Turning Roads into Carbon Sinks with Carbon Crusher
Haakon Brunell is the CEO and Co-founder of Carbon Crusher, a Norwegian company turning traditional road construction on its head. Carbon Crusher refurbishes existing roads using bio-based binders and on-site recycling to create carbon-negative, cost-effective, and more durable infrastructure.
In this episode, Haakon shares how their "Crushing-as-a-Service" model and SkyRoads AI platform reduce emissions, increase road longevity, and drive down costs. He explains why roads are both a climate problem and a climate opportunity—and how Carbon Crusher plans to sequester a gigaton of CO₂ by 2035.
MCJ is an investor in Carbon Crusher, having participated in the company's seed round back in 2022 when it emerged from Y Combinator. Guest hosting for the first time on this episode is MCJ Partner, Thai Nguyen.
Enjoy the show!
Episode recorded on May 13, 2025 (Published on June 23, 2025)
In this episode, we cover:
[02:23] Launching Carbon Crusher out of Y Combinator
[05:22] An overview of Carbon Crusher
[06:15] Roads as a climate problem and carbon sink opportunity
[08:21] Emissions from traditional road refurbishment
[09:41] Carbon Crusher's 3 pillars: crushing, bio-binders, and AI platform
[12:52] Why roads are now stronger, cheaper, and greener
[14:14] Customer mindset in a conservative industry
[17:49] Origin story from winter-damaged roads in Norway
[21:12] Performance in both cold and hot weather climates
[22:53] Customers include cities, counties, and private road owners
[26:12] SkyRoads AI helps digitize and plan road maintenance
[28:45] Challenges: regulation and conservative decision-making
[30:53] Vision: sequestering a gigaton of CO₂ by 2035
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Thai Nguyen (00:00):
Today on Inevitabl, our guest is Haakon Brunell, CEO and co-founder of Carbon Crusher. Carbon Crusher is transforming yesterday's fossil-based roads into carbon-negative, cost-effective and more durable infrastructure for the future. The company not only offers road refurbishment services, dubbed Crushing-As-A-Service, but also develops new carbon-negative bio-based binder solutions and an AI-powered road management platform called SkyRoads.
Thai Nguyen (00:29):
MCJ is an investor in Carbon Crusher, having participated in the company's seed round back in 2022 when it emerged from Y Combinator. One of a handful of extraordinary Norwegian founders I've had the pleasure of getting to know Haakon, began his career as a consultant at McKinsey, before concerns about climate change and the impact it would have on his young children inspired him to embark on founding Carbon Crusher. Haakon and I discussed the long history of roads, their vast global footprints, and the emissions associated with maintaining them. We also talk about how Carbon Crusher has developed a solution that innovates along multiple dimensions to deliver a product that's not only more sustainable, but also makes economic sense for the municipalities and private road owners the company serves.
Thai Nguyen (01:15):
Guest hosting for the very first time, I'm Thai Nguyen, one of the partners at MCJ, and this is Inevitable.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
Climate change is inevitable, it's already here, but so are the solutions shaping our future. Join us every week to learn from experts and entrepreneurs about the transition of energy and industry.
Thai Nguyen (01:45):
Haakon Brunell, welcome to Inevitable. How are you, sir?
Haakon Brunell (01:48):
Hey Thai, how are you? Good to be here. Thank you so much.
Thai Nguyen (01:52):
It's wonderful to see you. I know that this interview has been a long time coming. I'm just so happy we're able to find an opportunity to connect.
Haakon Brunell (02:00):
Good things is worth waiting for, right? It's an honor to be on this podcast. You guys are amazing and the community you have and what you're doing for the whole climate space, it's just we love it, so it's an honor to be here, man.
Thai Nguyen (02:10):
Thank you. I'll let the audience know, as a disclaimer, we are very proud investors in Carbon Crusher. I think we met maybe three years ago around this time as you guys were coming out of Y Combinator.
Haakon Brunell (02:23):
Yeah, I think so as well. That was quite a ride. We were a small group of naive climate Vikings from Norway, I think we were the fifth company ever to join Y Combinator and it was an amazing journey. We had a fantastic response afterwards, so we were lucky to have great people like you guys join, so definitely. And it's been quite a ride since then as well, so it's awesome to be here now.
Thai Nguyen (02:42):
Climate Vikings, I feel like that needs to be on a hat or T-shirt, I would proudly wear that.
