Climeworks
- Lucy Hargreaves, Corporate Affairs and Climate Policy at Patch
- Jim McDermott, co-founder and the managing partner of Rusheen Capital Management, LLC
- David Keith, professor at the University of Chicago and a DAC pioneer who founded the company Carbon Engineering
Learn more at www.scrubbingthesky.com
Follow us on: LinkedIn | Bluesky | YouTube
__
Produced by Amit Tandon & Bespoke Podcasts.
The podcast is part of the Carbon Herald’s podcast network.
___
Energy vs Climatewww.energyvsclimate.com
Energy vs Climate - Scrubbing the Sky - Episode 2: Bill Gates & Building a Climate ‘Miracle’
Transcript
Ed Whittingham: In Jules Verne's 1870 book, 20, 000 Leagues Under the Sea, the narrator, a French marine biologist named Professor Pierre Aronnax, receives a last minute invitation from a U. S. government expedition to track down a mysterious sea monster that has damaged two ships. After several months of searching, the expedition attacks what is believed to be the sea monster, but Professor Aronnax is thrown into the sea.
After grabbing onto a hatch on the monster's bac
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