A Q&A with Jan Huckfeldt, AirMyne’s new interim Chief Commercial Officer
Dr. Jan Huckfeldt has several years of experience in Direct Air Capture (DAC), most recently as Climeworks’ Chief Commercial Officer. We are so excited to welcome Jan to the AirMyne team as our new interim Chief Commercial Officer.
We sat down with Jan to dig into some of the key challenges present in our industry, covering topics ranging from the role of materials science in DAC to advice for executives building carbon removal portfolios.
Can you share a little about yourself & how you got involved in Direct Air Capture?
I have a PhD in Polymer Chemistry. Prior to getting into the climate space, I worked as Chief Marketing Officer at Motorola, and held various roles at global corporations including Proctor & Gamble, Lenovo, and Hewlett Packard.
Around 6 years ago I became increasingly worried about the climate crisis. My wife and I have 5 children in our household and the thought of the future we’re leaving behind for them made me want to be part of the climate solution and not the problem. My first introduction to Direct Air Capture was through Climeworks – I first consulted with them on the brand side and later joined as their Chief Commercial Officer. I’ve now joined AirMyne as their interim Chief Commercial Officer.
What is it like working inside a Direct Air Capture company?
It’s extremely fun. DAC is the highest quality carbon removal that exists, and it’s a vital part of the climate solution.
It is also a really tough nut to crack. The challenges from lab to pilot to demo to first-of-a-kind are manyfold. After you get to a first-of-a-kind commercially deployment, you need to operate 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, under real life conditions, which gets completely underestimated by most.
What do you think are the ideal power sources for Direct Air Capture, and does that have implications for what DAC technologies might have a real pathway to success?
The obvious is that it needs to be renewable energy otherwise it defeats the purpose. And then for Direct Air Capture you need both thermal energy as well as electricity. Within thermal energy, geothermal, thermal solar, and nuclear are the ideal sources.
On the other hand, I’m convinced we need to be pragmatic about it. If in the short term there is no access to these energy sources, then take what is available, as long as there is a pathway to using these renewable sources later on. It’s speed over perfection — I think this pragmatism is what is needed.
Many folks spend a lot of time trying to follow the latest materials science innovations in DAC, thinking that is the key to making it work. What, if anything, matters more than Materials science?
Materials science is a component, but from a breakthrough material to a climate relevant, large-scale production there are so many challenges. And that easily takes 20 years from your breakthrough sorbent material which you are rightly proud of, to then get to that full scale. The material itself is maybe just the beginning. That’s why I particularly like AirMyne’s approach of working backwards from existing large-scale chemical and refinery processes to what does it actually take and therefore what do my systems need to look like. That kind of pragmatic systems engineering is much more likely to make it out of the lab and to commercially viable scales.
What advice or insights would you share with executives who want to get involved in DAC and do it the right way, given the constraints they face & where the DAC technologies are today?
It’s a little bit like putting together a financial portfolio. You want to have a risk balanced portfolio of carbon dioxide removal solutions that is future-proof, aiming to build a portfolio that will withstand time, and with a quality that improves over time. Meaning you might be starting with less Direct Air Capture to start (due to high short-term pricing) but more down the line – regulation will be pushing very hard for highest permanence. Conversely nature based solutions might take the lion’s share at the beginning and then later you will phase them out.
It’ll be important to build a portfolio of CDR that is balanced and risk mitigated with highest quality Direct Air Capture as a future-proof cornerstone of your portfolio. Start now: a) to have your foot in the door given the supply gap in 2030s, b) to learn, and c) to enable growth (without demand from the buyers’ side, there is no market or funding to scale – currently, Microsoft is generating upwards of 70% of this demand).
And start now even if you can only make a moderate purchase or investment. There is no planet B.
Thank you to Jan for making time to sit down with us, we’re really excited to have him on board at AirMyne. And for more, give us a follow on Linkedin here.
