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[upbeat music] Hi, everybody, and welcome to The Adapt Interview series, a space for platforming the founders of those adapt tech companies working to climate-proof our world.
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I'm Louis Woodall, the editor of Climate Proof, and together with Will Everall of The Adapt Newsletter, we'll be bringing you fresh interviews with innovative startups every other Wednesday.
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Make sure to sign up to Climate Proof at www.climateproof.news and The Adapt at www.theadapt.co to get every episode sent straight to your inbox.
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Today, we're speaking with Tripp Wahl, founder and CEO of Pantheon Regeneration, a unique nature-based solutions company that develops, finances, and manages projects that restore ecosystems, strengthen natural systems resilience, and absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
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The company's first project, Poquoson Ecological Reserve I, is the first commercial peatland restoration effort in the United States.
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By re-wetting and restoring 14,500 acres of peatlands, the company plans to activate one of the world's most carbon-dense and durable nature-based solutions. Right, let's get straight into the interview.
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[upbeat music] Hi, Tripp. Please tell us in your own words what climate adaptation problem your company exists to solve.
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The climate adaptation problems that Pantheon Regeneration is trying to solve are really around the collapse of the atmosphere, solving the carbon sequestration by restoring important native, um, ecosystems and destructed habitats.
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Um, also looking to solve biodiversity and water issues with a ecological restoration platform, um, that really restores, uh, wet and peatlands, that reintroduces endangered species, um, that works on the, uh, beneficial water elements of restored, um, ecosystems, and sequesters massive amounts of carbon at the same time, and then permanently conserves those, um, native ecosystems for perpetuity so that they cannot be, uh, changed from a land use perspective to ever be anything but a, um, rewilded landscape functioning as it would, uh, in its native state.
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How does unchecked climate change make that problem worse over time, and what does it mean for the people and systems affected? So what I think, uh,
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enduring climate change affects, um, these systems that we're working in means that if you don't have resilient native ecosystems, um, then you have continued degradation to the land, to the water cycle, and certainly to the biodiversity collapse, so species collapse or trophic level cascading.
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Um, so with restored wetlands and peat ecosystems, you are able to do things like, um, stave off saltwater intrusion and some sea level rise, um, effects.
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Because once the water table in these wetland systems is back to its natural mean, it actually does create saltwater mitigation, um,
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and allows for species to then have the correct habitat to, um, wildlife corridor for flyways, for other, like, nesting bird habitat, um, for aquatic species.
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When these waters are, um, [lip smack] wetland waters are restored, they do things like bioaccumulate toxicity out of the waterways, so you're actually cleaning the water for people and planet, uh, pulling out NPK, for instance, agricultural runoff.
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Um, PFAS, some of the, the, the forever chemicals, um, are actually bioaccumulated in the biomass when the waterways are restored.
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Uh, and in some places where the, uh, aquifers are recharged by these wetlands, that system begins to work again. So for fresh water for people, for animals, um, and for the microclimates that they create.
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What makes you as a founder best positioned to solve this problem? Number one, I have a deep background in conservation, uh, and natural systems.
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I've done, uh, almost 20 years of philanthropic work for the Colorado Wildlife Foundation, where I'm president and chairman, uh, and for Western States Water, and I have a, a deep reverence for natural systems and, and restoration, water in particular.
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Um, and I've built a team a- that has a deep expertise in restoration ecology, 40 years with, uh, tens of thousands of projects here in the US.
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And I bring a unique skill set because I come from not only that background in philanthropy, uh, and conservation, but also in, um, high finance.
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So I come from a financial background where I manage alternative assets and institutional capital and can really bring projects to bear that have the ability to get financed and then stay, uh, monitored and maintained through perpetuity.
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And so I really can sort of transliterate the ecology to the investment committee, which I think is a critical component for project developers to be able to not only put the right, uh, capital stack in place for a given project, but then also be able to, um, sell carbon credits, water credits, uh, and design these complex projects, and we have an amazing team to do just that.
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Tell us how your solution works to reduce climate exposure and vulnerability. So our, our solution works in a couple of different ways.
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We have a, a software that allows us to look at a given parcel of land and Build a, an ecological intelligence around what the solution set for that specific jurisdictional landscape could be.
