GoodGeist
A podcast on sustainability, hosted by Damla Özlüer and Steve Connor, brought to you by the DNS Network. Looking at sustainability issues, communications, and featuring global guests from a wide variety of sectors such as business, NGOs and government.
GoodGeist
Cutting Through the Carbon Noise, with Göker AvcI
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In this episode we sit down with Göker AvcI, founder of Alalëa Social to get a clear view on what serious carbon management looks like when you move beyond the headlines of a press release or linkedIN post.
If you work in sustainability, communications, procurement or finance, you will recognise the problem straight away: targets are rising fast, yet only a small share of organisations can prove they are on track.
We dig into why the hardest part of corporate climate action is Scope Three emissions across the value chain, and why a net zero claim that ignores Scope Three simply does not hold up. Göker explains how he pulls fragmented carbon and regulatory data out of the noise and turns it into a living programme that works at board level and on the factory floor, linking decisions to market access, ratings and green finance.
We also talk about the changing climate narrative, where greenwashing is being squeezed by tighter standards and enforcement, but greenhushing is emerging as a new failure mode.
And then off that wasn't enough we go deep on carbon dioxide removal (CDR), clearing up the confusion with carbon capture and laying out nature-based versus engineered approaches like direct air capture, ocean alkaline enhancement and biochar.
Listen in to our conversation with Göker and look at the carbon story from setting targets, to actual delivery of emissions reductions.
Follow GoodGeist for more episodes on sustainability, communications and how creativity can help make the world a better place.
Welcome And Guest Introduction
SPEAKER_00Good guys. A podcast series on sustainability. Hosted by Damla Eusler and Steve Connor. Brought to you by the DNS Network.
SPEAKER_01Hello, hello everyone. You are listening to Good Guys, the message on sustainability, which is brought to you by the DNS Network, the global network of agencies dedicated to making the world a better place. This is Damlo from Mira Agency Istanbul and This is Dave from Crazy Concern in Manchester.
SPEAKER_02This podcast series explores global sustainability issues, how they're communicating what creativity can do to make positive change happen.
SPEAKER_01So in this episode, we're going to talk to Gekia Rao Ju, the founder of Alalea Decarbonization and Carbon Markets Advisory. Founded in 2019, the firm specializes in decarbonization strategies, carbon markets, and corporate sustainability programs.
SPEAKER_02Very excited about this one, Damler. So Gekke is also part of the Carbon Dioxide Removal CDR platform, and we will begin our carbon removal talks in this podcast with him. So, Gekke, thanks so much for taking the time to jump on the podcast with Damna and myself. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01Okay, we are really excited about the CDR and carbon removal, but let's stick to the basics.
A Purpose Driven Career Path
SPEAKER_01We always like to hear our guests' personal stories. How did they come here? Why did you choose to work in the sustainability area and sustainable development?
SPEAKER_03Well, you know, honestly, I think I always had this pull toward purpose-driven work in me. Even back in high school, I would organize my classmates to put together small support projects. And then my university years were very active on the social side. I will be very honest, I wasn't really focused on the academic side. I was much more into getting things done and into social causes. I'm actually an economics graduate, by the way, but it was the volunteering and environmental projects I got involved in at university that really showed me clearly that I could turn this instinct into real results. That's also when something clicked for me. I realized there are these wonderful, good-hearted people who genuinely want to do good in the world, but sometimes they are so good-hearted that they can't quite handle the commercial side of things. And then, like in any field, we have got the sharks, the ones trying to squeeze out maximum profit and advantage. I felt I was strong on both sides, so I figured if I positioned myself right between the two, I could grow the impact and build a career at the same time. After I graduated, I started out as a brand manager at a company that makes or manufactures cleaning products. And there I developed Turkey's very first line of vegan and plant-based cleaning products. While I was developing them, I wanted to add a feature that, as far as I knew, had never been done anywhere in the world before, and that could genuinely matter. So I created a project called Enga System Music in Turkish, Barrier Free Cleaning in English. We just put QR codes on the products and built a mobile app that is these special codes designed specifically for people who are visually impaired. So whatever information a cited person could read of the packaging, the phone would read all of it out loud and for someone who can see. And while I was doing the research for that project, this was back in 2017, by the way, I realized just how little was out there, very few resources, very little resource, and in Turkish, almost nothing at all. Then once we brought the products to market and saw how incredibly well they did, that's when it all came together for me. I finally understood both my purpose in life and the kind of work I wanted to do from then on. So in 2019, I started a consulting company basically from scratch, just me, a bag and a dust desk, and everything I have worked on since has brought me to where I am today.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I think that might that's the best journey so far, Damler. I could get some kind of award. He's swimming with sharks, creating plant-based products, doing stuff for people who visually I you know, I thought we were doing good, Damler, but I think Girka's winning. So amazing journey. So you stand at a place where business and policy making are coming together, and on the one hand, working on decarbonisation strategies business, and on the other hand, you're examining carbon darkide removal. And I think Damler's going to get into that in a moment, but that's a relatively new subject in the world of net zero. And so I'd be lovely to hear from you where you think we are at the moment on particularly net zero and business and targets towards net zero. Where do you think we stand in the world right now?