Haakon Brunell (02:48):
We made a climate Viking thing, we had to market ourselves again. Norwegians typically are quite shy and introvert, the only time we will get Norwegians to talk is either in the skiing slope or going hiking or very drunk. But yeah, so we had come out of the shell, maybe we should make hats with it. You'll be the first one to get the Climate Viking hat with the horns and everything.
Thai Nguyen (03:09):
Oh boy, I would love it. I would wear it almost every day.
Haakon Brunell (03:12):
We used to have Carbon Crusher hats, so we should maybe have one with the horn as well.
Thai Nguyen (03:15):
That'd be perfect. Might be a little bit difficult getting through TSA if it's too pointy, but definitely making a fashion statement there. You mentioned that you're based in Norway. Whereabouts?
Haakon Brunell (03:27):
Formal headquarters is something called the Hjartdal, which translates into Heart Valley, which is technically in the middle of southern Norway in the mountainous regions. Our white-collar satellite office is in Oslo in the capital. We originate from Hjartdal, Heart Valley. We're bringing the heart to Silicon Valley, from Heart Valley to Silicon Valley. Really a small place, couple hundred people, but it's good to stay there because supporting the community and also we get a nice tax break, so it's all good and we also have quite some presence. Still quite tiny though a company, but still a quarter around the US, some of us spread around in Europe working remote.
Thai Nguyen (04:03):
That's awesome. You mentioned Norway's a small country, but I have to share with the audience that Carbon Crusher is one of two Norwegian companies we have in our portfolio. In fact, I think it was Henrik Langeland of Enode that originally introduced us.
Haakon Brunell (04:19):
Yeah, he's a great guy. The whole climate tech scene has been doing fairly well over last years. Henrik is great. There's a few great founders out there. The other Y Combinator alums as well, Fredrik Thomassen and the likes, they're awesome guys.
Thai Nguyen (04:34):
That's great. Well, shout out to Henrik if he's listening. He's been incredibly helpful and we're so grateful for him to make the introduction to you and the team. Henrik was in Boston I think earlier this year and we grabbed lunch, he was sharing with me everything that's happening in the startup scene in Norway and some of the legislation I think that is impacting entrepreneurs, and it was really insightful.
Thai Nguyen (05:18):
But why don't we dive deep into the big topic at hand is what is Carbon Crusher?
Haakon Brunell (05:22):
We are a road refurbishment company, but a little bit untraditional road refurbishment company. So, our mission is to move the planet from gray to green, one road at a time. It's our take on the climate challenge. So, basically we refurbish roads in a way where we get stronger, cheaper and net carbon negative result out of it. That's it basically.
Haakon Brunell (05:45):
We figured when we started the company we were looking for a way to have a solution that could contribute materially to the climate challenge, and roads happened to be the biggest man-made structure in the Anthropocene and it's the structure that covers the most surface on the planet. So, we covered our planet with this, roads are great, they're more of a contributor to climate challenge than a part of the solution. That's how we think about it. Then there's 70 million kilometers of them circumventing the earth three or four times.
Haakon Brunell (06:15):
If you can take roads and actually improve them, and while doing that on a net unit level also sequester and store and take out carbon and use the roads as carbon sinks and carbon sequestrations, then that would be great, and if you can do that at a cost which is good for the customers as well, then you have something, and that's where we started and we figured we had a way to do that, that we can build on, and that's what we've been doing for the last three plus some years.
Thai Nguyen (06:43):
You mentioned roads are one of the most expansive man-made assets out there. Obviously they've been around for many millennia. Do you see them as a contributor to emissions, or do you see them mostly as an opportunity to sequester emissions?
Haakon Brunell (07:00):
Definitely both. Roads are really great, it's like the lifeline of civilization, so it's like everything we build, it's always two sides of the coin. The Romans were really the big road builders. Two things they used it for obviously was war and trade and they were amazing traders and amazing warriors. So, since the Roman age hasn't been much innovation in this space, and that's also really why we're focusing on road refurbishment and why that's a neat part of our solution is that we don't build new rads. Building roads is super emitting.
