23/25 Climeworks: Engineering a Carbon-Free Future and Cooler World

In the race to combat climate change, Swiss innovator Climeworks AG has emerged as a front-runner, transforming the ambitious promise of direct air capture (DAC) into a commercial reality. Founded in 2009 and headquartered in Zürich, Climeworks is now the world's premier DAC company pioneering a permanent, engineered solution to remove atmospheric CO₂ at scale.

✅ Why Direct Air Capture Matters?

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns that we must remove 3 -12 gigatons of CO2 annually by mid-century to keep warming under 1.5 °C, a scale far beyond what natural solutions alone can deliver. The DAC+Storage (DAC+S) offers one of the few reliable pathways to achieve these deep removals, locking away legacy emissions as rock, a process recognized by the Science Based Targets initiative as essential for net-zero goals.

🚀 From Pilot to Powerhouse

Climeworks has steadily scaled its infrastructure through a series of strategically designed industrial facilities:

• Capricorn (Hinwil, 2017): The inaugural plant captured ∼900 t CO₂ annually by using waste heat and supplying greenhouses, launching a real-world deployment.
• Arctic Fox (Hellisheiði, 2017): A 50 t/yr testbed combining DAC with permanent underground storage via basalt mineralization.
• Orca (Iceland, 2021): The first commercial DAC+S plant, capturing 4,000 t/yr and transforming CO₂ into stone using Carbfix technology.
• Mammoth (Iceland, 2024): The largest DAC+S plant globally, Mammoth captures up to 36,000 t CO₂ per year. It is powered entirely by geothermal energy from ON Power and will be fully operational in 2024.

💡 Continuation of Excellence

Climeworks is not resting on first-generation success. Their Gen-3 DAC technology, tested in Switzerland and built in partnership with Svante, has doubled CO2 capture efficiency while halving energy use a breakthrough vital for cost reduction.

🌍 Scaling Global Impact

A recent $162 million equity raise, bringing total funding beyond $1 billion, underscores investor confidence in Climeworks' ability to scale and reduce costs substantially.

Strategic expansion includes a new U.S. headquarters in Austin, Texas, with satellite offices in New York, D.C., and California, laying the groundwork for future North American DAC hubs.

Climeworks also has a high-profile client portfolio, delivering carbon removal credits to Fortune 500 companies such as Microsoft, British Airways, and Morgan Stanley. According to the Wall Street Journal reports, the latter committed to 40,000 t CO₂ removal through 2037.

🎯 Future of Cooling the World

Climeworks has set bold targets:

• 1 Mt/year of CO₂ removal capacity by 2030
• 1 Gt/year by 2050, on par with global net-zero needs
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The company is constructing megaton-scale hubs in the U.S. (Louisiana's Project Cypress) and Europe to meet these goals, leveraging breakthroughs in modular design and cost efficiencies.

🧭 The Path Ahead

Climeworks understands DAC is not the only option. As they emphasize, emissions reduction must remain the core; DAC is the tool to clean up the unavoidable past emissions. Their advances in modular scalability, energy efficiency, permanent storage, and corporate adoption position them at the cutting edge of climate technology.

📈 Greeningdotlive Thoughts

Climeworks is weaving engineering excellence with bold ambition, turning dreams into deployments and deployments into global scale-ups. From capturing greenhouse gas to forging stone underground, they are rewriting climate strategy not with seedling trees alone but with vacuum pods powered by our planet's geothermal heartbeat.

As the costs of DAC edge down, corporate demand rises, and industrial-scale hubs emerge, Climeworks is committed to redefining climate leadership and delivering climate confidence with each kilotonne removed.