Net Zero Pledges Versus Reality
SPEAKER_03That's a great question. And honestly, the the frame I would give is this we have moved past the ambition problem and straight into an implementation problem, I think. If you asked me a few years ago, the worry was that companies simply weren't setting targets. But that's no longer the issue. After it peaked, even retreated a bit in 2024, we saw a real surge in 2025, roughly a 40% jump in companies setting SPTI science-based targets, and that happened despite all the political headbits. The anti-ESG backlash, some of the biggest companies stepping back. So on taper, the momentum looks great, but here's the gap that keeps me up at night. Having a target and having a plan are two completely different things. Today, around 40% of the world's largest companies have a value chain net zero target, but by most trackers, only about one in six is actually on track to hit it. Nearly a third of the companies that have targets don't have a credible roadmap behind them at all. And when independent bus stocks score these targets for real robustness, only a tiny single-digit percentage actually pass. And the hardest part, the part most pledges quite a skip over, is scope three, of course. That's the emissions across your supply chain and your products. And for most companies, that's that's 70% or more of their entire carbon footprint. It's also the part you don't directly control. So it's where the real work and the real difficult difficulty lives. A target that ignores scope 3 cannot be considered a net zero target. So if I had to sum up where are where we are, the pledges are everywhere, the plans are rare, and the distance between the leaders and the laggers is widening fast. The good news is that the environment is finally forcing the issue. Regulation is tightening, courts are starting to treat vague climate claims as deceptive marketing, and the standards themselves are shifting from make a pledge to show me the implementation. And that's exactly what my work is about. A target is a press release, but what actually matters is turning it into an operational program you can measure and manage. That's the part the market is only now waking up to, I think.
Turning Carbon Data Into Action
SPEAKER_01So I was gonna go into the CDR part, but here is the right time to ask about the business. So I want to go on with that and then go back to the CDR, Steve. It's that's okay. If that's okay with you, you claim to pull fragmented carbon and regulatory data out of the noise and turn it into a measurable decarbonization program. How does this work?
SPEAKER_03So, this is really the heart of what I do, and I would start different diagnosis for a very long time. Sustainability and carbon management has been an orphan inside most companies. They knew they had to stay close to it, but uh, but so they would hand it to the smallest possible team on the smallest possible budget and then expect almost superhuman effort and results out of it. Meanwhile, the actual data, carbon data or regulatory data, is scattered everywhere and full of noise. And because it's treated as a reporting core, people just drown in it. But that picture has changed completely and fast because carbon management is now business critical for some very complete reasons. The first is market access. The big customers, the ones with their own emission reduction targets, now have to manage the emissions across their supply chain, which means very soon they simply won't be able to work with suppliers who aren't mature on carbon. If you can't manage your emissions, you start losing contracts. And the second is ratings. Carbon measurements and credible decarbonization plans now carry real weight in the rating systems. The old copy-paste sustainable report just doesn't pass anymore. And the third is access to green finance. To type sustainable financing, you need a measurable carbon program. Because without measurement, there is no way to even prove whether that financing is performance, performing against its its terms. And put those together, and this topic has moved off the side desk onto the CEOs and the CFOs table. And here's my core difference how I approach it. I treat carbon as an operational management domain. It's the central axis and everything else. ESC reporting regulatory compliance organizes around it currently. Rather than carbon being a box you tick at the very end. And because every company is its own living organism, a strategy that works beautifully in one will not transplant cleanly into the next. That's actually exactly where I come in. I build strategies that work both at the board table and on the factory floor. Let me make this concrete. Say a board commits to cutting emissions 30% by 2030. That's just a number on a slide until someone translates it into a reality. Which production line gets reconfigured, which boiler gets electrified, which raw material gets swapped out, which supplier gets re-evaluated, and critically, who owns each of those moves and how we track them. So the work runs in both directions. I take the fragmented data and consolidate it in one place, make it measurable, turn it into targets with real tracking, and then manage it like any other core business function. Not a static annual report, but a complete living program. I make sure the target the board signs off on is actually buildable on the floor, and that the data coming off the floor is credible enough for a CFO to make real capital decisions put together. And at the end of the day, this all rests on one principle. If a company cannot sustain its own financials, then doing lots of green things is meaningless. The genuine hard part is keeping a decarbonization program active and efficient while the company keeps growing. And you can't hit your emission target without changing things in the product and service strategy itself, of course. So what we actually build are financial and sustainable favorite approaches. We make sustainable to serve the company's revenue growth, not just it's conscious, because without that, the topic always slips back to being exactly what it was before and orphan.