Haakon Brunell (07:28):
The construction industry is one of the biggest contributors to the global emissions, as you're very well aware of, and building roads is a big part of that. When you look at the refurbishment part, taking the roads that already are there and improving them, that's improving infrastructure, it's potentially saving lives, it's making the civilization run smoother. So, if you can do more of that and do less of the new builds, then we think that's great, that's a win-win for the planet. That's what we do. So, it's definitely both. We need to have them, and it's good to have green, carbon negative roads all around the place and make the plant green and balanced, rather than using the most emitting methods.
Thai Nguyen (08:06):
For folks like myself that don't know very much of anything about how roads are made or maintained, where do those emissions come from? Is it in the paving of the roads, or is it the material that goes into, say, the asphalt?
Haakon Brunell (08:21):
It's definitely both and some more. If you look at the traditional road refurbishment as an example, since that's where we're playing, the bulk of the emission is demolishing a road, transporting out the materials, extracting new materials, road materials stolen from the stone yard, transporting that in into the road. So, that whole value chain is a big portion of it.
Haakon Brunell (08:43):
Typically we look at 15 to 20 kilos emitted per square meter in refurbishments. A majority of that is really the whole extraction and transportation and bringing new materials, and then another big chunk of that is the whole supply chain of extracting heavy oil from Venezuela and refining it and taking the heaviest part of that out of the refinery, bringing it to the site, hot mixing it, so you have to have energy to do that. Mixing it together with the base material on site, laying it out, and that's even before the asphalt and then the asphalt comes on top, which is an additional set of emissions on top of what I just mentioned.
Haakon Brunell (09:20):
So, what we do is basically that we eliminate most of those emissions, and the way we do it is Carbon Crusher is built on three pillars. So, one is crushing and recycling. Rather than crushing and bringing new materials and all that, we recycle all the raw materials on the spot with our crusher. You eliminate that whole part of the carbon accounts. So, that's number one.
Haakon Brunell (09:41):
And then second thing we do is using biocarbons, biopolymers instead of fossil traditional binders to stabilize road base. That eliminates the whole heavy oil, not only from Venezuela but from wherever you have heavy oil in the world, and there's just a lot of it in Venezuela. You take away all that supply chain, and you replace that with taking byproducts from paper mills. We also use other types of biochar, other types of biocarbons that are readily available local and cold mix it into the road, so we reduce the energy usage as well. So, all of that brings the emissions from 15 to 20 kilos, now we're talking road refurbishment, comparable to what we do. And there's a lot of different things we can do with road, but this is the most comparable type of road refurbishment, and we bring that to almost zero. It's one to two kilos, and that's diesel for the tractor and compactor, et cetera.
Haakon Brunell (10:31):
So, that brings it almost a zero, so that's great. That's emissions avoided, and we like emissions avoided, but what we like even more than emissions avoided is emissions removed. Then removal part comes in and the removal part from us is taking all those biocarbons. This is really the principle that you always use this to take biocarbons that would otherwise be released back into circulation somehow by being burned, used for energy, some places they throw it in the river and it goes back into circulation.
Haakon Brunell (10:55):
We sequester, fixate it into the road base and compact it and it stays there. That brings it to negative for us, from plus 15, 20, it brings it down to minus 10 and more. We can go all the way to minus 50. We can even use the roadsides and bring it even further down. We have roadside sequestration projects that we do in addition. So, that's how we go from plus to minus.
Haakon Brunell (11:16):
By the way, the third pillar of what we do then is deploying this in a carbon and cost-efficient way. We're using software. We have our SkyRoads AI, which we believe is, based on what we've seen, the most [inaudible 00:11:30] road maintenance AI platform that's out there. We're able to identify and look at the condition of the road before, during and after we have intervened and provide the road maintenance for the customer and also detect issues before they know they're there.
Haakon Brunell (11:45):
And then we do it in our lean, we call it crushing as a service model, where we deploy our crusher, our binder, our AI, our expertise, and we work together with local partners wherever they are. So we don't need to ship in costly and emitting equipment around the world. We use what's available locally always, and we come in with minimum, still a little bit. A ton is not that much in the overall refurbishment industry, 10 tons is more [inaudible 00:12:10] or a 100 tons. So we bring in some equipment and then we partner up locally and we deliver projects together with local contractors.
Haakon Brunell (12:17):
So, that's the crushing, the bio and the delivery model with AI and partners. They are three things that enable us to go from plus 15, 20 down to minus 10 to 50, to we have done 100, it's possible, per square meter square and then you just add up on the climate side.
