Climeworks – the leader in direct air capture technology deployment, announced exciting plans to scale in the US and grow its team as it is expanding its projects. Carbon removal technologies like direct air capture have to expand worldwide rapidly in order to move the needle in eliminating already emitted carbon emissions.
The company outlines it wants to engage in several large-scale DAC projects over the next few years, which could lead to creating over a hundred employees in the US in the near term and thousands of direct jobs by the end of the decade.
The growth projections result from projects that Climeworks is involved in within the country. Climeworks has applied to take part in three DAC hubs as part of the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) “Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs” program with proposed locations in Louisiana, California, and the Northern Great Plains.
Back in May 2022, Biden administration announced its intent to invest $3.5 billion of the bipartisan infrastructure bill to support four large-scale, regional direct air capture hubs that each has a carbon removal capacity of over 1 million tons of carbon emissions per year.
The company plans to work with some of America’s leading CO2 storage and energy infrastructure organizations and fellow DAC companies to build those hubs and bring large-scale commercial DAC deployments in the country.
Relevant: DOE To Invest $3.5 Billion In Carbon Removal
According to Climeworks’ announcement, the company is in the best position to spearhead the scale-up of the American DAC ecosystem as:
- It has 14 years of technology research and development.
- It has 6 years of project development and deployment experience. It deployed the world’s first and to date only commercial DAC and storage (DAC+S) plant Orca.
- It has achieved independent third-party validation of its work and its storage partner Carbfix’ DAC+S methodology and implemented it at Orca with ongoing audits and verification processes.
- It managed to grow its customer base to 160+ companies and has signed multi-year carbon removal agreements with US-based multinationals like Microsoft, BCG, Stripe and Shopify.
Climeworks’ workforces is currently more than 300 people in Europe and the US. It plans to hire over 100 employees in the short-term in the US. Thousands of direct jobs by 2030 could emerge from the Regional DAC Hubs’ project applications that the company participates in.
The open positions are in the areas of commercialization, supply chain, engineering, finance, project management and project development, including key positions like U.S. Head of Commercial, Project Director and Supply Chain leads.
Relevant: Climeworks, Partners Group Sign 13-Year Direct Air Capture Deal
Climeworks has also begun working with community stakeholders in all three potential hub regions in order to identify and solicit feedback from the communities where the projects will be located to make sure any concerns and needs are addressed.
