Swiss carbon technology firm Airfix, local project operator CO2 Energie AG, and carbon project developer South Pole have launched commercial operations at Switzerland ’s first integrated, cross-border Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS) project.
Operating at the Regionalwerke AG Baden biomethane facility in Niederwil – Switzerland’s largest biomethane plant – the project captures biogenic CO2 produced during the anaerobic digestion of local agricultural and food waste.
The facility is designed to capture and liquefy up to 4,300 tons of biogenic CO2 annually on site, converting a manufacturing byproduct into permanent negative emissions.
The inaugural ISOtainers of liquefied CO2 have departed the Niederwil plant for delivery to Denmark, where the carbon will be permanently sequestered offshore in the North Sea at INEOS-operated Project Greensand.
The launch establishes Switzerland’s first active, commercial-scale, multimodal carbon removal supply chain, bridging localized biogenic point sources with Northern European subsea storage infrastructure.
Multimodal Supply Chain Reaches 91.7% Net Removal Efficiency
To overcome the logistical constraints of landlocked Switzerland, project developer Airfix coordinated a cross-border, multimodal transportation framework managed by logistics specialist HOYER Group:
- Truck Drayage: Transporting liquefied CO2 ISOtainers from the Niederwil capture plant to the regional rail terminal in Basel.
- Rail & Road Transit: Long-haul rail shipping from Basel across Germany to Hamburg, followed by final truck transport to the Port of Esbjerg, Denmark.
- Maritime Shipping & Injection: Offshore transport to Project Greensand for deep-well injection 1,800 meters beneath the North Sea seabed in the depleted Nini West reservoir.
Accounting for all supply chain and transit emissions across the transport route, the BECCS value chain achieves a net atmospheric removal efficiency of approximately 91.7%.
Because Switzerland lacks suitable domestic deep geological storage reservoirs, cross-border carbon export is crucial to meeting statutory net-zero obligations under the federal Climate and Innovation Act.
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The Niederwil project represents the first Swiss commercial initiative to store carbon abroad and marks the first non-Danish project to execute carbon injection at Project Greensand.
The project’s carbon removal credits are certified under regulations set by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, supported by a CHF 10 million ($11.6 million) credit pre-purchase agreement from the Climate Cent Foundation through 2030.
Jonas Lötscher, Managing Director at Airfix, noted that the successful integration demonstrates that complex cross-border regulatory boundaries and multimodal logistics are no longer barriers to scaling European carbon removal.
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