Thai Nguyen (12:32):
That's really interesting. You mentioned how you're enabling roads to be basically carbon negative, so there's a clear sustainability benefit, but earlier you also mentioned that, hey, the roads that you're refurbishing end up being, I think you mentioned, more durable and also cheaper to maintain?
Haakon Brunell (12:52):
Yeah, it's really important, and it's really also part of why we chose to go all in on this and build this company was we were looking for that Kinder Egg approach, where we have white chocolate, brown chocolate and the toy, three things at once. Cheaper, better and the carbon negative.
Haakon Brunell (13:10):
I'm from Norway, all my cars have been electric vehicles. We all have electric vehicles. We're electric vehicles crazy, and it's all because of state subsidies, and Bernie Sanders would be [inaudible 00:13:21]. We are used to this, and sometimes they work really well and all a fan of good subsidies, but if you're scaling up something and you really want to have scale, C-scale quickly, then the best solutions are the ones that are just inherently better and it's of course hard to find. That's what we have.
Haakon Brunell (13:37):
Three years ago we always went around saying that we make roads carbon negative. That was our pitch. Now we make roads stronger, cheaper and carbon negative, because both things are true and it's just like it rings better with... Obviously, it always have rung better with our customers, because maybe not all our investors, but when you go to the customer we are working in the most conservative industry on the planet, perhaps, at least top five. They care about price, then they care about quality. Some pockets here and there, they might care about the environment, and they exist but they're pockets. But of course when you go to the top level, the country level or the company level, construction company, they care about sustainability. This is typical, I guess, for a lot of the industries you guys see, but it's the trickling down effect today, the experienced road engineer out in the field is just extremely layered and thick.
Haakon Brunell (14:50):
It's okay, I also get it, because even though it's fantastic that we do carbon negative roads and we are the first road company in the world which have a carbon negative EPD, and so that's all good and fine, but still for most people when they build roads or refurbish roads to do it because they want the road to last as long as possible, for a low cost as possible, to transport people and vehicles or animals as effective as possible.
Haakon Brunell (15:13):
So, for us, being stronger and being cheaper is a prerequisite. The way we get to that is linked to the method that we described earlier. So, in the cheaper part, just turns out that it's of course environmentally costly to have this complex value chain of bringing materials out, bringing them back in, heavy oil value chain energy, and but it's also costlier. So, we eliminate a lot of cost by recycling on the spot. We eliminate a lot of cost by doing cold mixing instead of hot mixing. We eliminate a lot of cost by not using oil, because oil prices are high. Our oil based products and our bio-waste, biocarbons and biopolymers are actually cheaper, so we save there as well.
Haakon Brunell (15:49):
So all in all, we then make roads, so our roads typically we increase durability, so basically the load bearing capacity, so the amount of tonnage that we can put on any axle of a vehicle passing over the road will increase by 50 to 350%. And we always measure it in terms of increase, so go from 10 to 20 tons per axle, that's amazing by the way. It's typically what we see, and we have roads similar to what we see in Norway. We increase the strength, the load bearing capacity, so it's really good when you have heavy traffic, industrial traffic and all that. And then we'll also increase the longevity, the duration, the service lifetime of the road, and that's typically by two to five to 10X.
Haakon Brunell (16:28):
So, you can have a road that usually lasts for two years before you need to do something, do a material intervention, and with our method it can last for 15 years, or 20 even. And that of course also then, when you look at the cost on the side by side basis, we might be on par, and maybe it's slightly cheaper, and that's sometimes a bit of a challenge because if you're on par, then why do you choose something new? But if you're looking at a 10-year perspective or a 20-year road lifetime perspective, then we are 20 to 70% cheaper. And that's the analysis that we of course need to find clever ways to convey to the customer.
Thai Nguyen (17:00):
As you know, I live in Boston and in New England we're an all weather type of environment, so it's kind of funny, I was driving a couple of days ago and we're basically at the start of the road refurbishing season. It's post winter, so the roads have been exposed to a lot of traffic, they've been exposed to the cold, the snow, all the salt that gets put on them, and now there's all these potholes. And so, what happens over the next few months is all the road pavers and the repair crews are out in full force, so you have a lot of road closures. But I share that story because it's easy to take for granted how critical it is to maintain this key piece of infrastructure, especially in environments where they undergo a lot of stress.
