Today is Wednesday, 10 July 2024.
As promised in last Monday’s “must-read” article, today we go over Climeworks, owner of the largest direct air capture (DAC) facility that began operations in May, marking a milestone for that sector.
But before we refer to this largest and newest facility, some background about Climeworks.
Its first DAC plant called Orca was launched in September 2021 in Iceland. The facility has an annual capture capacity of 4,000 tons of CO₂.
Also in Iceland, Climeworks newest facility is called Mammoth and is about ten times bigger than Orca. Its targeted capacity is 36,000 tons of CO₂ per year.
As indicated at the company’s portal, “an important milestone on the way to megaton capacity by 2030 and gigaton by 2050”.
The core component of Climeworks’ DAC plants are the CO₂ collector containers (CCs). Mammoth consists of 72 CCs in contrast to the 8 CCs deployed at Orca.
Scalability is therefore not a technological limitation. According to Climeworks, one bottleneck for further expansion relates to the supply chain, providing parts needed to manufacture DAC plants, such as valves, sorbent material and CCs.
After capture, once the CO₂ is released from the filters, it is transported underground where it reacts with basalt rock and can be naturally mineralized, transformed into stone and permanently stored.
The heat and electricity required to run the DAC process comes from renewable energy and is supplied by the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant.
This operation is obviously generating carbon credits, more specifically the CO₂ Removal Certificates (CORCs), verified by DNV after validation according to the Puro Standard methodology for Geologically Stored Carbon. This standard is considered the first standard for engineered carbon removal methods in the voluntary carbon market.
As a result of all that, Climeworks became the world’s first direct air capture company certified under the Puro Standard in 2024. Read more here, including the latest developments involving ICVCM, Verra, Gold Standard, the EU carbon removal certification framework and several others.
Climeworks is not alone. Together with more than 20 companies in this burgeoning carbon removal industry, it launched a coalition to lobby the United States government for new policies to help commercialize the nascent technology, which in recent years has been receiving a flood of private investments. The coalition is named Carbon Removal Alliance.
As we already reported sometime ago, JP Morgan Chase signed a 9-year agreement with Climeworks to deliver 25,000 mtCO₂e of carbon removal services.
Click at the image below to ream more how it works, including process perfomance and efficiency information.
And here to know more about the Switzerland-based Climeworks, including which companies are partnering with them to offset their own emissions.
It may take decades before carbon removal makes a dent in the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but it's great to see engineering action in that direction.
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