SPEAKER_02So which brings us right away back to the line you used at the beginning, Gekka, which I thought was brilliant, which is the target is a press release. If I if I had a good soundbite so far today, that's a really good one. I also think there is something really interesting about the maturity of our dialogue and our narrative around net zero now, means that we are at a phase where some of these targets were set a long time ago, weren't they? And and we're seeing people having to find new ways of explaining failure. I think it I think we're in for a really interesting period where we're not just talking about greenhashing or suddenly sort of we don't talk about the net zero targets anymore. I think we're gonna have to find people really struggling for the right language to talk about their carbon management. I think it's a really interesting space
What Carbon Dioxide Removal Means
SPEAKER_02that you're in. So but we left something hanging in the air a moment ago, which was carbon dioxide removal. Because I said, it's a relatively new topic, often confused with carbon capture. So I think for our listeners, it would be really lovely to get a sort of explainer of what carbon dioxide removal is. What are we talking about? What are you what are you leading with here?
SPEAKER_03Ask me about what carbon removal is. So that it's it's simplest. Carbon dioxide removal means taking carbon that's already in the atmosphere and pulling it back out, then storing it somewhere. That phrase already in the atmosphere is the part to hold on to, because it's exactly what separates removal from carbon capture. But I will come back to that at the end again. It breaks down into two broad families: nature-based removal and engineered removal, steel. The nature-based methods are pretty much what you would expect. That's there is afforestation and reforestation, planting or restoring forests because as trees grow, they pull CO2 from the air and store it in their wood and roots. There is soil carbon, farming practices like cover cropping and no-till that drive more carbon down into the soil and keep it there. And there's blue carbon, restoring coastal ecosystems like mangroves, seagrass, and salt marshes, which are some of the most carbon-dense habitats on the planet. But there's a catch with all of these, and it's a big one. Their storage is low durability. Somewhere between 20 to 100 years, a forest can burn down, soil can be ploughed up, and the carbon goes straight back into the atmosphere in those cases. So these metals don't really solve the problem, they just park it. And if that carbon comes back out in 50 years' time, all we have done is hand the problem to the next generation, which runs directly against the principle of intergenerational equity. The other side, and this is where my own focus is, is engineered removal, the unknown part. The simplest way I describe it, nature only takes carbon out of the air through photosynthesis. Engineered removal recreates or accelerates that effect using technology. But with one crucial upgrade, the carbon stays locked away for a thousand years or more. There are several quite different approaches here, so let me walk through the main ones very quickly. Direct air capture uses big machines with fonts that pull in ordinary air and pass it through chemical filters that grab onto the CO2. And once the filter is saturated, you apply heat to release the CO2 as a pure and concentrated steam. That steam is then compressed and injected deep underground into rock formation where it stays. And ocean alkaline enhancement, it works with the chemistry of the sea. You add alkaline minerals, things like crushed olive or limestone, to seawater, which boosts the ocean's natural ability to soak up CO2 from the air, and the carbon ends up locked into stable forms, dissolved bicarbonate that can stay in the ocean for thousands of years. And biochar. Biochar it starts with plant-based plant-based agricultural residues, for example, you heat that biomass in a low oxygen environment, a process called pyrolysis, which turns the carbon into a stable charcoal like solid instead of letting it rot and release CO2, worked into soil, that carbon stays locked up for centuries, and it tends to improve the soil's health as a bonus.
SPEAKER_01Well, good cat, if you're looking for a second career, I think teaching must be it. You just trained everything in a very simple way and understood, understood it.