Haakon Brunell (17:49):
Absolutely. The use case that you just described is the origination of Carbon Crusher. In the mountainous regions of southern Norway it's the same. This is season start, we're just starting with our first projects now in Norway, and the origination of the method that we are using in Carbon Crusher, which goes back even some years before we started to work on this as design tech company, but some of our team were there in the beginning, [inaudible 00:18:17] sitting in [inaudible 00:18:18] in Norway, sick and tired of the roads every winter, basically the asphalt would crack up after the frost heave you need to go in and repave or do interventions every year on the same road, and cost a lot of money and just is a pain. So, we figured out, okay, if you can go in and there must be a better way.
Haakon Brunell (18:37):
That's how we started to experiment with different type of crushers, with different type of teeth and materials inside the crusher, different angles with different ways of actually utilizing crushing devices that were used for other types of industrial processes and apply them for this application in particular. So, it's been an ongoing innovation that goes back 18 years for us to compare where we are today, and it has given us what we have today, which is basically a crusher, or actually suite now of crushers, that can crush through the mountain face, the top of the mountain, under the road or huge stones, asphalt, concrete, whatever, it can crushes and mills it up.
Haakon Brunell (19:15):
And then the binder that we use, the metaphor, which is easy, it's not exactly correct, but it's like a nice image of it, is that we are using a bio-based binder which is more bendy. So for the frost and thaw, a road would crack up because it's hard so it cracks, [inaudible 00:19:31] this is more dynamic. It's more linked to the way it works with water, but it's a nice metaphor to understand, because that is really what's happening, so you get the road which is much less susceptible for frost deformation.
Haakon Brunell (19:43):
So, the head of geotesting and carbon pressure, Benoit Loranger, he's done the most advanced research PHD global [inaudible 00:19:50] and there's a fantastic report out basically talking about how our binder and our method is very advantaged towards all frost winter, cold weather. So that's one side. And then you have of course the flip side, which is the other extreme. This is what we get in Boston and in Norway.
Haakon Brunell (20:03):
And then you have in Arizona and in Africa, what do you have there? Well, you have extreme heat and you have flooding. There's similarities, there are temperature variations and water in different forms. Either ice or rain or flooding storm, storm rain. And what we have figured is that the temperature variations for us is our sweet spot. When they get warmer temperatures, we did the first road in the US was three years ago and outside of Phoenix in Dreamy Draw, lovely area out there with a lot of recreational hiking trails, et cetera, horse trails. So, we did the horse trail, horse park [inaudible 00:20:34], we did the road there and it was record heat, dangerously record heat.
Haakon Brunell (20:38):
But the road was great and the road is still amazing and the learning that we were anticipating, and this is some of the work that one of our other research gurus, Robert Dyke, has done, is how weather increases or shortens the curing time and increases the curing and increases the hardening of the road. So, it can be an advantage if you know how to work with it, and apply the right set of moisture and mix of binder and do mix design and all that. It's actually an advantage for us also to work with very warm weather.
Haakon Brunell (21:12):
And then of course the flooding is still a challenge, it's always a challenge. If you build a road, the water is the most important thing to take care of, but you just need to make extra measures on the drainage part, control the waterways, the way the water flows, the angles, the curvatures of the road, and when you do that you basically make sure the water falls off instead of being left on top of the road and then that's fine as well. So, our solution works very well with super cold and very well with super warm weather. That's the short story.
Yin (21:40):
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Yin (22:11):
MCJ Collective connects members with one another with MCJ's portfolio and our broader network. We do this through a powerful member hub, timely introductions, curated events, and a unique talent matchmaking system, and opportunities to learn from peers and podcast guests. We started in 2019 and have grown to thousands of members globally. If you want to learn more, head over to Mcj.vc and click the Membership tab at the top. Thanks and enjoy the rest of the show.
Thai Nguyen (22:42):
Going back to what you mentioned about the project you did with the city of Phoenix, who are your customers? Are they mostly municipalities, or are they other entities?
Haakon Brunell (22:53):
So, it's typically public or private road owners. On the public side it's municipalities, it's cities, counties. On the private side it can be solar park owners, data center owners, wineries and farms, whoever has roads with road refurbishment needs, and then we work together with local contractor partner. So Dreamy Draw, that was the State of Phoenix. We're doing more for them now, and starting with some private customers as well in California and Arizona and Utah and looking at Colorado. So, it's really public and private road owners.
