A new vision for reversing global warming

Where climate science meets market design

The Carbon Removal Opportunity

Carbon dioxide removal represents one of the largest emerging markets of the 21st century. The National Academy of Sciences estimates the U.S. alone needs to remove 2 billion tons of CO₂ annually by 2050. Globally, projections reach 10 billion tons per year.

This scale requires significant capital deployment. Desalination plants, wastewater treatment facilities, direct air capture installations, and enhanced mineralization projects each require hundreds of millions in upfront investment. Traditional financing structures make these projects expensive and slow to deploy.

Our Solution

Anthrocene addresses this through three interconnected innovations:

1. Compliant Carbon Removal Marketplace

Our platform creates a transparent, regulated exchange exclusively for verified carbon removal credits. Unlike voluntary carbon markets plagued by quality concerns, our marketplace enforces rigorous standards:

• Third-party verification of actual CO₂ removed
• Durable storage exceeding 100 years
• Clear additionality requirements
• Real-time tracking and retirement of credits

2. Integrated Water Infrastructure Model

Water treatment and desalination facilities offer unique carbon removal opportunities. These capital-intensive projects already require significant financing—we help structure deals that monetize their carbon removal potential alongside traditional revenue streams.

Our model targets:

• New U.S. desalination projects (average $350M investment)
• Global desalination developments (average $600M investment)
• Municipal wastewater infrastructure upgrades
• Industrial water treatment facilities

3. Financial Engineering for Scale

We’ve developed patent-protected financial structures that use asset-backed securities to reduce borrowing costs for carbon removal projects. By securitizing future carbon removal credits, we can typically reduce annual interest rates by 2%—saving tens of millions on large infrastructure projects.

Additionally, projects can access federal incentives like the 45Q tax credit, providing up to $180 per ton of CO₂ permanently stored.

Market Infrastructure

Our Global Carbon Removal Market creates standardized trading mechanisms similar to the Kyoto Protocol’s carbon emissions market but focused exclusively on removal obligations rather than emission reductions. This addresses what the IPCC and U.S. National Academy of Sciences identify as essential: we must remove CO₂, not just limit new emissions.

Market Design Features:

• Standardized removal credit contracts
• Clearinghouse settlement mechanisms
• Credit quality tiers and pricing transparency
• Integration with existing compliance frameworks
• Scalability across multiple jurisdictions

Why Now

Multiple factors are converging to make carbon removal commercially viable:

• Regulatory momentum: California’s SB 643 proposes $50M in public funding for CDR projects, requiring private sector matching funds
• Corporate demand: Tech companies facing 300+ million tons of annual AI-related emissions need high-quality removal credits
• Federal incentives: 45Q tax credits provide economic foundation for removal projects
• Infrastructure needs: Water scarcity is driving $100B+ in desalination investment globally
• Scientific urgency: IPCC pathways to 1.5°C all require significant carbon removal by 2030

The question isn’t whether carbon removal markets will scale—it’s who will build the infrastructure to make it happen. Anthrocene is answering that call.

From climate economics theory to gigatonne-scale solutions

The Challenge

The climate crisis is accelerating. The IPCC’s latest assessment confirms that limiting warming to 1.5°C requires removing 5-10 billion tons of CO₂ annually by 2050—in addition to dramatic emission reductions.

Current voluntary carbon markets have failed to deliver reliable, scalable carbon removal. Quality concerns, lack of compliance frameworks, and insufficient capital deployment have left the carbon removal industry fragmented and underfunded.

Our Approach to Impact

Anthrocene measures impact across three dimensions:

1. Market Infrastructure Built

• Compliant trading platform for verified carbon removal credits
• Financial instruments that reduce project capital costs by ~2% annually
• Standardized contracts and quality verification protocols
• Integration mechanisms with existing compliance frameworks

2. Capital Mobilized

Our target is to facilitate $100M+ in carbon removal project financing within the first 18 months of operations, with pathway to $1B+ in deployed capital by year five. This capital will support:

• Desalination and water treatment facilities incorporating carbon removal
• Direct air capture installations
• Enhanced mineralization and weathering projects
• Biomass carbon removal and storage (BiCRS) initiatives

3. CO₂ Removed

Each dollar deployed through our marketplace translates directly to verified carbon removal. At current removal costs and with our financial innovations:

