Climeworks achieves another milestone in its journey towards decarbonizing at gigaton scale. The direct air capture company announces on June 28th it started construction of its newest and largest direct air capture and storage facility – the Mammoth direct air capture and storage plant.
Mammoth will have a capacity to capture 36’000 tons of CO2 per year when fully operational. Emissions will be permanently buried underground using Carbfix’s technology that turns them into solid form in less than two years.
Relevant: Climeworks’ Annual Direct Air Capture Summit To Be Held In June
With the construction of the plant commencing now, it will become operational in 18-24 months. Together with the new plant, the direct air capture capacity increases from 4,000 tons per year to a total of 40,000 tons.
The entire direct air capture and storage process will be carbon neutral as it will be powered by renewable energy provided by the Hellisheiði electricity power plant, operated by ON Power.
Mammoth is created to further expand Climeworks’ supply of carbon removal – a service that is growing exponentially in demand in recent years. Several companies like Microsoft, Swiss Re, and Boston Consulting Group have already signed ten-year carbon removal agreements with Climeworks, counting on them to offset the emissions they cannot avoid yet.
Relevant: Climeworks Raises $650M To Scale Carbon Removal Technology
The company also recently raised $650 million to scale up rapidly its carbon removal capacity. It will concentrate on implementing large modular direct air capture and storage facilities, investing in technological development, and growing its organization globally.
Mammoth represents a major milestone in Climeworks’ ambitious scale-up plan – a multi-megaton capacity by 2030 and achieving a gigaton capacity by 2050.
“Based on most successful scale-up curves, reaching gigaton by 2050 means delivering at multi-megaton scale by 2030. Nobody has 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…,” said Christoph Gebald, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks.
