A New Swiss plant cleans air, with 18 Climeworks’ CO2 collectors

Designed by Climeworks, the direct air capture (DAC) plant is capable of removing 900 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) from ambient air annually.

Climeworks has launched the world’s first commercial plant that captures atmospheric CO2 for supply and sale to customers. The Swiss direct air capture company launched the commercial-scale Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant, featuring its patented technology that filters carbon dioxide from ambient air. The plant is now supplying 900 tonnes of CO2 annually to a nearby greenhouse to help grow vegetables. The plant is a historic step for negative emissions technology -earmarked by the Paris climate agreement as being vital in the quest to limit a global temperature rise of 2°C.

Founded by engineers, Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, Climeworks developed its technology to capture atmospheric carbon with a filter, using mainly low-grade heat as an energy source. In Hinwil the DAC plant has been installed on the roof of a waste recovery facility – operated by the municipal administration union KEZO– with its waste heat powering the Climeworks DAC plant.

“We really only have less than 20 years left at current emission rates to have a good chance of limiting emissions to less than 2ºC,” says Chris Field, director of the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and coauthor of a recent paper discussing carbon removal. “So it’s a big challenge to do it simply by decreasing emissions from energy, transportation, and agriculture.” Removing carbon–whether through planting more forests or more advanced technology like direct carbon capture–will probably also be necessary to reach the goal.