Haakon Brunell (23:24):
It's been most public up until now, but we're starting to work with the private customers. On the private side it's really interesting, because there you actually sometimes also find the type of customers that do care about the carbon side of things. For instance the big tech data center builders, et cetera, and solar farms and wind farms and what have you. That's a super interesting play for us, which we are starting to look at serving some of those and helping them with their needs.
Thai Nguyen (23:51):
And you detailed how there's many different aspects to Carbon Crusher's business. You have the crusher, which is basically innovating, it sounds like, on the actual repair and refurbishment of the roads. There's almost some biochemistry component to what you do, because you have developed this binder which you explain uses biocarbons, that uses materials taken from paper pulp manufacturing plants, and then you mentioned the remote sensing layer to that. What was the name of that service?
Haakon Brunell (24:24):
Skyroads.
Thai Nguyen (24:25):
How do you guys make money?
Haakon Brunell (24:26):
We make money on a per square foot or square meter basis. Typically we prefer as much as possible, when possible, longer term multi-year contracts. Or it can be standalone, and then we scale up with the customer. It's super simple. From a square meter, square feet basis, you get your Skyroads subscription, we come in and we do the road and together with the contractor, and we're left with our part of that margin which is good, then it's improving continuously. So, and all of those three elements that you mentioned, the crusher, the bio and the AI, the software, as we innovate in all of them, they all contribute to our ability to deliver faster, better, higher margin, higher value projects, which also makes it easier for us to collaborate with the contractors and all of that, and add value to what they currently are doing and supply our offering as a co-offering together with them, in addition to what they normally do.
Haakon Brunell (25:20):
It's that combo, those three elements also, that enable us to take this business, which is really, as one of Y Combinator partners eloquently formulated it, making road refurbishment globally defensible, building global defensibility in an industry which up until now has been completely defined by location, taking a CapEx heavy location oriented, direct, low margin industry and we're trying to make it, and we're on a good path now, to making it global function of IP and tech and high margin, and recurring.
Thai Nguyen (25:55):
You have this traditional foundation to your business, which as we talked about before, there is this recurring seasonality of the refurbishing that you provide. On the software layer with Skyroads, what types of insights are most valuable to your customers?
Haakon Brunell (26:12):
We have this dual side to our business all the time. We have this super traditional part of our business that everyone can understand. You can look at our crusher, you can see the road before and after, you can see it being crushed up, but you can see us mix in the binder as we crush the road and we compact it and we can walk it after and it's super easy to understand, which we also like. It's a cool thing and we're doing it now. It's not like something we're developing in five years. We're on the ground crushing roads, taking out carbon, making better roads for people as we speak.
Haakon Brunell (26:42):
On the other end is all the development going into hardware and bio and software development and the utilization of our AI tools before and after. So, the most important insights that we see for now is to take something which is completely analog most places and just digitize it. It's kind of a low-hanging fruit for the moment, to be honest. Because again, as one of our investors put it, we said, "Yeah, we think we are one of very few that are using AI now in road construction." And the response was, "I think you are the only one using computers in road construction." Which is unfair to the Skanksas of the world, they're using computers as well.
Haakon Brunell (27:20):
There's something about the way typically a road is inspected most places, we send out some guys, they drive out in their truck and they look at it and then they go back and have lunch and then they do the other road next day. They of course do a great job, but it's not super efficient. So, when we can have an image analysis doing that job for a 100 roads in the time that you would normally do for one, but just gives the road owner much better way to manage and plan where to do what when.
Haakon Brunell (27:44):
So, I think that is the biggest advantage right now for the customer. And for us, the biggest advantage is that it really enables us when we go into a new area, and we've never done a road in Colorado before, we're working on a big project in East Africa, then we always do the lab design, we take the sample, we bring it back to our laboratory, we analyze the soil, we combine that then with image analysis, so we can look at all the roads, we can run it through our AI and we can get the very solid first-hand picture, and a very solid first hypothesis of how we should structure and deploy our mix design of binders, moisture and all that to make the best end results.
Haakon Brunell (28:20):
So, for us it's just a very good operational branding tool as we work with different types of geographies and soil types and climate types and all that.
