Our Goal Our Methods How We Engage

How We Work

We focus our charitable efforts on projects that remove, store, or prevent greenhouse gas emissions.

Short and long term impact

We research, develop, and support carbon containment strategies with large-scale implementation potential. One of our short-term goals is to apply our expertise to support the capture and abatement of short-lived climate pollutants (such as methane and HFCs with an equivalent climate benefit of 30 million metric tons of CO₂) by 2030 at an average cost of less than $25 per ton. One of our long-term goals is to support the removal and mitigation of the equivalent of 1 billion metric tons of CO₂ by 2050 at an average cost of less than $75 per ton.

Working with partners

We partner widely, and look for inspiration from academics, practitioners, past efforts, and parallel fields. Our work is informed and shaped by the practitioners, entrepreneurs, and companies that will bring them to scale.

Our Methods

Carbon Containment Methods

Carbon containment means carbon dioxide removal, abatement and avoidance of greenhouse gas emissions. Learn more below.

Containment

Holding CO₂ in a stable state (for example buried wood) and preventing new carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere through decay or combustion.

1
Processing

Eliminating emissions through safe, durable, and verifiable methods that use or destroy the gas.

2
Avoided Emissions

Preventing emissions from entering the atmosphere through reductions and avoided emissions.

3

Containment

Holding CO₂ in a stable state (for example buried wood) and preventing new carbon emissions from entering the atmosphere through decay or combustion.

1

Removal
Removing carbon from the air or water. Includes photosynthesis, Direct Air Carbon Capture (DACC) and aqueous carbon removal via enhanced weathering.

Capture
Gathering emissions from a point source. Includes emissions from mines and landfills, as well as bioenergy and carbon capture.

Storage
Safely and durably holding carbon. Includes underground injection of CO₂ and wood carbon preservation.
Processing

Eliminating emissions through safe, durable, and verifiable methods that use or destroy the gas.

2

Use
Using CO₂ or CH₄ as a product, fuel, or for another valuable end use. Includes bioenergy and mass timber.

Destruction
Destroying greenhouse gases by combustion, incineration, or oxidation. Includes using existing technologies such as flares and regenerative thermal oxidation.
Avoided Emissions

Preventing emissions from entering the atmosphere through reductions and avoided emissions.

3

Abatement
Reducing emissions using new strategies or approaches to lessen emissions from an activity or process.

Low-Cost

Verifiable

Scalable

Practicable

Novel or Neglected

Resource-Efficient

Safe & Benign

Regulatorily Feasible

Project Vetting and Criteria

We screen the types of solutions that our scientific research and educational activities encourage against a rigorous and comprehensive list of criteria. Among other considerations, these criteria shape our analysis and evaluation of a potential technology’s risks, advantages, potential to scale, and whether the carbon to be removed or stored can be verifiably measured.

Project Economics

From the start, we undertake a rigorous analysis to evaluate potential projects to ensure they are scalable and can be deployed at low-cost. New projects and technologies are designed with economics considered from the outset. We also review neglected technologies where changing market conditions might now allow for deployment. We publicize our findings.

Project Life Cycle and Impact

When analyzing and designing solutions, we consider ecological, human, and industrial systems. This work uses a full life cycle perspective, applying techno-economic, environmental, and social impact assessments.

How We Engage

Engaging in Emerging Markets

Our team engages with these nascent markets in several ways, including participation in integrity initiatives and composing or reviewing project methodologies.

Our work helps ensure projects' removals or reductions can be rigorously measured, reported, and verified — essential characteristics for any market-based actors. Our team also monitors and educates on developments in the voluntary carbon markets including major buyers, key suppliers, and emerging marketplaces.

Connecting Innovators with Practitioners

Sometimes, the biggest breakthroughs come from having the right people around the table. Our team draws upon deep connections in the private sector, scientific, and investment communities.

Sponsored Research

We sponsor research with leading experts in carbon containment, with a focus on unlocking scientific and technical knowledge that could reduce costs or scale of climate solutions. We also conduct research sponsored by others.

As a mission-driven nonprofit organization, it is the policy of the Carbon Containment Lab to pay no more than 10 percent overhead fee to sponsored research projects being conducted by partners as directed by the Carbon Containment Lab (as of April 16, 2024).

Meeting collaborators in the field. (CC Lab, 2022)

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Frequently Asked Questions

We use “carbon containment” to refer to activities that remove, mitigate, and/or sequester carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. We focus our scientific research and educational efforts on carbon containment methods that either enhance or are additional to natural processes such as photosynthesis.

The CC Lab is a 501(c)(3) non-profit. Our scientific research and educational activities advance the design, testing, and implementation of novel and neglected carbon containment. We seek to support not just one stakeholder but entire ecosystems with rigorous research, analysis, and initiative-building.

In our first four years, we’ve:

— Run nationwide field experiments to test the viability of methods that delay or prevent the decomposition of woody biomass and partnered with leading practitioners to pilot these methods

— Encouraged the reduction of methane emissions at active and abandoned coal mines in the US

— Developed and published a draft methodology for the generation of emissions reductions from the recovery and destruction of hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants

— Conducted feasibility assessments for a carbon sequestration hub in the Pacific Northwest

— Sponsored research with leading Yale labs to develop novel technologies for carbon removal, methane destruction, and fluorocarbon decomposition

— Used aero-geophysical surveys and remote sensing technologies to study the potential for carbon mineralization in basalts

You can visit our Biologic, Geologic, and Anthropogenic Program pages to learn more about these and other past and ongoing projects. We are excited to accelerate our pace and expand our reach.

The CC Lab selects focus areas where clear, tractable bottlenecks are holding back large-scale emissions reduction or removal efforts. We investigate either emission sources (such as cooling equipment) or technology categories (such as ex situ carbon mineralization), looking for high-impact, system-level problems that an independent nonprofit is uniquely suited to solve. Then we apply scientific, entrepreneurial, and investment expertise to assess potential solutions against a set of eight criteria: low-cost, verifiable, scalable, practicable, novel or neglected, resource-efficient, safe and benign, and regulatorily feasible.

We are always looking for interesting problems and opportunities to take up. In addition to novel systems, we also consider neglected or transferable solutions. If you think there’s a carbon containment method we should be considering, please email info@cclab.org.

We aspire that our work will unlock carbon containment. We set our goals for carbon containment quantitatively, measured in metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent (MTCO2e): a near-term goal of 30 million MTCO2e contained by 2030, and 500 million MTCO2e contained by 2050.

Yes! We are always eager to broaden our network of collaborators. If you are interested in working with the CC Lab, or gathering more information about us, please email info@cclab.org.

The CC Lab is funded entirely with individual gifts and grants.

The CC Lab was founded within the Yale School of the Environment in 2020, and spun out into an independent entity in February 2024. To learn more about the spin-out and our relationship to Yale moving forward, you can read a Yale School of the Environment Q&A with our founder Dean Takahashi here.

Currently, the CC Lab is not a grant-making organization, although we have funded external research, experimentation, and testing and plan to continue doing so.

The CC Lab neither is nor plans to be a carbon credit registry. We are also not validators, verifiers, or developers of carbon credit projects.

Although we engage with market stakeholders in pursuit of scaled carbon containment, we do so as an independent nonprofit without financial interest.