Mid-April, the inaugural edition of the Africa Carbon Removal Summit took place in Nairobi, Kenya, attracting over 80 people from governments, start-ups, investors, and academia. The event was organised by the Kuehne Climate Center, Carbon Removal Kenya, the Africa Carbon Removal Accelerator, the Office of Kenya’s Special Envoy for Climate, Ocean-Climate Innovation Hub Kenya, Heriot Watt University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The event boasted a packed three-day programme, the first day featuring a high level reception to discuss Africa’s role in shaping the carbon dioxide removal (CDR) sector and the African red carpet premiere of Legion 44’s carbon removal documentary. The second day focused on uncovering current challenges and hurdles for carbon removal in Africa, and actionable solutions to address these. The third day brought summit participants on site visits to see ongoing CDR projects in the Rift Valley.
HW colleagues from the Research Centre for Carbon Solutions were particularly involved in organising the workshop, following successful workshops hosted in Washington, DC and Oxford, UK last year. Mijndert van der Spek, Associate Professor in the School of Engineering and Physical Sciences explains: “the Washington and Oxford workshops were geared towards understanding pressing research and education needs from folks leading CDR in Europe and North America. The Kenya workshop had a wider scope and included developing solutions to current policy, market, and supply chain hurdles, next to understanding knowledge and workforce gaps”.
“There was tremendous energy among the participants, and most can’t wait to scale their carbon removal approaches on the African content”, Van der Spek continues, “but as in Europe and North America, the context for carbon removal is still developing, and supporting policies and markets are largely to be created. The thing that struck me most was the enthusiasm, high level of knowledge, and appetite to make this work across the participants, really very motivating to see”.
The high-level reception also saw the launch of Carbon Removal Kenya and the first cohort of start-ups under the Africa Carbon Removal Accelerator. Fiona Mugambi of Octavia Carbon, Global South’s first direct air capture company, and from Carbon Removal Kenya: “We’re no longer debating why we need carbon dioxide removal. We are now actively implementing pilot projects in the world’s best location to scale these critical technologies.” Ingrid Schulte of the Kühne Climate Center was one of the initiators: “A goal of the summit was to catalyze the growing CDR ecosystem in Africa, and I think we achieved that. It was fantastic to have so many people in the room who brought different perspectives on CDR. We had participants from across the African continent, people who were familiar with CDR, people who were new, participants who were working in adjacent sectors, and experts on different CDR pathways including both terrestrial and marine CDR”.
The summit is a great example of the global impact Heriot Watt colleagues have on addressing climate change in a bottom up fashion, and on working on a just and equitable transition towards a zero-carbon society for all.