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In the peat wetlands where we have, uh, we've purchased just under twenty thousand acres in the United States, um, we actually use a, a series of, um, engineered solutions to help restore these degraded landscapes.
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They've been trenched and drained, um, and what we're doing is we're putting, um, water control structures around the perimeter of a peat system and allowing the, the gravity-fed, uh, natural precipitation cycle to fill these peat wetlands back up.
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And we monitor them with eddy covariance flux towers, gas chambers, and water transducers all over the property that then allow us to manipulate the water control structures to keep the water at what has been a historical mean, um, in these fifteen-thousand-year-old systems.
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So we have a, a, a very elegant, sort of low disturbance, but very high impact engineered solution for restoring these wetlands.
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We then do other interventions like remove invasive species, reintroduce endangered and native species that were taken out of these systems. Um, we've reintroduced red wolves, for instance.
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Are bringing back Atlantic white cedar, a tree species with ornithological ramifications, um, that we will be interceding back into these post-restored wetlands.
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And so each landscape is different, but for our first pathway, those are the solutions. Who is your customer, and what does it take to get them to see that this is a problem they should pay to solve?
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So our customers are a few-fold. Uh, we have a income stream stack that's ecosystem specific. So we have, uh, water credits.
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Uh, those customers are typically, uh, municipalities or, um, developers who need water offsets or water credits that's very specific to a, what they call a HUC, a hydrologic unit or a watershed. Um, so we look at that.
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That's the customer there. The carbon customers then for the sequestration we're doing are a universe of voluntary carbon market customers. So we have a, um, a partnership with Microsoft.
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They're an investor not only in the company, but, um, are looking at our, um, carbon credits. We have a purchase, um, from a Canadian carbon fund that has already purchased our first hundred thousand, uh, carbon credits.
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And then we have a universe of buyers that we're talking to that are kind of the, the typical cohort, um, of tech companies, energy companies, and other corporate buyers that are looking to offset, um, their Scope three carbon footprints and looking for a net zero either twenty thirty or twenty fifty, um, commitment.
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We then have, uh, other income streams that we put on there around biodiversity. That's a, a burgeoning market. But we monitor, um, and baseline biodiversity and have a, uh, an outreach going on to customers there.
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It's a smaller universe, but a growing universe.
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And lastly, conservation easements, and those are typically, um, title encumbrance that we put on the land that, that then, um, ensure that for perpetuity that land cannot change.
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And those customers are everything from the Department of Defense to, um, Clean Water Act, um, municipalities and state players. What's the hardest thing to explain about what you do, and how do you explain it?
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I think the hardest thing, um, to explain about what we do is, is the complex ecology and hydrology around working in degraded peat wetlands.
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Um, it's, it's obviously something here in the United States that's not very well understood or known. In Europe, you know, these are protected, uh, and regulated markets, in Canada too.
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But in the US, people are, um, not really up to speed on the importance of these systems, the biodiversity importance of these systems, the fresh water impacts of these systems, and then the, the massive carbon sequestration engine that these systems, um, have provided for millennia and continue to provide in the event that they can be restored, um, and brought back to their functioning natural, um,
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ways.
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And so I think we spend a lot of time educating not only carbon buyers, um, but the greater public of, of investors on why these are such important systems, why they're climatological superheroes and kinda punch above their weight.
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Uh, and people are always a-amazed to hear that, that even though peat, for instance, is three percent of the Earth's surface, it sequesters more carbon than all the forests times two.
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And so, um, they're really up-and-coming, I think, from a, a climate poly-solution perspective. Tell us a moment where you felt close to giving up, and what helped you push through that?
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Well, there've been multiple moments of, of feeling close to failure in this process. Um, when I stood this company up almost three years ago, uh, it was a very, um, abstract idea for very, very...
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most people actually that I talked to. Um, and as we looked back from, from the team's perspective, I've had over, you know, a thousand meetings, um, with investors and other stakeholders.
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We have an amazing set of investors now. Um, but out of those, you know, thousand-plus meetings, we had ten yeses.
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And so I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, which I have been, um, my whole life in multiple iterations, I think you have to have a, a sense of optimism and a very thick skin to be able to take no most of the time and still keep going.
