Axel welcome. First, if you wouldn't mind,
just tell me a little bit more about your company NetZero.
So NetZero is a young startup I created about two years ago,
and we focus on carbon removal.
So we want to take out massive amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere and store
it in the agricultural soils.
We leverage a solution called biochar that has huge potential for
scale up.
And so what we want to do is to move an existing technology
from small-scale research,
NGO type of applications to full industrialization scale.
Tell me more about biochar, why that as opposed to any other removal solution?
So biochar is a carbon that is extracted from plants
or crop residues or woods or any kind of biomass. Basically,
when plants grow,
they suck up carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis,
but if you don't do anything at some point plants decay or are burnt and then
the carbon goes back into the atmosphere.
And what we do with biochar is we heat the biomass at very high temperature and
we extract and stabilize the carbon that was contained in this biomass.
And so basically you create a kind of carbon pump where plants suck up the
carbon, we extract it, we stabilize it, and we store it in the soils.
So that's the carbon removal effect.
The other effect is that when you put this carbon into the soil,
it helps improve the soil properties: retain water, retain nutrients,
correct soil acidity, help develop microbial life in soils.
And the net result of that is that you improve yields and you're allowed to
reduce usage of fertilizers.
So biochar is a very interesting solution for carbon removal.
It's one of the many but it has lots of co-benefits and it's
quite cheap as a carbon removal solution.
So huge potential and relatively cheap. And we thought, okay,
let's try to bring that at scale.
How did you come up with the idea to launch NetZero?
So it's a long story. It's actually a family story.
So NetZero the--30 years ago I was at
the Rio Conference with my father.
We were really struck by the messages that came at that time,
which were more or less the same messages that we have today.
Be careful--global warming at that time that is coming.
And actually that decided my father to leave his job and launch an NGO
to protect rainforests.
And he tried many things to protect rainforests and to protect the gradual
deforestation.
And one of the issue you have is that the soil in the tropics are very poor and
in the rainforest.
So it's a bit counterintuitive to see all those trees and so on. It actually,
the soil is very poor. And so when agricultural countries,
they try to grow things on degraded land for a few years and then the land
becomes more or less sterile and they have to go further and cut the forest.
And so he looked at different solutions and about 20 years ago came across
biochar and so he started to develop small scale projects, NGO mode.
At that time there was no carbon credit and so on,
and actually grew the thing to some kind of scale,
which was kind of still small at the time.
And then during the COVID lockdown two years ago, I was with my son.
We were locked in the same apartment and we started thinking, Well,
now that IPCC has recognized biochar as a carbon removal solution,
that was just the year before,
what if we added carbon credits to the agricultural business
case of biochar? And we started playing around almost as a game.
And then after a few weeks we were very excited and after two or three months we
had the business plan and I decided to quit my job and launched Net Zero.
How have your years at BCG helped you in launching Net Zero?
Well, yeah, I spent a lot of time at BCG. I was there for 23 years.
So that's really, really prepared.
I think it's many things.
The first thing is when we thought about how to build a business plan
that can be profitable, scalable, defendable,
of course here you're on the kind of strategy part of BCG.
And so I leveraged my years of doing such things.
The second thing is when you start with just a deck of slides,
they can be very good,
and I think we had done a pretty good job at wrapping up our idea,
but you need to convince people you need to mobilize them
for people willing to join the company, for people,
try to invest in the company, and so on. And so those skills,
of course when you've been an MDP at BCG for some time, you know,
have a bit of that. And then there was a whole network.
The BCG network proved absolutely incredible.
Some people wrote,
you know started to participate in the company some people put me in contact
with their clients and basically I saw the power and actually the global
reach of BCG to all kinds of people that,
and immediately were talking to the senior people in the right companies and so
on. And so that this has been very, very, very helpful.
And I would say the last thing that was announced just a few days ago BCG
is our first client for carbon credits. And so BCG,
as part of the global commitment of BCG to be net zero and to help develop
solutions well,
was kind enough to trust us at the early days when we were not certified yet.
And so we actually delivered ten days ago our first carbon rates to BCG.
So I think it's a very interesting thing of individuals helping
a company like NetZero and then BCG as a corporation helping
us too. And I hope that will continue in the future.
Fantastic. Excellent. Thank you so.