Largest plant in the world to extract CO2 from the air launched in Iceland – Environmental

Climeworks opened the largest operational direct air capture and storage facility (DAC) of the world in Iceland. Mammoth is the company’s second commercial facility in Iceland and is around ten times larger than its predecessor, Orca.

The plant was designed for a nominal capture capacity of up to 36 thousand tons of CO2 per year, in full operation, filtering CO2 from the air and storing it permanently underground.

“Mammoth’s start of operations is yet another proof point in Climeworks’ journey to scale up to megaton capacity by 2030 and gigaton capacity by 2050. It is an example of our continued investments in R&D to further optimize our technology and gain maturity through field experience”, says Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks.

In addition to Iceland, the company is developing several megatonne centers in the US, with operational and testing experience derived from its two commercial facilities in Iceland. “Building multiple real factories in rapid succession makes Climeworks the most deployed carbon removal company with direct air capture,” adds the co-CEO.

Climeworks began construction of Mammoth in June 2022. The plant is built using a modular design, with 12 of a total of 72 collection containers currently installed on site.

The company explains that once the CO2 is released from the filters, the CO2 is transported underground, where it reacts with basalt rock through a natural process, transforming into stone and being permanently stored.

Climeworks’ ambition is to replicate its megaton hubs around the world to achieve global scale.

Worsening climate change and inadequate efforts to reduce CO2 emissions have created the need to artificially remove CO2 from the atmosphere in order to meet global climate objectives.

However, critics of this technology claim that it is expensive and warn that Focusing on CO2 removal may dissuade companies from reducing their emissions as much as possible.