Dhunche, Climeworks, and Swarowski

 

October 2023, I took an extended break from work to travel around Nepal and India, with my wife Anna.  For me it was a once in a lifetime trip; for her it was a return to the a place she spent a significant part of her childhood - so it was a big thing.  However, having initially suggested the trip I was suddenly hit by a wave of guilt: I'd completely forgotten about my no-flying commitment.  I was in a dilemma - either break with my commitment or pull out of a trip that meant a lot to both of us.

I hit upon a solution: Climeworks.  This is a Swiss company selling carbon credits using Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology.  The plants are based in Iceland so they have access to abundant zero-carbon geothermal energy to power the fans which suck in the air, and the process that mineralizes and buries the carbon.  But it was eye-wateringly expensive.  We needed to offset 5 tons of CO2 - the emissions of two passengers travelling from London and back again - and this cost just over £5000.  I winced as I pressed "accept".

It was a trip of a lifetime - for me at least.  We met with a fantastic guide Subash.  (Never call them "Sherpa's" - a Sherpa is a member of an ethnic group based in Nepal, and whilst many guides are Sherpa's, many are not.)  Subash took us on two week long treks: the first to Poon Hill (which would be considered a large mountain in any European country); and the second Gosain Kunda, a beautiful mountain lake at over 4000m where Shiva is said to have recovered from a poisoning.

The first of the treks we were joined by Subash's brother who came along as a porter.  This was not his main job, which was working for a local educational charity assisting some of the poorest people in the region.  I remember one event where we got out a pair of Swarovski binoculars to look at a monkey and he asked us how much they cost.  I felt awkward telling him they were £600 (this was Anna's purchase not mine - I would have got something cheaper).  He was astonished: "That's one Lakh!"  And my guilt increased further when he added "people here earn that in 3 months".

Between the two treks Subash very kindly offered to put us up for a week, so we stayed with his family in a tiny patch of farmland on the side of a hill.  It was the week of Dashain, an important Hindu festival which is celebrated much more in Nepal than in India.  We saw how his family (which included himself, his wife and child, parents, brother and sister in law) did everything for themselves, and I mean everything.  They grew their own vegetables, collected their own milk for morning coffee, electrical and construction work for the buildings, plumbing, even slaughtering and butchering the goat sacrificed for the festival.  (Goat was the main part of every meal for that week.)  I particularly remember Subash's sister in law sweeping up the unburnt charcoal from the firepit into a cloth bag to take away and use later.

During our evenings around the fire we got into many Google Translate-mediated conversations, and I was particularly struck by one with the sister-in-law.  It turned out that she was working for a climate charity, raising awareness within local governmental and non-governmental organisations, and helping Nepal lower its CO2 emissions.  This struck me as an odd place to start given that a Nepali's emissions are only 250kg CO2 on average.  I asked where the funding was coming from and I was surprised to discover that it was entirely funded by German and Japanese organisations.  These are countries whose per-capita CO2 footprints are 40 times that of Nepal, but they had worked out that, economically, you get more emissions reductions per Euro/Yen by paying the Nepalese to cut their emissions.  Something didn't sit right - perhaps they were right about the economics but the atmosphere is barely going to notice, whereas it might if the wealthy countries made a real effort to cut back rather than outsource.  The sister-in-law, on the other hand, didn't seem to see any problem.

The trek to Gosain Kunda started in the town of Dhunche, already 2000m above sea level.  This was a reasonably sized town but still had Chickens running around freely in the street.  To the east there was an enormous mountain (sorry, small hill) which completely blocked the sun until about 10am each morning when it seemed as if someone had flicked a light switch as the sun rose above it.  This week Dhunche was in the news again as the base of operations for the emergency workers trying to save people trapped after the flash floods.  The floods were apparently caused by a glacier collapsing, an event made much more likely by climate change.  This wiped out villages maybe two hundred metres away from where we stayed, at the bottom of the valley that Dhunche was perched on.   As I write the story is still unfolding, as an unstable lake has emerged high up the Trishuli river, and is likely to collapse any day now, bringing more water, mud, and silt with it, and endangering the lives of the rescue workers.

We left Nepal after spending a month there, and flew on to India for the second half of our once-in-a-lifetime trip.  India was a very different experience and, truth be told, if I had to do it again I'd spend two months in Nepal instead.  While staying in a hotel in Bikaner, Rajasthan I was reading an article about Climeworks in which it was mentioned that the facility was capable of capturing 10,000 tons of CO2 annually.  This shocked me somewhat: we had just paid for 5 of those.  So I sent off an email to the company asking if it was really possible that a middle-class couple from England had bought 1/2000th of what a company like Climeworks was able to sell, and had any double selling occurred?  I got a prompt response from the company which did reassure me that those 5 tons were allocated to us and not sold twice.  However, what we had bought, it turned out, was a contract for them to remove that CO2 at some point over the next 6 years, and not instantaneously.  I was a bit disappointed but I could see the point: they need funding to scale, and that is what we offered.  Nonetheless, my 5 tons were going to sit there in the atmosphere for up to 6 years, causing warming, and feedbacks.

Fast forward to summer 2026, where I sit now.  I have received an email from Climeworks.  It has been 3 years and I am mid contract, and they wish to make me an offer.  They must be struggling to scale DAC as fast as they had hoped, and struggling to meet their commitments, because they are asking: do I want to stick with my contract as it stands or switch to a biochar and mineral option, which will "draw down" 3x my original purchase.  The switch is the default and will occur if I don't reply in a certain number of weeks.  Again, I'm torn: 3x is an improvement - perhaps I can celebrate by flying to NYC for a weekend break - but biochar is not the same thing.  Direct Air Capture guarantees a reduction in atmospheric CO2, but with biochar it's contingent on the trees growing back, which you have to take on trust.

Was it all just a story, like the one the Germans and the Japanese were telling themselves?  That we're still good people, despite the jet-setting, and the Swarowski binoculars?