SPEAKER_02I know I did too. I actually I think biochar in particular. I know people get really obsessed about biochar, don't they, Gekka? It's like if you're gonna get into this stuff, biochar is where I think a lot of people get really quite geeky and are excited.
SPEAKER_01They are I have a lot of questions about the scalability of those technologies and everything, but we have limited time, so I have to ask the main question, I think, because there is a huge challenge in front of you on the CDR promotion.
Removal Without Excuses For Polluting
SPEAKER_01The tech behind it is exciting and innovative for sure, but there is also the fear in climate circles that people are usually hoping for the technology to come and save us all without changing our systemic failures. So, how are you handling the narrative here?
SPEAKER_03Uh honestly, it's it's a fear I share. And I think anyone working seriously in this space has to take it seriously rather than wave it away. There's a real risk that the technology will save us, becomes a comfortable excuse to keep doing exactly what we were doing already. If removal ever turns into a permission slip to avoid the hard structural changes, then we have lost the plot completely. So I don't dismiss that query. I just start from it. But of course, the way I would frame my position is simple. Removal is in addition to cutting emissions, never instead of it. Just think about the bathtub analogy. Maybe I can quickly describe the analogy like that. There's a tap water which actually represents the emissions going into the atmosphere, and there's an accumulated CO2, there's an accumulated water in the bedtop. And there's the what's the word for the thing that takes. Yeah, there's a hole out under the bedtop. Which black hole, the waste.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Regular nature-based solutions are the plug that slowly takes the CO2 out of the bed from the atmosphere. But when we add the engineered CDR plug into the bed, it just accelerates the process. Therefore, also in in this case, when the carbon removal is opening the drain under under the bed. But if you open the drain and leave the tap running full blast, you have achieved nothing. You still have to turn the tap down first and hardest, in the hardest way, a removal doesn't replace this work. It's useless without it. So where does the removal actually belong? In two places, and really only two. First, the hard to abate emission side, sectors like cement, steel, aviation, parts of agriculture, etc., where even with our best effort, some residual emissions will be left over for a long time. And the second, the legacy carbon that's already sitting in the atmosphere from the last century, last century, and the hull. That's its removal is not a magic razor that lets the rest of the economy off the hook. It's there to finish the job that emission cutting on its own physically can't.
SPEAKER_02That makes sense to me, Tamla. Makes sense to me. I often think when people get into this conversation, go, well, two things I find really interesting is we talk about net zero and not absolute zero when it comes to carbon emissions. And I think I I actually I know some in the environmental movement get very suspicious when they hear the phrase net zero because they think that it is simply people trying to avoid hard decisions. But I I think people I know that here in the UK, if I have the most aggressive decarbonisation personal lifestyle choice that I try to do literally everything I can, I still come out with an annual carbon footprint of about six tons. So we we're getting to absolute zero absolute zero is so hard that your these sorts of solutions are absolutely critical, aren't they? And I also Think it we should have some more analogies. I like the bathtub and the plug. I actually also think the solutions to the climate crisis are a bit like an orchestra where you need all of these different players playing their own pieces. And that's what you're talking about here. But let's go back to targets.
Science Based Targets And New Rules
SPEAKER_02And in particular, you are an SBTI certified expert. So Science-Based Targets Initiative is a collaboration. It's got CDP, UN Global Compact in it, World Resources Institute, WWF, We Mean Business, a big coalition pushing all of this and putting science-based targets at the heart of their action. I'm proud to say my own city, City of Manchester, was one of the first cities to set a science-based target. So I've been down this track. Where do you think we are on science-based targets? There's been some shifts in the space in the last couple of years. What's your health check on SBTI and science-based targets at the moment?
