Carbon Removal TechSprint — San Francisco Bay Area, hosted by Alix Partners
A published framework for gigaton-scale carbon removal
About
The Alliance for Innovative Regulation (AIR) is a US non-profit founded by Jo Ann Barefoot, a former Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, to make the financial system fairer, more inclusive and more resilient through responsible technology. Rather than a trade group, AIR is a convener — backed by the Gates Foundation and the U.S. State Department, it brings regulators, technologists, scientists and advocates together to solve hard systemic problems. Its signature method is the TechSprint: an intensive, multi-disciplinary innovation sprint that turns fragmented expertise into policy-ready frameworks.
Challenge
Carbon removal at gigaton scale is one of climate's hardest levers — and it sits at the intersection of three worlds that rarely speak the same language: hard science (direct air capture and storage), cryptography and tokenomics (incentive design), and policy (making it work at scale without fraud). Put those experts in one room and you usually get mutual skepticism. AIR needed a sprint that could build enough shared language and trust for them to produce something real on a timeline that mattered.
Solution
I designed and facilitated a four-day TechSprint in the San Francisco Bay Area, hosted by Alix Partners. The room brought together researchers from PARC, carbon-removal specialists, cryptography and tokenomics experts, climate scientists, environmental advocates and Silicon Valley leaders. Rather than starting from assumptions, the sprint opened with structured cross-disciplinary dialogue to establish shared language, then moved through systematic problem framing into ideation and solution design — using design-thinking methods to build genuine trust across fields that had never worked together.
Outcome
The sprint produced a published whitepaper — "Incentivizing Gigaton-Scale Carbon Dioxide Removal via a Climate-Positive Blockchain" — a full technical and policy framework for verifying and rewarding direct air capture on an immutable ledger, backed by the Gates Foundation and the U.S. Department of State. Beyond the paper, it forged lasting cross-disciplinary relationships that continue to shape carbon-removal work.
He designed the conditions for rival disciplines to build something none of them could alone — a framework regulators and technologists could both trust.
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