Thai Nguyen (28:30):
So, many different parts to Carbon Crusher's business. You have a global footprint at this point, you started off in the Nordics, you've expanded into the US, you just mentioned a project in East Africa. What are the biggest challenges that you guys have to confront?
Haakon Brunell (28:45):
Maybe you just pointed to it, we're 20 people, and we literally get requests from all parts of the world every week, from Alaska to Australia to India to anywhere, japan, but we say no to 19 out of 20 of those, just because we do have to focus. Our biggest or challenge, which has been our biggest challenge for the last three years, I mentioned it also a little bit earlier, but the inertia, the lack of willingness to try out new things in this industry, the bureaucracy, the regulations, that are there for a good reason. I respect regulations, especially when they're an industry which typically you don't really need to change regulations that much, because there's not much innovation, then can be hard for someone coming in with something new which is not in the handbook to now bring that to market.
Haakon Brunell (29:29):
So, it's really [inaudible 00:29:30] regulations and an inertia and lack of agency at the customer decision-making point that are probably the biggest barriers. But that being said, I think also that has been a blessing in disguise for the last three years, because it has enabled us to focus more on building out and developing our hardware, our software, our bio, we have a suite of three patents ongoing, to a level where we... And our business model using AI and partners, this enables us to develop this into a model which is much more efficient in terms of scaling, in terms of having impact on the carbon side and doing many projects well.
Haakon Brunell (30:08):
So, I think it has been good for us. Right now, I feel that we are definitely ready to do the bigger project, going from doing a mile, half a mile here and there, to doing 10 miles, 20 miles, and then [inaudible 00:30:20] contracts with the bigger players. So, this is a very exciting time for us. I think the customer side is in a way ready for that. Although the climate part of, carbon part of our offering of course is typically not as important for some of our customers in the same respect as it was before. But I think those are the three biggest challenges, and I think we're in a good place now to overcome them.
Thai Nguyen (30:42):
When you look through your crystal ball, 10, 20, 30 years down the road, no pun intended, what do you envision and aspire Carbon Crusher to become?
Haakon Brunell (30:53):
Our mission has always been to be in a position where we can take out a billion tons of carbon per year. We think that's possible. We say within 2035 we think we can be there, perhaps not alone. If we use our latest crusher that is coming out now in a couple of months, big excitement around that, and you'll put it to full utilization a year, with the current technology around a thousand of those driving around the world, if we had taken 1% of all the roads that are on the planet, we would be at a gigaton. Of course that's all if and but and [inaudible 00:31:26] by math and all of that, but still it's 1% of all roads. That can sound like a lot of course, because it's still 1%. If there's a gigaton at stake and you really want to find opportunities to take out carbon and we still have to refurbish those roads, then it's definitely possible.
Haakon Brunell (31:40):
And of course we don't have to do that by ourselves. We are happy to be the Tesla of green roads, going first and take a nice portion of that market and having others follow suit, so we can reach that gigaton earlier together with others. I think that's also the way it should and will play out, and that's all good and fine. It's a huge, it's still like hundreds of billions, or even like a trillion-dollar industry we're talking about, and if we're in that scale, so there's definitely space.
Haakon Brunell (32:05):
That's where we're going with our next generation crusher that's coming out soon. We're going there with our AI tool. We're going there with our patent portfolio of bio-binders, and we're deploying that in new ways at scale using both roads and roadsides and working with the strategic type of partners that can really deploy a lot in the short period of time. Because of course up until now we worked most bottom-up, working with municipalities, working with counties, working with cities, working with industrial companies, taking a road there, road there, making sure it works and getting happy customers and doing things the right way, and then now we are a position where we could also, and we are starting to explore that route, is to, okay, but let's go to the huge players in this field that are already out there and refurbishing hundreds of kilometers of road frequently. And we go to them and we say, "Well, are you interested in utilizing our platform? This is our suite of tech that we are deploying."
Haakon Brunell (33:01):
How could we do that in a partnership, and go that route and go to sequester more carbon earlier that way as well. I have three kids now, I believe the climate challenge is definitely real. I used to work as a consultant in McKinsey, I was also partner there and I worked there for eight years and I made oil companies drill faster, and it was a lot of fun working McKinsey by all means, and learned a lot and all that, but I would rather try to really do something with the climate challenge than contribute to making it easier to meet.
