If carbon removal's time has finally arrived, Etosha Cave will be one of the first to know.

Her Berkeley-based tech firm, Twelve — named for the carbon isotope that makes up the vast majority of carbon on earth — has been around since 2015, exploring various applications for its technology, which splits carbon dioxide and water into carbon monoxide and uses it to create fuels.

Cave, Twelve's co-founder and chief scientific officer, is particularly excited about the Inflation Reduction Act, which has incentives for carbon removal, sustainable jet fuel and manufacturing.

The company is also getting new buzz from sustainability commitments from companies that are trying to go further than traditional carbon offsets, like e-commerce firm Shopify, which last year agreed to buy $2.5 million worth of its jet fuel.

It also has an agreement with Alaska Airlines and Microsoft to deliver 1,000 gallons of the fuel, which they're planning to blend with conventional fuel and deliver in time for one round-trip flight between Seattle and San Francisco at the end of 2023 or beginning of 2024.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

How has policy helped you, and what policies are you looking to now?

When we first were getting off the ground, there were no investors that were looking to fund us. Our only investor in our early days was the government through the Small Business Innovation Research Program. Later on, we've attracted almost $200 million in private follow-on funding. But that was only made possible because of those early supports. We also were housed at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab.

With the Inflation Reduction Act, that's been really amazing. We're so excited about that. There's so many provisions in there: The manufacturing investment tax credit is going to be big for helping us on our manufacturing floor. And there's the 45Q, which is for CO2 utilization. There's the sustainable aviation fuel production tax credit, that'll be really huge.

What it really does is just gives the ability to go to market quicker, because we've always been kind of like, 'Okay, how do we get to cost parity with petroleum?' And we've seen that there's small markets, there's some customers that are willing to pay a premium early on, but not as many as you need to really get to scale. And so this just helps us get to scale much quicker.

Is that already changing how you're able to market it?

Yeah. Because we have this engagement with Shopify and Microsoft and they're kind of acting in place of the jet fuel tax credit, where they're covering the costs of their Scope Three emissions in jet fuel. They're paying for that now. So once the IRA comes fully online, we'll have that in future years and say, "Okay, we can cover that difference between what we're selling it for and what it actually costs us to make it."

How much are you selling it for? 

What we find with talking with airlines is they really just want to pay market rate for the jet fuel. So the market rate for wholesale jet fuel sales is anywhere between $2 to $4 per gallon. It's supposed to go to $3.50 since the war in Ukraine, prices went up a little bit. That's what they want to pay, so that's what we've basically been looking to sell it for. And then we make up the difference in our costs and what they're paying for it with either government subsidies or corporate buying of Scope Three.

Would you say that a lot of your funders are the altruistic type? Are they in it because they think it's the right thing to do, or because they think they'll make better returns? Or is it a combination of both?

I would say they're mission-driven, not necessarily altruistic. But I think they see capitalism as the fastest way to solve large-scale problems.

I mean, if you look at large-scale planetary problems that we've solved: We've taken lead out of gasoline, we approximately closed the hole in the ozone; not fully, that goes in and out, but we also stopped acid rain, and I would argue that we've kind of stopped world hunger. There's still some people in conflict zones that don't have access to food, but no one's starving to death on a mass level just from a food distribution problem. That wasn't the case in the '80s and '90s. And I would say all of those had a capitalism component to them of problems being solved.

Do you see capitalism able to play a similar role with climate change?

I think the thing that's a little bit unique about this particular planetary issue is that the markets that have been set up, carbon-trading markets, there's no longer just one single thing we have to stop doing. It's so diverse. You have these natural solutions, where you can plant trees or stop cutting down trees or do stuff with the soil. That kind of creates a marketplace that's a little fragmented.

I was talking with Alicia Seiger at the Steyer-Taylor Center. They look at policy and one of the things they're looking at is, how do you do the counting bit, how do you create a balance sheet for carbon emissions such that it's very clearly and transparently accounted for on a planetary scale. Once you have that in place, once you have the infrastructure of the market, then I think the market can be a player. I don't think it's the only one. I think we do need that kind of regulatory feel; you do need the government saying, 'No, you must do this.'

GAME ON — Welcome to the Long Game, where we tell you about the latest on efforts to shape our future. We deliver data-driven storytelling, compelling interviews with industry and political leaders, and news Tuesday through Friday to keep you in the loop on sustainability.

Team Sustainability is editor Greg Mott, deputy editor Debra Kahn and reporters Jordan Wolman and Allison Prang. Reach us all at [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected].

Want more? Don’t we all. Sign up for the Long Game. Four days a week and still free!

— Chinese companies don't have great ESG scores, worrying investors, the FT reports.

— Sustainability-minded Salesforce, Inc. is laying off 10 percent of its employees.

— There's a debate over how closely states should regulate utilities, with implications for the greening of the grid, the NYT reports.