Has the world’s largest DAC facility

Based in Zurich, Switzerland Website - https://climeworks.com/

Founders - CEO Dr Christoph Gebald has a mechanical engineering background, having met co-founder Dr Jan Wurzbacher at Swiss academic institution ETH Zurich

To the extent that anyone outside of sustainability has heard of carbon capture, the chances are that they will have heard of Climeworks.

This is because Climeworks operates the (at the moment) largest Direct Air Capture Facility, the Orca plant in Iceland, where it works with partner Carbfix on storing the carbon into the Icelandic rock (it’s effectively turned into mineral water and pumped underground).

Right now, Orca’s capabilities are quite modest, with the potential to remove 4000 tonnes of legacy CO2 from the atmosphere every year - this equates to the emissions from around 870 cars.

However, the company’s ambitions are of course much bigger than removing the CO2 of the car fleet of a very small town. Work will soon start on a second plant in Iceland that will remove 36,000 tons of CO2 a year - by 2050, the Swiss company wants to be taking a billion tons a year out of the atmosphere.

The company is well funded with high profile backers and partners. In the Spring, Climeworks announced an equity round of $650 million. In July, Climeworks also signed a ten year agreement with Microsoft. This follows Climeworks having been included in Microsoft’s carbon removal portfolio a year earlier.

Climeworks is one of the only carbon removal companies to have a consumer product, and this is something that airline executives may want to look at (in addition to any interest in carbon storage).

Starting at €1 a month, you can become a supporter of Climeworks, though the amount of carbon stored for now with that price will be minimal. That amount can be increased to €80 a month

Sustainable travel initiative Tomorrow’s Air also offers subscriptions and one time purchases via Climeworks.

In May, Boom Supersonic, which aims to offer commercial supersonic flights powered by 100% SAF, signed an agreement with Climeworks to remove a part of Boom’s residual CO₂ emissions from the atmosphere and permanently store it underground, helping Boom achieve netzero carbon by 2025.