Climeworks

In May 2017 the company opened the world's first commercial CO₂ project filtering from the ambient air in Hinwil. There are 18 with Direct air capture modules 900 tons CO₂ each year and then sold to a greenhouse operator for use as fertilizer.[2][3]

In October 2017, a demo project followed, in which a module on CO₂ filter is used at the Hellisheiði Power Station in Iceland. As part of the Horizon 2020 research project CarbFix2 will become the CO₂ filtered from the air and then stored underground as a stone.[4][5] Climeworks refers to the filtering of CO₂ from the ambient air for underground storage also as Carbon dioxide removal.[6]

In November 2009 Climeworks AG was founded by Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher as a Spin-off from ETH Zurich. The two German founders were fellow students in mechanical engineering and had in the context of their studies and the subsequent doctorate with technologies for chemical and physical CO₂. In 2011, Climeworks received capital from investors for the first time to develop a prototype with a modular structure. Since 2011 then, the rapid scaling has followed today's module technology, which has been available since 2014. In the course of the enterprise development a partnership with the automaker Audi succeeded. Further support was provided by Climeworks from the Swiss Federal Office of Energy which enabled the accelerated commercialization and scaling of the technology. Climeworks is part of several European research and development projects.[7] Among others, the production of synthetic fuels on the basis CO₂. Since 2018 a Swiss mineral water bottler in Vals, took a CO₂ plant in operation to make drinks with carbon dioxide from the air.

The company's goal by 2025 is to filter one percent of annual global CO₂ emissions from the air. This requires the construction of 250,000 systems, comparable to the one in Hinwil.[8]

A German subsidiary Climeworks Deutschland GmbH opened in Cologne.[9]

Climeworks has the only existing commercial direct air capture machine. [10] Although several companies aim to commercialize direct air capture systems (e.g., Carbon Engineering, Global Thermostat, Climeworks), Climeworks is the furthest along in the market process, selling to a comparatively small market in high-cost CO₂ (i.e., CO₂ used in greenhouses to enhance productivity may cost more than $1,000/t if the greenhouse is located far from a source). This market is too small to support a robust ecosystem of small innovators necessary to explore the large number of chemical recipes and physical machinery that might decrease direct air capture prices. Thus, like photovoltaics or hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling, the development of direct air capture will likely require long-term government investment in incentives.[11]

• Carbon capture and storage
• Hellisheiði Power Station
• EDL Anlagenbau Gesellschaft