Mammoth: our newest direct air capture and storage facility

From reality to scale-up: an order of magnitude closer to gigaton scale

On 28 June 2022, we broke ground on Climeworks’ second and newest commercial direct air capture and storage plant Mammoth in Iceland. Only 18 months later, the infrastructure of the plant has been successfully put in place, with 90% of the systems operational, including that of storage partner Carbfix.

Mammoth represents a demonstrable step in the company’s scale-up roadmap, moving Climeworks’ carbon removal capacity from thousands of tons to tens of thousands of tons per year – an important milestone on the way to megaton capacity by 2030 and gigaton by 2050.

The plant is designed for a nameplate capacity of up to 36,000 tons per year. The actual net removal will be lower, following Climeworks’ carbon removal production waterfall.

Status

In operational ramp-up

Date

May 2024

Goal

Providing engineering and operational experience for Climeworks’ 10x scale-up steps, further developing the supply chain, and bringing additional high-quality carbon removal capacity to the market

Location

Hellisheidi, Iceland

Design annual nameplate capture capacity

up to 36,000 tons of CO₂

Proof point of Climeworks’ modular technology design and high-quality carbon removal

Climeworks broke ground on Mammoth in June 2022. Only 18 months later, the core pieces of the plant are built. The rest of 2024 will be dedicated to completing the plant's buildout, adding the remaining 60 CO₂ collector containers, and ramping up its operations. This phased initiation underscores Climeworks' flagship modular technology design, facilitating the construction of plants of varying sizes.

With Mammoth, the company gains further field experience on a whole new level of scale. The engineering and operational learnings will inform Climeworks’ future scale-up steps – this is deployment-led innovation.

Mammoth also brings new high-quality carbon removal capacity to the market for Climeworks to provide to its customers. Like at Orca, Climeworks aims to third-party verify and certify the carbon removal performed at Mammoth and delivered to customers.

A word from our founders

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

Based on most successful scale-up curves, reaching gigaton by 2050 means delivering at megaton scale by 2030. Nobody ever built what we are building in DAC, and we are both humble and realistic that the most certain way to be successful is to run the technology in the real world as fast as possible and relentlessly deploy it.

Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks

Mammoth shows how Climeworks is championing DAC deployment. Since 2021, we have been operating our commercial DAC plant, Orca. Now its big brother is taking final shape: Mammoth represents not only a tenfold increase in carbon removal capacity but also a step change in project management, supply chain volume, and workforce requirements. Having the core infrastructure in place and operational within just 18 months is a proof point of Climeworks’ ability to scale up quickly, with extremely fast development cycles, on its path to gigaton capacity by 2050. This milestone has been achieved only thanks to the Climeworkers who worked relentlessly in Iceland throughout the past months. Amidst harsh winter conditions, they commissioned the plant’s systems in record time, and I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone involved.