Christoph Gebald, Climeworks' co-founder, told the Washington Post that it costs at least $600 to capture one metric ton of carbon dioxide, since super-heating the air takes a lot of energy. Each of those facilities could remove up to 250 times more carbon per year than Orca.Ī Climeworks facility for capturing carbon dioxide atop the roof of a waste incinerating plant in Hinwil, Switzerland, July 18, 2017.īut as with many emerging technologies, direct air capture is expensive. It also plans to start construction on a a plant in Texas next year. Two other plants are in planning phases: The Canadian company Carbon Engineering, which is backed by Bill Gates, started designing a similar facility in northeastern Scotland three months ago. Before that, the technology had only been used on a small scale in spacecraft and submarines. The Swiss company Climeworks, which built Orca, has the only operational game in town its other plant is in Switzerland. This technology, known as direct air capture, is in its infancy. Orca, by contrast, is an attempt to deal with the greenhouse gas that's already up there. But that simply prevents more carbon from accumulating in the atmosphere. More than 20 facilities worldwide currently do this, most of which are in the US. It can then be converted into materials like concrete or stored underground. Those collect the carbon produced in the manufacturing process before it enters the air. The Orca facility works differently than the carbon-capture technologies built into some power plants, steel mills, and industrial facilities. It often indicates a user profile.Įquipment used to capture carbon dioxide at a coal-fired power plant owned by NRG Energy in Thompsons, Texas, on January 9, 2017. Several nations are now offering financial incentives for DAC, but more governmental assistance will be required to reach optimistic cost targets.Įxplore the 2023 list of 15 Climate Tech Companies to Watch.Account icon An icon in the shape of a person's head and shoulders. Ultimately, whether Climeworks meets its goals will depend on whether it can offer carbon removal services at a lower cost than companies developing competing DAC technology, and whether the overall costs of DAC can be brought down. Last month, Climeworks announced that it was exploring potential direct air capture and storage projects in Kenya. In August, the US Department of Energy Funding selected three projects Climeworks is involved with to receive funding under the agency’s Regional DAC Hubs program. The company will likely announce additional carbon deliveries, and more carbon removal contracts, in the coming months and years. To build confidence in its technology, Climeworks must continue to deliver on its early contracts and grow its customer base. To reach that goal, it plans to launch several commercial DAC projects in the US and other countries in the coming years. By 2030, the company aims to remove more than a million tons of carbon from the atmosphere each year. Also located in Iceland, Mammoth should have the capacity to pull up to 36,000 metric tons of CO 2 from the atmosphere each year.įrom there, Climeworks plans to go even bigger. Within the next year, it expects to finish construction of its second DAC-plus-storage facility, called Mammoth. Climeworks is operating on a small scale today: its Orca plant in Hellisheidi, Iceland, can remove up to 4,000 metric tons of CO 2 from the atmosphere each year.
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