• $100M in capital → approximately 500,000 – 1,000,000 tons CO₂ removed annually
• $1B in capital → 5 – 10 million tons CO₂ removed annually
• Scale target: facilitate removal of 100+ million tons annually by 2035

Beyond Carbon

Our water infrastructure model creates co-benefits beyond carbon removal:

• Water security: Supporting desalination projects that provide clean water to water-stressed regions
• Economic development: Creating jobs and economic opportunity in infrastructure development
• Technology advancement: Driving innovation in both carbon removal and water treatment technologies
• Policy leadership: Demonstrating compliance-first market design that can serve as model for regulatory frameworks globally

Market Transformation

Success for Anthrocene means fundamentally transforming how capital flows into carbon removal:

Current state:

• Fragmented voluntary markets with quality concerns
• Limited investor confidence in carbon credits
• High capital costs preventing project deployment
• Slow technology scale-up

Future state (Anthrocene goal):

• Transparent, compliant marketplace with standardized quality
• Institutional capital flowing confidently into removal projects
• Financial innovations reducing project costs
• Rapid deployment of diverse removal technologies at scale

Why Our Impact Matters

Dr. Chichilnisky’s carbon market design for the Kyoto Protocol enabled over $600 billion in emissions trading and demonstrated that properly structured markets can mobilize capital at scale. The carbon removal challenge is even larger—and even more urgent.

By building the compliant marketplace infrastructure the climate crisis demands, Anthrocene aims to unlock the trillions in capital required to remove atmospheric CO₂ at gigatonne scale. This isn’t incremental improvement—it’s building the economic foundation for climate reversal.

The stakes are clear. The solution is markets that work. The time is now.

Dr. Graciela Chichilnisky is a pioneering economist whose work fundamentally shaped global climate policy and carbon markets as we know them today.

Climate Markets Pioneer

Dr. Chichilnisky created the carbon market mechanisms embedded in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, establishing the first global framework for trading emission reduction obligations across more than 160 nations. Her market design innovations enabled over $600 billion in carbon trading activity and created the blueprint for emissions markets worldwide, including the European Union Emissions Trading System.

In 2010, the Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) acquired the Chicago Climate Exchange and European Climate Exchange for $606.7 million, validating the commercial viability of the carbon market structures Dr. Chichilnisky pioneered.

Academic Leadership

Currently serving on the faculty at Columbia University, Dr. Chichilnisky holds appointments at both the Columbia Consortium for Risk Management and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research (SIEPR). Her academic work spans economics, mathematics, and climate science, with groundbreaking contributions to sustainable development theory, intergenerational equity (the “Chichilnisky Criterion”), mathematical economics, resource allocation under uncertainty, and climate change economics.

Her work on sustainable preferences balancing present needs with future welfare directly addresses the fundamental challenge of climate policy: how do we make decisions today that properly value outcomes centuries from now? This research, published in leading journals including Social Choice and Welfare and Land Economics, provides the theoretical foundation for long-term climate investments.

A 2017 study in Climate Change Economics co-authored by Dr. Chichilnisky demonstrated that climate policies designed with her criterion favor earlier, more aggressive emission reductions compared to standard economic models, precisely the approach climate science now shows is necessary.

Innovation and Patents

Dr. Chichilnisky holds multiple patents relevant to climate finance and carbon markets. Her Asset-Backed Securities for Carbon Removal (US Patent #2553191, 2023) provides financial structures that reduce capital costs for removal projects. Her Global Carbon Removal Market patent (US Patent #US11983724) establishes trading mechanisms for removal obligations rather than emission limits.

Recognition

Dr. Chichilnisky previously served as Advisor to the United Nations Foundation and has been a keynote speaker at COP conferences and World Economic Forum events. She has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals across economics, mathematics, and climate science.

Education

Ph.D. in Economics from University of California, Berkeley and Master’s degree in Mathematics from MIT.

Why Anthrocene

“We designed the first global carbon market for emission reductions,” Dr. Chichilnisky explains. “But climate science has evolved. We now know reduction alone isn’t enough. We must remove CO₂ already in the atmosphere. Anthrocene applies decades of market design experience to this next phase: building compliant, scalable infrastructure for carbon removal at the gigatonne scale we need.”

With Anthrocene, Dr. Chichilnisky is once again pioneering the market structures the climate crisis demands.