Who are Klimate, and what’s your role?
Founded in 2021, Klimate is a climate tech scale-up. Our focus is the carbon removal industry – we help companies to understand what carbon removal is and how best to approach it. In my role as Chief Commercial Officer, I work with our clients to establish their frameworks – what are they able to do today as sustainability stewards, but also how they might be able to scale their support in the future.
How does carbon removal differ from traditional offsetting methods?
Traditional carbon offsetting (often now described as carbon avoidance) is when you’re paying for future emissions not to happen. As carbon removal deals with emissions that have already happened – and focuses on lowering the overall concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere – it offers a much more tangible solution.
How does Klimate choose which projects to support?
We follow a due diligence model that considers a range of different impacts. For example, one area we look at is climate change mitigation – how long any carbon removed by a project is taken out of the atmosphere. If a project removes carbon by planting a tree, we estimate that this carbon is out of the atmosphere for 50-70 years (a typical tree lifecycle). However, other removal projects may offer much more permanent solutions, for example by returning removed carbon to the Earth’s geological layer. We also consider the socioeconomic benefits of all potential projects, as well as their integrity and scale-up potential.
How diverse is your range?
Our portfolio includes 35-40 projects, across which there are 10 different carbon removal methods. We take a global approach – as climate change is a global phenomenon – so location is probably the biggest differentiator between our projects.
Let’s talk about our partnership. Can you tell us a little more about the projects we are supporting?
You’ve been involved in lots of different projects in the two and a half years that we’ve worked together, but one of my favourites is Hummingbird. This is a Direct Air Capture (DAC) facility at the very forefront of climate technology. It takes place in Kenya as conditions there are perfect for DAC – the country’s electricity grid is >90% renewable and there are lots of opportunities for safely storing the captured carbon where it can be injected into basaltic rock and held there for millennia.
On the co-benefits side, you also support a really interesting project in Germany. Klim focuses on regenerative agriculture – incentivising local farmers to tap into the soil’s potential as a carbon sink. As well as removing emissions, soil sequestration improves soil productivity and fertility, which results in more resilient and nutrient-rich yields.
How has our support helped advance Klimate’s work?
To date, Inntravel has invested over 400,000€ in Klimate and contracted to remove over 5,000 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere. The partnership has been of incredible value in other ways, too: it’s helped us to attract new clients and to secure other essential funding – which in turn has enabled us to hire more employees and improve our product.
One final question – what would your advice be to someone keen to find out more about Klimate and carbon removal?
Have a look at our website – there’s almost too much information there! The webinars and insider articles that we share are suitable for everyone – for those well-versed in the space and for those just getting started. On our website you’ll also find lots of stories and images direct from our project sites –we’re on a mission at Klimate to make carbon removal as tangible and accessible as possible.