The newly established Carbon Technology Research Foundation (CTRF) aims to finance research into nature-based processes to enhance the capture of atmospheric greenhouse gases – to see if similar processes of carbon capture that over millions of years led to the creation of reservoirs of fossil fuels, can be used and intensified to restock and relock Pandora’s Box. It’s the brainchild of Stig Arff, who runs Fremr, a family office in Norway, as he discussed with Alliance’s Andrew Milner at the Nordic Foundations Conference in Kristiansand.

Stig Arff.

Andrew Milner: Could you start off by telling me about Fremr and how that led into the CTRF?

Stig Arff: Fremr is a family office managing funds that have accumulated from working in different start-ups. The last one was a loan mediator which was created in 2008 and then sold to an American private equity firm in 2019. At that point, we had more than enough funds to start doing other things and the problem of climate change has been on my mind for many years and I thought, if there’s any time to do this, it’s now.