Change the Climate

The pioneering process of turning carbon dioxide into stone is safe. It happens through a combination of carbon dioxide capture from the air and rapid underground mineralization - a natural process whereby the carbon dioxide reacts with the basaltic rock to become solid calcite matter (another form of rock) within a few years. No weather conditions or fire can harm it or cause an outbreak of carbon dioxide: in this calcite form the greenhouse gas is removed from the atmosphere permanently and safely. The basaltic conditions at existing geothermal power plants in Iceland make it one of the best places to start the permanent storage of carbon dioxide. There are, however, more places that can have ideal conditions. For example, the Icelandic Rift System with a capacity of 50 million tons of carbon dioxide per year (source here). On a global scale studies have estimated an overall capacity of 30 trillion tons of carbon dioxide (source here). Other suitable locations can be found in North America, the Middle East or China.
You can learn more about an exemplary mineralization process that turns carbon dioxide into stone on the CarbFix website.

To remove CO₂ in your name, Climeworks does two things:

1) Build and install CO₂ capture plants at sequestration sites

2) Operate the CO₂ capture plants and hand over the CO₂ to our storage and monitoring partners (in Iceland this is Carbfix), who proceed with underground storage of the CO₂.

Building and installing a plant typically takes 1-2 years, the foreseen operational time of a plant is currently 10 years (and will presumably be even longer for future plants). Subject to the utilization and operation schedule of our plants, for CO₂ removal currently being subscribed for, our CO₂ removal service and the safe and permanent storage underground are completed within 5 years or earlier following the subscription date.

For comparison, this is at least 2 times faster than for typical other CO₂ removal approaches (for example, if trees are planted, it will typically take at least 10 years [source] until the CO₂ is removed from the air, for natural mineralization processes (enhanced weathering), it might take at least an order of magnitude longer [source] to complete CO₂ removal).

On the carbon dioxide removal confirmation you will receive by the end of each year we state the amount of carbon dioxide that has been ordered for removal in your name. No one else can put a claim to that amount. We can exactly measure how much carbon dioxide our collectors capture from air, so we know exactly how much carbon dioxide has been removed in your name.