Stacy Kauk, Head of Sustainability at Shopify, on getting in early on carbon removal and the next phase in scaling it up

Episode 10 of The Carbon Curve is with Stacy Kauk, Head of Sustainability at Shopify.

After a few weeks off, I’m excited to bring you a new series of interviews with policy experts, market shapers, and entrepreneurs who are working tirelessly to responsibly and effectively scale up the carbon removal (or CDR) innovations needed to draw down CO2 from the atmosphere.

Over the next 8 weeks I’ll be speaking with guests on topics including environmental justice, measurement, reporting, and verification, and the policies that helped spur plans for a multi-million ton per year direct air capture facility in Wyoming.

Today, we’re covering a topic I’m absolutely obsessed with: How are we going to pay for carbon removal? Seriously. How are we going to pay for this?

Companies like Shopify, Stripe, and Microsoft made catalytic early CDR purchases which helped create the entrepreneurial, dynamic carbon removal sector we see today.

So I wanted to speak to Stacy Kauk, Head of Sustainability at Shopify, who was central to that effort about: the formation of an almost billion dollar advance market commitment for carbon removal, how we bring on the next wave of corporate buyers, and what comes next for the early catalytic funders that helped stimulate the CDR sector in the first place.

In this episode, Na’im and Stacy talk about:

* The formation of Shopify’s Sustainability Fund, it’s objectives, and notable successes to date

* The genesis of the Frontier advance market commitment

* How to attract the “next wave” of corporate buyers to long-duration carbon removal

* What role the public sector could play in the long-term growth of CDR

Relevant links:

* Shopify’s Sustainability Fund

* Frontier advance market commitment

* Shopify’s report on kick-starting the carbon removal market

* Follow Stacy Kauk on Twitter

About Stacy Kauk:

Stacy Kauk, P.Eng. joined Shopify in January 2020 and as the Head of Sustainability, Stacy’s role is to ensure the millions of businesses using Shopify’s platform, the nearly 600 million shoppers that purchased from a Shopify merchant last year alone, and climate entrepreneurs globally are working together in the fight against climate change. 

Stacy leads Shopify’s Sustainability Fund, which has committed more than $32M to date (since 2019) across 22 entrepreneurial, tech-driven companies, to accelerate carbon removal solutions globally. Most recently, Stacy was behind Shopify’s decision to help build and launch Frontier, an advance market commitment to buy an initial $925M of permanent carbon removal alongside our partners, Stripe, Alphabet, Meta, and McKinsey Sustainability. 

She also serves on the advisory board of the Carbon Management Research Initiative (CaMRI) at Columbia University. Prior to joining Shopify, Stacy was head of the Ozone Layer Protection Program at Environment and Climate Change Canada. Previously, Stacy worked on several chemicals management regulatory initiatives and represented Canada as a member of delegations for the Stockholm Convention and Montreal Protocol.

Stacy began her career as a practicing engineer designing environmental protection measures and pollution prevention controls for a variety of industry sectors. She has worked for the City of Ottawa, Morrison Hershfield, and Golder Associates. Stacy holds a Bachelor of Engineering and Masters in Public Administration from Carleton University.

Na’im Merchant, Founder and Managing Director of Carbon Curve, is an advisor and thought partner to start-ups, policy groups, and research organizations on scaling up climate technologies to meet the monumental challenge of removing billions of tons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Every week, Na’im will release a short interview with individuals advancing bold new ideas and taking a collective action approach to scaling up carbon removal.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit carboncurve.substack.com