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Axel welcome. First, if you wouldn't mind,

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just tell me a little bit more
about your company NetZero.

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So NetZero is a young startup
I created about two years ago,

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and we focus on carbon removal.

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So we want to take out massive amounts
of CO2 from the atmosphere and store

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it in the agricultural soils.

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We leverage a solution called
biochar that has huge potential for

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scale up.

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And so what we want to do is
to move an existing technology

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from small-scale research,

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NGO type of applications to
full industrialization scale.

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Tell me more about biochar, why that as
opposed to any other removal solution?

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So biochar is a carbon that
is extracted from plants

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or crop residues or woods or
any kind of biomass. Basically,

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when plants grow,

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they suck up carbon from the
atmosphere through photosynthesis,

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but if you don't do anything at some
point plants decay or are burnt and then

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the carbon goes back into the atmosphere.

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And what we do with biochar is we heat
the biomass at very high temperature and

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we extract and stabilize the carbon
that was contained in this biomass.

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And so basically you create a kind of
carbon pump where plants suck up the

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carbon, we extract it, we stabilize
it, and we store it in the soils.

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So that's the carbon removal effect.

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The other effect is that when you
put this carbon into the soil,

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it helps improve the soil properties:
retain water, retain nutrients,

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correct soil acidity, help
develop microbial life in soils.

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And the net result of that is that you
improve yields and you're allowed to

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reduce usage of fertilizers.

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So biochar is a very interesting
solution for carbon removal.

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It's one of the many but it has
lots of co-benefits and it's

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quite cheap as a carbon removal solution.

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So huge potential and relatively
cheap. And we thought, okay,

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let's try to bring that at scale.

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How did you come up with
the idea to launch NetZero?

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So it's a long story. It's
actually a family story.

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So NetZero the--30 years ago I was at

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the Rio Conference with my father.

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We were really struck by the
messages that came at that time,

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which were more or less the same
messages that we have today.

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Be careful--global warming
at that time that is coming.

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And actually that decided my father
to leave his job and launch an NGO

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to protect rainforests.

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And he tried many things to protect
rainforests and to protect the gradual

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deforestation.

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And one of the issue you have is that
the soil in the tropics are very poor and

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in the rainforest.

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So it's a bit counterintuitive to see
all those trees and so on. It actually,

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the soil is very poor. And so
when agricultural countries,

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they try to grow things on degraded
land for a few years and then the land

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becomes more or less sterile and they
have to go further and cut the forest.

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And so he looked at different solutions
and about 20 years ago came across

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biochar and so he started to develop
small scale projects, NGO mode.

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At that time there was no
carbon credit and so on,

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and actually grew the thing
to some kind of scale,

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which was kind of still small at the time.

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And then during the COVID lockdown
two years ago, I was with my son.

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We were locked in the same apartment
and we started thinking, Well,

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now that IPCC has recognized biochar
as a carbon removal solution,

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that was just the year before,

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what if we added carbon credits
to the agricultural business

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case of biochar? And we started
playing around almost as a game.

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And then after a few weeks we were very
excited and after two or three months we

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had the business plan and I decided
to quit my job and launched Net Zero.

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How have your years at BCG
helped you in launching Net Zero?

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Well, yeah, I spent a lot of time
at BCG. I was there for 23 years.

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So that's really, really prepared.

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I think it's many things.

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The first thing is when we thought
about how to build a business plan

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that can be profitable,
scalable, defendable,

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of course here you're on the
kind of strategy part of BCG.

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And so I leveraged my
years of doing such things.

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The second thing is when you
start with just a deck of slides,

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they can be very good,

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and I think we had done a pretty
good job at wrapping up our idea,

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but you need to convince people
you need to mobilize them

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for people willing to join
the company, for people,

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try to invest in the company,
and so on. And so those skills,

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of course when you've been an MDP
at BCG for some time, you know,

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have a bit of that. And then
there was a whole network.

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The BCG network proved
absolutely incredible.

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Some people wrote,

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you know started to participate in the
company some people put me in contact

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with their clients and basically I
saw the power and actually the global

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reach of BCG to all kinds of people that,

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and immediately were talking to the senior
people in the right companies and so

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on. And so that this has been
very, very, very helpful.

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And I would say the last thing that
was announced just a few days ago BCG

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is our first client for
carbon credits. And so BCG,

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as part of the global commitment of
BCG to be net zero and to help develop

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solutions well,

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was kind enough to trust us at the early
days when we were not certified yet.

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And so we actually delivered ten days
ago our first carbon rates to BCG.

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So I think it's a very interesting
thing of individuals helping

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a company like NetZero and then
BCG as a corporation helping

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us too. And I hope that
will continue in the future.

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Fantastic. Excellent. Thank you so.