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But I knew irrespective of the no's, uh, the importance, the profound need for this work and sort of the urgency around what's happening with the climate and how these solutions could be incredibly powerful.
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Um, and, and also I think the conviction that, you know, these systems, if they're lost, uh, and totally degraded, can never be brought back within human timescales. And so I felt a really, um, you know, a real
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important, um, mission was at hand and that we were the team in our partnership with Duke University, who had sort of the decades of science and data points around these systems that could bring it to bear, and, um, I was willing to persist.
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What do you know now that you wish every climate adaptation founder knew when they were starting out?
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I think there have been a lot of learnings in this journey, um, but I guess I wish, I wish I would've known a couple of things. Number one, you know, the amount of time that it would've taken to get here.
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I think I had a, um, potentially an overly optimistic view because of my history in, in fundraising and in pulling, uh, startups up.
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I didn't know that this one, because of its really esoteric nature, ecological nature, um, would take so long. So I wish I would've been a little bit more, had my expectations managed around the time horizon.
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Um, I also wish, looking back, that I had understood who... a, a little bit better about who the appropriate investors for the project were.
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I think I went out with a, um, a little bit larger aperture, and I could've been, um, a little bit more tapered and focused, understanding, you know, the, the people, uh, the funds, and the individuals who would really, um, be appropriate for a strategy like this and sort of a, a long duration sort of natural cycle.
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Um, so I think those are two, two things. Um,
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I guess lastly, I, I think, um, I wish I would've known, you know, the amount of sort of team building, um, and, and recruiting it would've, th- that was gonna be needed to bring the right people sort of in the right configuration in the company.
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I think I'm so grateful for where we ended up, but I didn't know that was gonna be quite as difficult and take quite as long as it did.
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Where do you see capital flowing into adaptation, and what areas is it not flowing into, but should? So I think when I think about capital inflows, you know, I really am thinking about nature-based solutions.
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And I think, you know, capital is flowing into what are a little bit more de-risked and historically, um, profitable businesses, so really around tree systems.
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I see a lot of IFM, um, projects that get, uh, appropriate, um, funding and capital flows from institutional investors and even, even public market capital.
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Um, I think where that should be flowing, um, is a lot more into wetlands, peatlands, um, coastal salt marsh, um,
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marine estuary restoration, uh, bivalve restoration, so think mussel and oyster bed, uh, reconstruction for, um, hurricane and wave, um, energy mitigation.
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I think soil organic carbon, uh, in terms of the soil fertility, um, nutrient density, and water-holding capacity, um, in soils is a critical, uh, climatological element that is being overlooked.
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I think the regenerative agriculture movement, um, is up and coming, but I think the flows into those particular adaptation pathways is, is slow, um, and needs to be increased on massive levels.
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I also think from the sort of the ranching and intensive rotational grazing side, the perennial grass, uh, and mob grazing pathways are, are very important.
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Lastly, I would say the, the fresh water, um, restoration quality and quantity issues need massive funding. Is there anything else you'd like our audience to know about your company and about adaptation tech in general?
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I think in conclusion, for me, just to step back and think about what I believe is a templatable solution that we are trying to build at Pantheon Regeneration is really a, a landscape scale platform that looks at important and degraded ecosystems that we can actually bring ecological intelligence to and restore, and do it in a way that we can be rewilding large amounts of, uh, wildlife corridors, birding habitats, fresh water systems that have a impact on what I see is this interconnectivity between water,
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between biodiversity, between atmospherics, which include carbon, but also super pollutants around methane, nitrous, um, and the food system and in particular, nu- nutrient density in the food system.
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And I think all of these things are connected, and the ethos of Pantheon is to try to find, uh, and work with large landowners and large landscapes where we can really have an impact around bringing an ecosystem health metric, um, to these, these people and places, where we can impact communities positively, uh, in multitudes of ways, but also the climatological solutions that I think are incredibly urgent.
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[outro jingle] The Adapt Interview Series is a Climate Proof Media production. It is produced and presented by me, Louis Woodall. Subscribe to the Climate Proof newsletter by going to climateproof.news/subscribe.
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And to learn more about the publication, feel free to reach out directly using our LinkedIn page.
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[upbeat music] Hi, everybody, and welcome to The Adapt Interview series, a space for platforming the founders of those adapt tech companies working to climate-proof our world.
