Climeworks

Climeworks AG is a Swiss company specializing in carbon dioxide air capture technology. The company filters CO2 directly from the ambient air through an adsorption-desorption process.[1] Climeworks refers to the filtering of CO2 from the ambient air for underground storage as carbon dioxide removal.[2]

Climeworks AG
TypeAktiengesellschaft
IndustryDirect air capture
FoundedNovember 2009 (2009-11)
Headquarters
Zürich
,
Switzerland

History
Large industrial equipment on display as people talk nearby
Climeworks equipment displayed in 2015 on Bundesplatz in Bern

Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher founded Climeworks in November 2009 as a spin-off from ETH Zurich. The two German founders were fellow students in mechanical engineering and had worked with technologies for chemical and physical CO2 in the context of their studies and subsequent doctorates. In 2011, Climeworks received capital from investors for the first time to develop a prototype with a modular structure. Since then, rapid scaling has led to their present module technology, which has been available since 2014. In the course of the enterprise's development, a partnership with the automaker Audi succeeded. 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.[3] This includes the production of synthetic fuels from CO2. Since 2018 a Swiss mineral water bottler in Vals has been producing beverages with carbon dioxide from the air.

The company's goal by 2025 is to filter one percent of annual global CO2 emissions from the air. This requires the construction of 250,000 systems comparable to the one in Hinwil.[4]

A German subsidiary, Climeworks Deutschland GmbH, has opened in Cologne.[5]

In January 2019, the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company (partially-owned by The Coca-Cola Company) announced that its carbonated water brand Valser would use captured carbon from Climeworks,[6] and in 2021, a Coca-Cola HBC official stated in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that 30 percent of their production was done with captured carbon from Climeworks.[7] In January 2021, Microsoft disclosed an investment in Climeworks.[8][9][10][11]

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).[12]

In 2022, Climeworks with CHF 600 million received the biggest round of a later stage venture capital investment in Switzerland in that year.[13]

The corporate offices of Climeworks AG are in Zürich.[14]

In January 2023, Climeworks announced that it had successfully sequestered carbon dioxide underground permanently on a carbon credit contract that was verified by DNV.[15][16]

Projects

In May 2017 the company opened the world's first commercial project to filter CO2 from the ambient air in Hinwil. It consists of 18 direct air capture modules that filter 900 tonnes of CO2 each year, which are then sold to a greenhouse operator for use as fertilizer.[17][18]

In October 2017, a demo project followed, in which a module on CO2 filter is used at the Hellisheiði Power Station in Iceland. As part of the Horizon 2020 research project, CO2 will be filtered from the air and then stored underground as a mineral.[19][20]

In September 2021, Climeworks's Orca carbon capture plant came online. As of September 2021, it is the largest direct air capture facility in the world, capturing 4,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.[21] Like the pilot project, the operating facility is located at Hellisheiði Power Station.[22]

The carbon dioxide captured from Orca is passed to a second company, Carbfix, who inject it underground in such a way that within two years it becomes stone.

Following Orca, a second, larger plant "Mammoth", will capture 36,000 tonnes a year, once completed in 2024.[23]

Commercialization

Climeworks has the only existing commercial direct air capture machine.[24] 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, selling to a comparatively small market in high-cost CO2 (i.e., CO2 used in greenhouses to enhance productivity may cost more than $1,000 per tonne if the greenhouse is located far from a source). This market is too small to support a robust ecosystem of small innovators necessary to explore the large number of chemical recipes and physical machinery that might decrease direct air capture prices. Thus, like photovoltaics or hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the development of direct air capture will likely require long-term government investment in incentives.[25]

See also

References
  1. Simon Evans (22 June 2017). "The Swiss company hoping to capture 1% of global CO2 emissions by 2025". Carbonbrief. Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  2. McGrath, Matt (15 November 2017). "Climate's magic rabbit: Pulling CO2 out of thin air". BBC News. Retrieved 20 July 2022.
  3. "Power-to-X: Climeworks an drei europäischen Projekten beteiligt" (PDF). Climeworks. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 August 2018. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  4. Benjamin von Brackel (10 June 2017). "Schweizer Wundermaschine geht in Betrieb". Frankfurter Rundschau (in German). Retrieved 3 August 2018.
  5. "Climeworks Deutschland GmbH has opened its offices in Cologne". Archived from the original on 23 April 2020.
  6. Kotecki, Peter (15 January 2019). "A Coca Cola-owned brand will sell sparkling water made with carbon dioxide captured from the atmosphere". Business Insider. Axel Springer SE. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
  7. "Coca-Cola's and Microsoft's Latest Gamble: A Giant CO2 Vacuum Cleaner". The Wall Street Journal. News Corp. 31 August 2021. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
  8. Geman, Ben (28 January 2021). "Microsoft backs direct air capture player Climeworks". Axios. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  9. Calma, Justine (9 September 2021). "How the largest direct air capture plant will suck CO2 out of the atmosphere". The Verge. Vox Media. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  10. Joppa, Lucas; Luers, Amy; Willmott, Elizabeth; Friedmann, S. Julio; Hamburg, Steven P.; Broze, Rafael (29 September 2021). "Microsoft's million-tonne CO2-removal purchase — lessons for net zero". Nature. 597 (7878): 629–632. Bibcode:2021Natur.597..629J. doi:10.1038/d41586-021-02606-3. S2CID 238229298. Retrieved 14 July 2022.
  11. Clifford, Catherine (28 June 2022). "From milligrams to gigatons: Startup that sucks carbon dioxide from the air is building a big plant in Iceland". CNBC. Retrieved 27 November 2022.
  12. "Switzerland and Iceland join forces to 'capture' CO2". swissinfo.ch.
  13. "Swiss Venture Capital Report 2023" (PDF). startupticker.ch. JNB Journalistenbüro. Retrieved 1 March 2023.
  14. "Climeworks AG". Bloomberg L.P. Archived from the original on 3 August 2020. Retrieved 30 October 2021.
  15. Clifford, Catherine (12 January 2023). "Swiss company that counts Microsoft as a customer says it's removed CO2 from the air and put it in the ground". CNBC. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  16. Ramkumar, Amrith (12 January 2023). "Climate Startup Removes Carbon From Open Air in Industry First". The Wall Street Journal. News Corp. Retrieved 12 January 2023.
  17. Parkin, Brian (31 May 2017). "Swiss Pickles Set to Benefit From First Carbon Capture Plant". Bloomberg.
  18. Speicher, Christian (31 May 2017). "Zürcher Startup-Unternehmen mit Weltpremiere: CO2 wird aus der Luft gefiltert". Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
  19. Alister Doyle (11 October 2017). "From thin air to stone: greenhouse gas test starts in Iceland". Reuters. Retrieved 13 December 2017.
  20. World's first "negative emissions" plant turns carbon dioxide into stone. 12 October 2017.
  21. "World's biggest machine capturing carbon from air turned on in Iceland". The Guardian. Agence France-Presse. 8 September 2021. Retrieved 16 September 2021.
  22. Brown, Chris (30 October 2021). "In Iceland, can a revolutionary new process actually help stop global warming?". CBC News. Retrieved 30 October 2021.
  23. "Racing against the clock to decarbonise the planet". channels.ft.com. Retrieved 26 August 2022.
  24. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019, summary.
  25. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine 2019, introduction.

Sources
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