In this episode of This Week in Carbon, host Rene Velasquez sits down with Bill Flederbach, Founder, President and CEO of ClimeCo, one of the most established and mission-driven environmental project developers in North America. ClimeCo has spent over fifteen years building the foundational infrastructure for industrial N2O abatement: developing the protocols, financing the technology, creating the markets, and now expanding into China and India. The result is a portfolio that is abating 30 million tons of CO2 equivalent annually in China alone, with first issuances expected imminently.This episode is a deep dive into nitrous oxide: a super-pollutant 273 times more potent than CO2, that lingers in the atmosphere for over a century, damages the ozone layer, and remains almost entirely absent from mainstream climate conversations.Key topics covered:- What N2O is, where it comes from (nitric acid plants, adipic acid production, ammonia nitrate fertilizer) and why it's invisible in so many climate discussions despite its extraordinary potency- How ClimeCo destroys N2O using catalyst technology and why, unlike forest carbon, it carries zero reversal risk: once destroyed, it's gone permanently- The years of zero-revenue protocol development that underpinned ClimeCo's first projects and what it takes to build a credible methodology from scratch with a registry- The China expansion: 30 million tons under abatement, a 90% baseline mandate that means the first 90% of reductions aren't even credited, and why ClimeCo is pushing for regulatory backstops to prevent the CDM repeat of projects shutting off when incentives disappear- ”Follow the molecule” — how ClimeCo maps the supply chains of nylon 6,6 and ammonia nitrate to identify and engage the companies that should care about N2O in their scope 3 footprint- Digital carbon solutions: how ClimeCo is embedding carbon certificates into product serial numbers; retiring credits against individual Lenovo laptops overnight, at scale, automatically- Insetting vs. offsetting: how the REI partnership and automotive supply chain work illustrate scope 3 science-based target reductions through book-and-claim certification- Why the voluntary market is the only revenue stream keeping these abatement projects alive and why regulatory backstops in China and India are essential to prevent history repeating- Portfolio harmony: why Bill believes avoidance, removals, and insetting must all be pursued simultaneously rather than treated as competing approaches- The five-to-ten year vision: a carbon nutritional label on products, as standard as calorie counts on foodAn episode that makes the case that some of the highest-impact, most permanent carbon abatement happening in the world right now is in industrial chemistry facilities and almost no one is talking about it.🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, and more.