Haakon Brunell (33:32):
So anyways, that's where we come into this, and all of us, we are three founders, Kris, Sander and myself, and the small tight company that we have, we're all super mission-driven there. We want to deliver great roads. We think about our customers first and foremost, and we want to do it in a cost-efficient, we believe in the means of using capitalism to scale and all that. Our driving force is really to do that and serve our customers and also serve the next generation and make sure that we can restore some balance to the climate imbalance. All that balance, Thai, isn't it?
Thai Nguyen (34:04):
I like that, that's a mission I can get behind. For those listening that would love to help out in any way possible, where could you guys use assistance? How can they reach out to you?
Haakon Brunell (34:16):
We're always super excited about people that want to help spread the mission and join in in any shape or form. For anyone that are out there that think that what we do is inspiring, we have three parts of our mission. We're moving planet from gray to green one road at a time, making great roads, they're always carbon negative, one road at a time. Using the biosphere to heal the atmosphere, using the planet's own means to heal itself. The planet is a great organism. It can do wonders if you allow it to. The whole balance part, using byproducts of natural processes and always thinking about the second and third order effect of what we do.
Haakon Brunell (34:54):
[inaudible 00:34:56] we always have used biochar in roads, use enhanced rock weathering on the sides of the road, in addition to what we doing with our pseudo-biobinders and all that. Using this methods that can scale up big in and next to the roads, and then without having to turn to drastic measures, which is you can use nukes and all that to fast track climate change in a good way. We believe in doing things in a balanced way, so that's the second part of our mission.
Haakon Brunell (35:19):
And the third part is to inspire people to change in new ways. And the inspire part is also about just because we think that we have something very visible that can inspire people to rethink conventions and to start thinking about new ways of tackling the climate challenge. So, any shape or form, there's anyone that are interested in sharing what we do or spreading the word, that's awesome. Obviously if you are interested in working with Carbon Crusher, we are expanding in the US and in Europe as well, probably soon. Definitely great to reach out. And I think, of course on the customer side, we are looking for both the public road owners and the private road owners that have road refurbishment budgets, and are willing to try out new methods, and are interested in doing that at scale, quality and the cost and an environmental benefit.
Haakon Brunell (36:10):
So, especially in right now in Southwest Mid US, Nordics, but also part of Europe's and potentially in Africa, let's see, road owners, big focus on the US right now, always interested in that. And I think the final customer part that we're looking at is not only bottom up, but also top down, the bigger players that are potentially interesting partnering up on the platform side, that's also very exciting. On the investors side, we are thinking about doing something now, we're well-funded and all that, and we have great investors like yourselves and Lowercarbon Capital and a bunch of other great guys, great investors. We're super lucky about how our investor capital looks, but within the visible future we are thinking about doing something where we will do something and then connect that to all, say, strategic expansion of our customer side, bring in some of the bigger infrastructure players slash investors that are ready to deploy at scale, and also are very interested in doing an investment, reach out please, that would be great.
Thai Nguyen (37:10):
Awesome. We'll include in the show notes maybe a general email address that folks in the audience can use to reach out to you. Anything else you want to touch upon that we didn't cover?
Haakon Brunell (37:20):
We're super excited, we have our next-gen crusher now coming out in a couple of months, we're pre-selling carbon credits now. Also on our future project accreditation is coming there now soon. So, also interested, by the way, if there are players out there that are looking for high quality infrastructure related carbon credit pre-purchase. Without being too commercial, yeah, I think that it has been a great conversation. Enjoyed talking to you, could talk for hours.
Thai Nguyen (37:44):
Same here. Last time we met up in person was in Oslo in a neighborhood called Tjuvholmen over beers, so I'm looking forward to the next opportunity to do that again. Haakon Brunell, thank you so much for the conversation, thank you for everything that you and your team are doing to make roads more resilient in the face of climate change. I personally look forward to hearing more about the exciting stuff that you guys accomplish.
Haakon Brunell (38:11):
Thanks a lot, Thai, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much. Thanks for doing this.
Thai Nguyen (38:14):
Thank you.
Cody Simms (38:15):
Inevitable is an MCJ podcast. At MCJ we back founders driving the transition of energy and industry and solving the inevitable impacts of climate change. If you'd like to learn more about MCJ, visit us at Mcj.vc, and to our weekly newsletter at Newsletter.mcj.vc. Thanks and see you next episode.