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00:00:14.400 --> 00:00:23.350
I'm Louis Woodall, the editor of Climate Proof, and together with Will Everall of The Adapt Newsletter, we'll be bringing you fresh interviews with innovative startups every other Wednesday.
3
00:00:23.970 --> 00:00:34.120
Make sure to sign up to Climate Proof at www.climateproof.news and The Adapt at www.theadapt.co to get every episode sent straight to your inbox.
4
00:00:34.740 --> 00:00:49.560
Today, we're speaking with Tripp Wahl, founder and CEO of Pantheon Regeneration, a unique nature-based solutions company that develops, finances, and manages projects that restore ecosystems, strengthen natural systems resilience, and absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
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The company's first project, Poquoson Ecological Reserve I, is the first commercial peatland restoration effort in the United States.
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By re-wetting and restoring 14,500 acres of peatlands, the company plans to activate one of the world's most carbon-dense and durable nature-based solutions. Right, let's get straight into the interview.
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[upbeat music] Hi, Tripp. Please tell us in your own words what climate adaptation problem your company exists to solve.
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The climate adaptation problems that Pantheon Regeneration is trying to solve are really around the collapse of the atmosphere, solving the carbon sequestration by restoring important native, um, ecosystems and destructed habitats.
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Um, also looking to solve biodiversity and water issues with a ecological restoration platform, um, that really restores, uh, wet and peatlands, that reintroduces endangered species, um, that works on the, uh, beneficial water elements of restored, um, ecosystems, and sequesters massive amounts of carbon at the same time, and then permanently conserves those, um, native ecosystems for perpetuity so that they cannot be, uh, changed from a land use perspective to ever be anything but a, um, rewilded landscape functioning as it would, uh, in its native state.
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How does unchecked climate change make that problem worse over time, and what does it mean for the people and systems affected? So what I think, uh,
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enduring climate change affects, um, these systems that we're working in means that if you don't have resilient native ecosystems, um, then you have continued degradation to the land, to the water cycle, and certainly to the biodiversity collapse, so species collapse or trophic level cascading.
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Um, so with restored wetlands and peat ecosystems, you are able to do things like, um, stave off saltwater intrusion and some sea level rise, um, effects.
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Because once the water table in these wetland systems is back to its natural mean, it actually does create saltwater mitigation, um,
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and allows for species to then have the correct habitat to, um, wildlife corridor for flyways, for other, like, nesting bird habitat, um, for aquatic species.
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When these waters are, um, [lip smack] wetland waters are restored, they do things like bioaccumulate toxicity out of the waterways, so you're actually cleaning the water for people and planet, uh, pulling out NPK, for instance, agricultural runoff.
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Um, PFAS, some of the, the, the forever chemicals, um, are actually bioaccumulated in the biomass when the waterways are restored.
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Uh, and in some places where the, uh, aquifers are recharged by these wetlands, that system begins to work again. So for fresh water for people, for animals, um, and for the microclimates that they create.
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What makes you as a founder best positioned to solve this problem? Number one, I have a deep background in conservation, uh, and natural systems.
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I've done, uh, almost 20 years of philanthropic work for the Colorado Wildlife Foundation, where I'm president and chairman, uh, and for Western States Water, and I have a, a deep reverence for natural systems and, and restoration, water in particular.
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Um, and I've built a team a- that has a deep expertise in restoration ecology, 40 years with, uh, tens of thousands of projects here in the US.
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And I bring a unique skill set because I come from not only that background in philanthropy, uh, and conservation, but also in, um, high finance.
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So I come from a financial background where I manage alternative assets and institutional capital and can really bring projects to bear that have the ability to get financed and then stay, uh, monitored and maintained through perpetuity.
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And so I really can sort of transliterate the ecology to the investment committee, which I think is a critical component for project developers to be able to not only put the right, uh, capital stack in place for a given project, but then also be able to, um, sell carbon credits, water credits, uh, and design these complex projects, and we have an amazing team to do just that.
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Tell us how your solution works to reduce climate exposure and vulnerability. So our, our solution works in a couple of different ways.
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We have a, a software that allows us to look at a given parcel of land and Build a, an ecological intelligence around what the solution set for that specific jurisdictional landscape could be.
