Climeworks' three new Executive Team members

Key take-aways:

Building on his international experience across the U.S. and China, Australian native Douglas Chan oversees the Operations of Climeworks.
With more than 20 years of experience in marketing and sales at leading global companies like Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo and Motorola, Jan Huckfeldt is leading Climeworks’ corporate partnerships side to cater to the growing demand of Climeworks’ CDR service.
Under Christoph Beuttler's leadership, the Climate Policy team will continue to deepen and nurture productive dialogues with stakeholders, with an emphasis on the development of standards and their implementation around the world to scale high-quality CDR solutions.

Climeworks, one of the global leaders in direct air capture (DAC) technology, is proud to share that its Executive Team has gained three new members. Douglas Chan joined Climeworks as Chief Operations Officer and Jan Huckfeldt as Chief Commercial Officer. Christoph Beuttler, who joined Climeworks over four years ago, has been appointed Chief Climate Policy Officer.

Douglas oversees Climeworks’ plant operations and is looking after the structuring of the supply chain, project execution, and production teams that are needed to enable direct air capture and storage (DAC+S) to reach gigaton capacity by 2050. Before Climeworks, Douglas was latest with Tesla where he contributed to scaling the operations internationally. For Climeworks’ commercial team which is led by Jan, engaging with pioneering companies to sustain the long-term demand for CDR is key to assisting in the growth planning and scale-up of operations. Among Christoph’s priorities will be nurturing open dialogues with all stakeholders of the developing DAC industry value chain, contributing to the creation and continuous development of stringent standards for high-quality CDR solutions.

Since Climeworks was founded in 2009, the team has grown to 250 people who stand behind the company’s vision to inspire 1 billion people to remove CO₂ from the air. In the emerging CDR industry, this represents one of the strongest groups of DAC experts to date.

To drive the scale-up of the company further, assembling a seasoned leadership team has been key focus for Climeworks’ day-to-day business. The Climeworks Executive Team now comprises 13 members, including co-founders and co-CEOs Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher.

“Since 2021, the number of Climeworkers has grown significantly as we witnessed an exciting increase in interest for careers in CDR. For Climeworks’ scale-up roadmap, this development is key and has been reflected in the growth of the People team as well. Achieving our target to scale DAC+S to gigaton capacity by 2050 goes hand in hand with assembling a strong, multidisciplinary team that is ready to tackle the challenges of building a new industry”, says Dominique Kronenberg, Chief of Staff at Climeworks.

Jan Huckfeldt, Chief Commercial Officer at Climeworks

What an incredibly well run and inspiring company’’. Those were my introductory words to the Climeworkers when I was officially announced and I mean every single one of them. I’ve followed Climeworks closely for several years now and I’m delighted to be a part of its Commercial team. Climeworks has established itself as a pioneer and industry leader in providing CDR as a service and I’m looking forward to propelling the growth of the company further with the Commercial organization.

Douglas Chan, Chief Operations Officer at Climeworks

I’m motivated by the challenge of solving difficult problems and doing what may seem impossible. Climeworks gives me the opportunity to create an industry that does not yet exist at scale. Let’s design and ramp technology that will make direct air capture widely used in the world.

Christoph Beuttler, Chief Climate Policy Officer at Climeworks

Through the establishment of a dedicated Climate Policy Unit, Climeworks recognizes the crucial role of the public sector to help scale up high-quality CDR to gigaton capacities that are so important in achieving our global climate goals. I’m excited to continue leading the company’s efforts to foster the mutual understanding between Climeworks and the policymakers, community stakeholders, and thought leaders around the world.