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“All of us can play a part in solving these crazy, huge problems. There is no exception to the rule. We are all equal players if we apply ourselves.”


~ Jaeson Cardiff, Microscale carbon capture innovator 


Jaeson Cardiff has been involved in the heating industry as a plumber and gas fitter for over 20 years. Early on, he realized that building heating systems account for a large share of global emissions and he co-founded CleanO2 with the goal of decarbonizing the heating industry. Today, the company’s CarbinX™ technology captures the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide and converts it into a valuable ingredient used in consumer and commercial products. An avid fan of land speed racing and former racer, he can often be seen supporting his father, the current Bonneville Salt Flats record holder. 

Could you explain what CleanO2 does?


CleanO2 was founded in 2017, but we've been working on the technology since 2005. The purpose of the technology that we've developed is not only to reduce greenhouse gasses through direct capture, but also to utilize those emissions and turn them into valuable products. We also want to engage communities and encourage them to have discussions around what carbon capture means. What is it? How does it relate to the average person who's trying to do better by the environment?

You have somewhat of an atypical background for a CCU start-up co-founder. Could you tell me a bit more about CleanO2’s origin story?


I've always been interested in innovation, and I think I get that from my dad – I spent a fair bit of time watching him build stuff, and I was always enamored with the idea of creating solutions for problems. I ended up becoming a plumber and gas fitter here in Calgary, and gradually found myself spending more and more time in mechanical rooms. 


I noticed that there were a lot of discussions going on around carbon emissions, but those discussions were largely focused on transportation and energy sectors. They weren't really addressing these smaller aggregated sources of greenhouse gasses (GHG), and 70-80% of the market share for heating appliances in Canada belong to natural gas. It's roughly the same for parts of the eastern seaboard of the United States, and from a percentage of GHG emissions, both in Canada and the US, roughly 13-16% of the emissions being generated come from these smaller aggregated sources. Yet when you talked to manufacturers about where they saw the future of the heating industry in terms of addressing carbon emissions, there didn't seem to be any clear answer in 2005. It's only really been in the last five years that these agencies and organizations have started to take a stronger interest in addressing this. 


I decided to learn more. I wasn’t planning on creating a company and building a piece of technology that can have a positive sustainability impact. It was more that I wondered what I would need to do from a career perspective if I'm in a changing industry. The more time I spent trying to answer that question, the more I realized that there may be an opportunity to explore something.


CarbinXvideo  screen shot

I started collecting people far smarter than I am to answer the question of what we are going to do with carbon emissions and here we are, 18 years later, with the first commercialized piece of equipment that's designed to capture carbon emissions and convert them into a commodity that can be used to make all manner of products. We've worked with 13 different gas utilities, we're spread out between three different countries, and we're constantly expanding to collect people and organizations to help make this a better story and working with other organizations for guidance on what to do with carbon emissions.

Could you tell me some about the challenges you faced and how you've overcome them?


Credibility and biases have always been huge issues. Again, going back to 2005 when they started talking about carbon emissions, nobody was looking at emissions on these smaller scales. They were looking at it from a management perspective by increasing efficiency, and thereby indirectly reducing emissions was sort of the avenue that was largely being played out. 


At one point, when I was still working as a plumber and gas fitter, I went to a conference and was surrounded by engineers, scientists and academics from various universities and think tanks. There were all sorts of jokes about how the plumber should be in the bathroom fixing the plumbing. There were also some comments about how the carbon market will never mature, but how I choose to spend my time is my business. That's the comment that stuck with me the most. I thought, “Isn't that funny. This is a scientist who's supposed to be supporting sustainability actions at a US carbon conference to reduce emissions, and he's saying it's never going to amount to much.” 

The challenge today is market adoption, as the heating industry is very slow to adopt radical change. If you look at most boilers that are manufactured today, the innovation that's occurred in this space has been minimal; there have been minor design tweaks in terms of increasing efficiencies, but there really hasn't been any effort to address carbon emissions directly to date. 


I will say, though, that we are in the process of working with a major boiler manufacturer out of the United States that's going to help partner with us and scale things up. Largely, it's still an unanswered question, and we seem to be the only ones with a commercialized product. There are certainly some early-stage companies that are approaching this and are doing some remarkable work, and we certainly believe in collaboration. We also believe in competition, which promotes growth and helps get things moving, in my opinion.

Jaeson Cardiff from video about turning pollution into soap

How did you address the credibility issue that you faced early on?


Everybody has talents. My talent is storytelling. If you can tell a compelling story to somebody who's marginally interested in a certain topic and engage them with that story, then they’ll want to be a part of that story. That's the mechanism that I've used – storytelling to find people that have skill sets that I don't, to join this story so that we can all move together towards accomplishing a common goal. 


All of the people that I've surrounded myself with fill in a certain credible portion of our story, so that when we present to the world, it's backed by people with the ability to say ”Yes, this is valid. Yes, this has merit. And yes, we should do this together.”


That's how we've been able to resolve the credibility issue. 

If the number of interviews and podcasts you’ve done is any indicator, you are definitely a great storyteller! 


Thank you, and as an executive of this team obviously I want to use storytelling to keep this company moving forward, but I also want to use it as a leverage point to inspire others. All of us can play a part in solving these crazy, huge problems. All of us can–there is no exception to the rule. We are all equal players if we apply ourselves. That’s one of the messages I want to relay to inspire others to help solve problems like climate change, homelessness, or food shortages. I hope there’s some mechanism there where we can all inspire each other to do something.


Learn more about Jaeson:

From Plumber To Cleantech Inventor And Entrepreneur

This big black box turns the CO2 emissions from a hot shower into soap

News in a Nutshell

Engineers need a sustainability education


President Biden Issues A Carbon Management Challenge


California Researchers Attempt Ocean Climate Solution


As US bets big on carbon capture, Climeworks outlines necessity of removal technologies


Energy decarbonization requires an all-of-the-above approach

Imminent Events

Foundation for Climate Restoration's Fifth Annual Climate Restoration Forum

May 13, 2023


Join to hear from young people about their hopes for the future and what actions we need to take today. Key leaders from fields including climate policy, solutions, and climate justice will update our audience on the progress we’ve seen over the past year and the hurdles that remain

TEA/LCA Workshop on Harmonizing CCUS Assessments

May 16-18, 2023


This fifth workshop in the series is planned and conducted by the International CCUS Assessment Harmonization Group with members from the USA (GCI at U-MNETLNRELANL), Canada (NRC), Germany (RIFS, formerly known as IASS), Switzerland (ETH Zürich), and Japan (NIAIST). We are looking forward to one-and-a-half days of intense dialog and work that will advance transparent and uniform assessments of CCUS technologies and products. Virtual participation is still available.

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