Arctic Fox: Climeworks first direct air capture plant.

The world’s first direct air capture facility combined with CO₂ storage

Arctic Fox was our first facility in Iceland and marks the beginning of carbon dioxide removal through direct air capture. For the first time, direct air capture was combined with the safe and permanent storage of carbon dioxide. With this facility, we could demonstrate that our technology to remove CO₂ from the air is one important solution to help fight global warming.

Climeworks' founders Jan and Christoph in Iceland — Climeworks' founders Jan and Christoph at the direct air capture facility in Iceland

Status

Operational

Date

October 2017

Goal

Successfully combine direct air capture with safe and permanent underground storage

Location

Iceland, Hellisheidi

Capture capacity

Up to 50 tons of CO₂ per year

This is how it works

We remove carbon dioxide from the air with our direct air capture machines. Our Icelandic partner Carbfix then mixes the carbon dioxide with water and pumps it deep underground. Through natural mineralization, the carbon dioxide reacts with the basalt rock and turns into stone within a few years. The carbon dioxide is thus removed from the air and returned to earth, permanently and safely. More about CO₂ removal

Climeworks’ direct air capture technology combined with the storage process developed by Icelandic company Carbfix removes carbon dioxide from the air and stores it permanently underground.

What’s special about Arctic Fox

When the project was initiated in 2017, we installed a Climeworks CO₂ collector with a capacity of 50 tons of carbon dioxide per year. It uses the geothermal power of the local geothermal power plant as a renewable energy source. One major challenge was to make our process work under such harsh weather conditions with very low temperatures. Despite the challenges, we were able to operate Arctic Fox with great success, which is now allowing a significant scale-up of our carbon dioxide removal capacities in Iceland.

Christoph Gebald, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Climeworks

The potential of scaling up our technology in combination with CO₂ storage is enormous. Not only here in Iceland but also in numerous other regions, which have similar conditions.