Climeworks AG

Type	Aktiengesellschaft
Industry	Direct air capture
Founded	November 2009 (2009-11)
Headquarters	Zürich , Switzerland

Climeworks AG is a Swiss company specializing in direct air capture (DAC) technology. The company filters CO₂ directly from the ambient air through an adsorption-desorption process.^[1] At its first commercial direct air capture and storage plant, Orca, in Hellisheidi, Iceland, the air-captured CO₂ is handed over to storage partner Carbfix, who injects it deep underground where it mineralizes and turns into stone.^[2] Climeworks’s machines run on renewable energy or energy-from-waste and re-emit less than 10% of the carbon dioxide they capture.^[3]

The company was founded in 2009 by mechanical engineers Dr. Christoph Gebald and Dr. Jan Wurzbacher who lead the company as co-CEOs. Climeworks has put more than 15 direct air capture plants into operation all over Europe. In Iceland, Climeworks operates the world’s first large-scale direct air capture and storage plant "Orca" to permanently remove carbon dioxide from the air.^[4] According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), carbon removal technologies are necessary to mitigate climate change. The IPCC’s modelled pathways show that to limit global warming to 1.5 °C with no or limited overshoot it would require up to 310 billion tons of direct air capture and storage by 2100.^[5]

To contribute to the standardization and scale-up of high-quality, permanent removals, Climeworks and Carbfix announced in September 2022 the release of the world's first full-chain methodology dedicated to carbon dioxide removal via direct air capture and underground mineralization storage.^[6] This methodology has been validated by the independent quality and assurance leader DNV. It provides the requirements for stringent standards by which measurement and reporting of Climeworks' carbon dioxide removal and Carbfix‘s permanent mineralization can be third-party verified.

History

Climeworks equipment displayed in 2015 on Bundesplatz in Bern

Climeworks was founded in 2009 by the mechanical engineers Jan Wurzbacher and Christoph Gebald. During their PhDs at the ETH Zurich, the two founders conducted research on direct air capture technology to remove carbon dioxide from the air. Based on that scientific research, Climeworks was founded as a spin-off from ETH Zurich. In 2011, Climeworks received capital from investors for the first time to develop a prototype with a modular structure. The company was able to evolve its technology from laboratory to commercial scale, presenting the first concept of a modular CO₂ collector and a working prototype in 2014.^[7] Since then, rapid scaling has led to their present modular technology. In September 2021, Climeworks launched the world’s first large-scale direct air capture and storage plant “Orca” in Iceland.^[8]

During the company’s development, a partnership was formed with the automaker Audi. Further support was provided by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy, which enabled the accelerated commercialization and scaling of the technology. Climeworks is part of several European research and development projects.^[9] This includes the production of synthetic fuels from CO₂. In 2018, Climeworks raised $30.8 million in a financing round^[10] and in summer 2020, the Swiss company raised $110 million.^[11] In an equity funding round in April 2022, Climeworks raised $650 million, the largest sum raised thus far by a carbon dioxide removal company.^[12] The funding round has placed Climeworks in the unicorn category of startups.^[13]

On 20 July 2021, the Swiss and Icelandic governments agreed to jointly develop “negative emission technologies” which involve extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere and storing it underground using Climeworks’ and CarbFix’ (CO₂-to-stone) technologies.^[14]

The corporate offices of Climeworks AG are in Zürich and a German subsidiary Climeworks Deutschland GmbH opened in Cologne in 2019. As of January 2023, the company has over 300 employees internationally.

Projects

In May 2017, the company opened the world's first commercial direct air capture plant in Hinwil, Switzerland, to filter CO₂ from ambient air. It consisted of 18 collector containers that together had a nominal capture capacity of 900 tons of CO₂ per year. The plant was installed on the roof of a waste incineration facility that provided waste heat to power the machines. The CO₂ that the plant captured was sold to a nearby greenhouse operator for use as fertilizer^[15] and to Coca-Cola HBC to produce the sparkling water Valser.^[16] The Hinwil facility stopped its operations in October 2022, as Climeworks pivoted from selling CO₂ to storing the greenhouse gas permanently underground.^[17]

In October 2017, the demo project “CarbFix2” followed. As part of the Horizon 2020 research project, the CarbFix2 project at the Hellisheiði Power Station in Iceland filtered CO₂ from the air with Climeworks technology, which was then stored underground in Iceland’s basaltic rock, where it mineralizes.^[18] The combination of direct air capture and storage of CO₂ is a form of carbon dioxide removal, which produces negative emissions.^[19]

In September 2021, Climeworks launched “Orca”, the largest direct air capture and storage facility in the world, with a nominal capture capacity of up to 4,000 tons of CO₂ per year.^[20] Like the pilot project CarbFix2, the operating facility is located near the Hellisheiði Power Station, which provides geothermal energy to run the Orca plant, and the air-captured CO₂ is stored underground by Climeworks’ storage partner Carbfix.^[21]

In June 2021, Climeworks announced the start of construction of Mammoth, its newest and largest direct air capture and storage facility. The plant is Climeworks’ 18th project and its second commercial direct air capture and storage facility. Mammoth will also be located in Iceland. It will have a nominal CO₂ capture capacity of up to 36,000 tons per year when fully operational and its construction is expected to last 18–24 months before operations start.^[22] Overall, Mammoth represents a demonstrable step in Climeworks' ambitious scale-up plan: multi-megaton capacity in the 2030s, on track to deliver gigaton capacity by 2050.

Commercialization

Climeworks operates the only existing commercial direct air capture facilities and offers carbon dioxide removal as a service to both companies and individuals.^[23] Its carbon dioxide removal achieved the only 5/5-star rating on the database compiled by CarbonPlan.^[24] In June 2021, together with DNV, Climeworks has developed and validated the world’s first methodology focusing on direct air capture; the first step towards full third-party certification.^[25]

Several corporations have already purchased Climeworks’ carbon dioxide removal, including Stripe,^[26] Microsoft,^[27] Swiss Re,^[28] and BCG.^[29] As of February 2023, the number of individuals who have subscribed to Climeworks’ carbon dioxide removal service exceeds 18’000. Although several other companies aim to commercialize direct air capture systems (e.g., Carbon Engineering, Global Thermostat), Climeworks is the furthest along in the market process. The cost of carbon dioxide removal via direct air capture and storage as offered by Climeworks is relatively high (around $1000 per ton of CO₂ for small quantities). However, as more governments and companies invest in direct air capture, the technology can be scaled up which will lead to a reduction in the costs,^[30] a development pattern similar to photovoltaics.

See also

• Carbon capture and storage
• Hellisheiði Power Station
• EDL Anlagenbau Gesellschaft

References

Sources

• National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2019). Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration: A Research Agenda. National Academies Press. doi:10.17226/25259. ISBN 978-0-309-48452-7. PMID 31120708. S2CID 134196575.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

External links

• Official website