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In the peat wetlands where we have, uh, we've purchased just under twenty thousand acres in the United States, um, we actually use a, a series of, um, engineered solutions to help restore these degraded landscapes.
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00:06:29.332 --> 00:06:46.142
They've been trenched and drained, um, and what we're doing is we're putting, um, water control structures around the perimeter of a peat system and allowing the, the gravity-fed, uh, natural precipitation cycle to fill these peat wetlands back up.
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And we monitor them with eddy covariance flux towers, gas chambers, and water transducers all over the property that then allow us to manipulate the water control structures to keep the water at what has been a historical mean, um, in these fifteen-thousand-year-old systems.
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00:07:05.392 --> 00:07:15.492
So we have a, a, a very elegant, sort of low disturbance, but very high impact engineered solution for restoring these wetlands.
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We then do other interventions like remove invasive species, reintroduce endangered and native species that were taken out of these systems. Um, we've reintroduced red wolves, for instance.
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Are bringing back Atlantic white cedar, a tree species with ornithological ramifications, um, that we will be interceding back into these post-restored wetlands.
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And so each landscape is different, but for our first pathway, those are the solutions. Who is your customer, and what does it take to get them to see that this is a problem they should pay to solve?
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So our customers are a few-fold. Uh, we have a income stream stack that's ecosystem specific. So we have, uh, water credits.
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Uh, those customers are typically, uh, municipalities or, um, developers who need water offsets or water credits that's very specific to a, what they call a HUC, a hydrologic unit or a watershed. Um, so we look at that.
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That's the customer there. The carbon customers then for the sequestration we're doing are a universe of voluntary carbon market customers. So we have a, um, a partnership with Microsoft.
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They're an investor not only in the company, but, um, are looking at our, um, carbon credits. We have a purchase, um, from a Canadian carbon fund that has already purchased our first hundred thousand, uh, carbon credits.
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And then we have a universe of buyers that we're talking to that are kind of the, the typical cohort, um, of tech companies, energy companies, and other corporate buyers that are looking to offset, um, their Scope three carbon footprints and looking for a net zero either twenty thirty or twenty fifty, um, commitment.
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We then have, uh, other income streams that we put on there around biodiversity. That's a, a burgeoning market. But we monitor, um, and baseline biodiversity and have a, uh, an outreach going on to customers there.
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It's a smaller universe, but a growing universe.
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And lastly, conservation easements, and those are typically, um, title encumbrance that we put on the land that, that then, um, ensure that for perpetuity that land cannot change.
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And those customers are everything from the Department of Defense to, um, Clean Water Act, um, municipalities and state players. What's the hardest thing to explain about what you do, and how do you explain it?
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I think the hardest thing, um, to explain about what we do is, is the complex ecology and hydrology around working in degraded peat wetlands.
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Um, it's, it's obviously something here in the United States that's not very well understood or known. In Europe, you know, these are protected, uh, and regulated markets, in Canada too.
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But in the US, people are, um, not really up to speed on the importance of these systems, the biodiversity importance of these systems, the fresh water impacts of these systems, and then the, the massive carbon sequestration engine that these systems, um, have provided for millennia and continue to provide in the event that they can be restored, um, and brought back to their functioning natural, um,
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ways.
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And so I think we spend a lot of time educating not only carbon buyers, um, but the greater public of, of investors on why these are such important systems, why they're climatological superheroes and kinda punch above their weight.
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Uh, and people are always a-amazed to hear that, that even though peat, for instance, is three percent of the Earth's surface, it sequesters more carbon than all the forests times two.
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And so, um, they're really up-and-coming, I think, from a, a climate poly-solution perspective. Tell us a moment where you felt close to giving up, and what helped you push through that?
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Well, there've been multiple moments of, of feeling close to failure in this process. Um, when I stood this company up almost three years ago, uh, it was a very, um, abstract idea for very, very...
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most people actually that I talked to. Um, and as we looked back from, from the team's perspective, I've had over, you know, a thousand meetings, um, with investors and other stakeholders.
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We have an amazing set of investors now. Um, but out of those, you know, thousand-plus meetings, we had ten yeses.
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And so I think, you know, as an entrepreneur, which I have been, um, my whole life in multiple iterations, I think you have to have a, a sense of optimism and a very thick skin to be able to take no most of the time and still keep going.