SPEAKER_03Well, we needed an entire scientific body backed by the UN, WWF, and W Ri and some others just to separate real climate targets from a nice sounding sentence in a brochure. This was the level of problem it was in the market, I think. So is it changing now? My honest answer is yes, but it's changing its form, not completely disappearing. And let me explain what I mean at this point. On one side, the things that used to let the noise trial are being squeezed out. Regulation is closing in. The EU's Empowering Consumers Directive, which kicks in from September 2026, is going to make vague green claims. You're eco-friendly, you're green, you're sustainable with nothing behind them, actually illegal across the EU. And and crucially, it bans the carbon neutral product label ban, which is my favorite favorite ban to correct it. It's based purely on buying offsets. That single change rewrites how a lot of companies are allowed to talk. And on top of that, there are real cheap now. In the UK, the competition authority can find a company up to 10% of its global turnover. And we have already seen cases against big names. So the cost of noise has gone from a bit of a reputational risk to a line item on the profit and loss table. And it's not the it's not just regulators. The ratings agencies want real carbon data and credible plans now, but not a copy-paste sustainability report. Green finance wants measurable programs and the standards themselves are maturing. SPTI has just moved to version two of its net zero standard, and the whole center of gravity has shifted from make a pledge to prove you are actually implementing it. All of that together is steadily shrinking the space, the old noise we used to live in. And this is the honest part. I won't pretend it's a clean victory. There is a real political backlash. The EU actually withdrew its tougher green claims directive in 2025, over concerns about the burden on smaller businesses, and there's a broader anti-ESC mood in some markets still. And there's a new failure mode that worries me almost as much as greenwashing did. Green hushing, as you also mentioned. That's when companies scared of being accused of getting it wrong, simply go quiet and stop talking about the sustainability work all together. The silence is isn't silence, isn't progress. It's just moves from the noise from saying too much to saying nothing.
SPEAKER_01Well, for a time now, I've been quoting Bob Dylan about the business changing. As he said, if your time to you is worth saving, then you better start swimming or you'll sink like a stone for the times. They're changing. Now I've got Bob Dylan on the podcast too. But basically, it's what you said. There is backlash, of course, but the times are changing and the business has to change too. Gokar, I would love to go forever on a lot of issues with you, but we are coming to an end of our time.
Kids, Hope And Closing Thoughts
SPEAKER_01So our final question, our network is ironically called do not smile, because we need to make sustainability a subject that brings happiness into the world. So what object, place, or person always makes you smile?
SPEAKER_03Well, you you know a few things come to mind straight away, and they make me smile for very different reasons, and they will make me forever, I think. This first is the question I get asked the the most these days. People come up to me, completely sincere, and go, man, why can't you just purify seawater? I I really I really don't get it. We can fly to space, but we cannot clean seawater enough to drink it. Like it's it's just so innocent, so genuine, and that it makes me green every single time. Then there's the other group, the people who are absolutely confused the climate crisis isn't real. That the whole thing is just some game capitalism is playing on us. And then there are my friends who still didn't understand the job I do for for living. But but the honestly, the the one makes me smile, who actually really make me happy, are a very specific group, children. And I sit down with them and explain where the world is heading, and then what we can actually do about it, they they transform on the spot. They basically turn into these little climate soldiers, and that's why, hands down, my favorite age group to work with is kids under 12. They get it instantly, and they care with the their whole hearts as the thing that keeps me smiling and making me wake up in the morning.
SPEAKER_01One answer to cover all.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, Dam absolutely knocked it out of the park there, as we say in English Gurkha. Um, small little anecdote, I know we're out of time, Damler, but on that, I was once hosting a climate conference, and we had lots of people in this conference gurker, and and we played two radio bulletins from the future. And one was a very negative scenario of where we'd fail to address climate change, and one was an optimistic future where we put all the solutions in place and we come out the top. And then we did a crazy little poll of all the people at the conference of which scenario do they think would win? And there were like 150 people said, We're not gonna make it. It's the doomsday scenario. And there were just 12 people said, had voted that they thought that the most optimistic scenario would come true, we'd get there. And I said, I was in the front of the stage and I said, Look, we need to meet you guys because you know, whoever it is, you you are the optimist, you are the future, you're amazing that you think we're gonna make this. Would you mind putting your hands up? And on the front row of the conference, a guest primary school class of kids was sat on a day out from school, and they all just put their hands up like this. And there were like 200 grown-ups in the room crying about that reality. Amazing.
SPEAKER_01So Steve, you shouldn't do that at the end of the program.
SPEAKER_02I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I couldn't help it. But Gurka started it, I just finished it. But it's been so wonderful talking to you. Totally fascinating. We'll have to have you back so we can talk some more, particularly about that science piece, because I think it's got so far to run. But I think we're gonna have to wrap ourselves up. Damla, over to you.
SPEAKER_01So thanks to everyone who has listened to our good guys podcast brought to you by the Do Not Smile Network of Agencies.
SPEAKER_02And make sure you listen to future episodes where we'll be talking to more amazing people about how we can work together to create a more sustainable future. So, Gekga, Damla, see you soon.
SPEAKER_00Bye. Goodgeist. A podcast series on sustainability.
