Join us this Earth Day 2022

Choose a level of climate-positive action that matches your lifestyle and complete the sign up. No strings attached, you can tell us to stop our carbon dioxide removal service for you at any time. Each year, we send you a confirmation of the amount of carbon dioxide removal you have ordered. No middle-men, no unintended side effects: easy and direct climate action.

Climeworks direct air capture machines consist of modular CO₂ collectors, which selectively capture carbon dioxide in a two-step process. First, air is drawn into the collector with a fan. Carbon dioxide is captured on the surface of a highly selective filter material that sits inside the collectors (“adsorption”). Second, after the filter material is full with carbon dioxide, the collector is closed. We increase the temperature to between 80 and 100 °C - this releases the carbon dioxide (“desorption”) and we can collect it in high purity and concentration. The air-captured carbon dioxide can either be upcycled into climate-friendly products such as carbon-neutral fuels and materials, or completely removed from the air by safely storing it. You can find more info here.

Multiple climate studies published recently (IPCC Special Report, EASAC, NAS) clearly state that in order to achieve climate targets, not only do we need to do everything we can to reduce emissions; we also need to accelerate climate change solutions, actively remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Climate scientists agree that by 2050, direct air capture needs to remove between 5 and 30 billion tons of CO₂ annually if we want to achieve net zero emissions globally. To reach this level of carbon dioxide removal, direct air capture needs to be scaled up significantly, starting today.

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

1) Build and install CO₂ capture plants at sequestration sites where CO₂ can be stored

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). 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 until the CO₂ is removed from the air, for natural mineralization processes (enhanced weathering), it might take at least an order of magnitude longer to complete CO₂ removal).

You pay for the removal of CO₂ from the air and the scale-up of our technology. Additional overhead costs (that include "behind the scenes" work from our R&D, marketing, finance & admin teams) are included in the subscription prices.

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.

Traditional carbon offsets are typically a trade of avoided emissions: someone reduces emissions on behalf of the offset buyer who pays for the other party’s emissions reduction (= avoidance certificates). Thereby, the offset buyer continues emitting. If done in a transparent way, this trade will at best result in a short-term emissions reduction but never lead to the zero and negative emissions that we need to keep global warming in check.

What Climeworks does is fundamentally different. Rather than trading avoided emissions, we physically remove carbon dioxide emissions that are difficult to otherwise avoid. Climeworks' carbon dioxide removal (= removal certificates) is further permanent and fully measurable, as every ton of carbon dioxide removed from the air and stored underground can be precisely measured using standard industry measurement equipment.