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But I knew irrespective of the no's, uh, the importance, the profound need for this work and sort of the urgency around what's happening with the climate and how these solutions could be incredibly powerful.
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Um, and, and also I think the conviction that, you know, these systems, if they're lost, uh, and totally degraded, can never be brought back within human timescales. And so I felt a really, um, you know, a real
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important, um, mission was at hand and that we were the team in our partnership with Duke University, who had sort of the decades of science and data points around these systems that could bring it to bear, and, um, I was willing to persist.
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What do you know now that you wish every climate adaptation founder knew when they were starting out?
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I think there have been a lot of learnings in this journey, um, but I guess I wish, I wish I would've known a couple of things. Number one, you know, the amount of time that it would've taken to get here.
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I think I had a, um, potentially an overly optimistic view because of my history in, in fundraising and in pulling, uh, startups up.
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I didn't know that this one, because of its really esoteric nature, ecological nature, um, would take so long. So I wish I would've been a little bit more, had my expectations managed around the time horizon.
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Um, I also wish, looking back, that I had understood who... a, a little bit better about who the appropriate investors for the project were.
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I think I went out with a, um, a little bit larger aperture, and I could've been, um, a little bit more tapered and focused, understanding, you know, the, the people, uh, the funds, and the individuals who would really, um, be appropriate for a strategy like this and sort of a, a long duration sort of natural cycle.
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Um, so I think those are two, two things. Um,
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I guess lastly, I, I think, um, I wish I would've known, you know, the amount of sort of team building, um, and, and recruiting it would've, th- that was gonna be needed to bring the right people sort of in the right configuration in the company.
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I think I'm so grateful for where we ended up, but I didn't know that was gonna be quite as difficult and take quite as long as it did.
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Where do you see capital flowing into adaptation, and what areas is it not flowing into, but should? So I think when I think about capital inflows, you know, I really am thinking about nature-based solutions.
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And I think, you know, capital is flowing into what are a little bit more de-risked and historically, um, profitable businesses, so really around tree systems.
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I see a lot of IFM, um, projects that get, uh, appropriate, um, funding and capital flows from institutional investors and even, even public market capital.
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Um, I think where that should be flowing, um, is a lot more into wetlands, peatlands, um, coastal salt marsh, um,
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marine estuary restoration, uh, bivalve restoration, so think mussel and oyster bed, uh, reconstruction for, um, hurricane and wave, um, energy mitigation.
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I think soil organic carbon, uh, in terms of the soil fertility, um, nutrient density, and water-holding capacity, um, in soils is a critical, uh, climatological element that is being overlooked.
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I think the regenerative agriculture movement, um, is up and coming, but I think the flows into those particular adaptation pathways is, is slow, um, and needs to be increased on massive levels.
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I also think from the sort of the ranching and intensive rotational grazing side, the perennial grass, uh, and mob grazing pathways are, are very important.
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Lastly, I would say the, the fresh water, um, restoration quality and quantity issues need massive funding. Is there anything else you'd like our audience to know about your company and about adaptation tech in general?
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I think in conclusion, for me, just to step back and think about what I believe is a templatable solution that we are trying to build at Pantheon Regeneration is really a, a landscape scale platform that looks at important and degraded ecosystems that we can actually bring ecological intelligence to and restore, and do it in a way that we can be rewilding large amounts of, uh, wildlife corridors, birding habitats, fresh water systems that have a impact on what I see is this interconnectivity between water,
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between biodiversity, between atmospherics, which include carbon, but also super pollutants around methane, nitrous, um, and the food system and in particular, nu- nutrient density in the food system.
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And I think all of these things are connected, and the ethos of Pantheon is to try to find, uh, and work with large landowners and large landscapes where we can really have an impact around bringing an ecosystem health metric, um, to these, these people and places, where we can impact communities positively, uh, in multitudes of ways, but also the climatological solutions that I think are incredibly urgent.
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[outro jingle] The Adapt Interview Series is a Climate Proof Media production. It is produced and presented by me, Louis Woodall. Subscribe to the Climate Proof newsletter by going to climateproof.news/subscribe.
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And to learn more about the publication, feel free to reach out directly using our LinkedIn page.
