Climeworks raises $650m to boost carbon removal facilities

The company’s plant in Iceland can currently withdraw 4,000 tonnes of CO2 from the air, but Climeworks now aims to scale up to meet a million-tonne removal target.

Climeworks is a Swiss start-up that allows people to subscribe to have a personalised amount of carbon removed from the atmosphere every month. The company uses a technology called ‘direct air capture' that sucks carbon out of the air. Climeworks then stores the CO2 underground in such a way that it turns into stone in a natural process.

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Climeworks' direct-air capture plant is currently the world’s largest. Although its 4,000-tonne capacity is a commendable figure, this is equivalent to around just 600 European’s CO2 emissions every year.

That’s why the latest funding boost of $650 million (€595 million) has the potential to cause a dramatic shift in the scale of the operation, as they will build a new 40,000-tonne plant over the next three years. It is the largest ever amount raised by a carbon dioxide removal company.

The company hasn’t yet chosen the location of its new plant, but CEO Christoph Gebald said that Climeworks was looking at Oman, Iceland, Norway or North America as their next spot.

Climeworks, whose goal is to reach net-zero and stop climate change, runs its machines entirely on renewable energy and energy from waste. Building a plant usually takes between one to two years and then it is operational for the following decade. 

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According to the IPCC’s report on global warming of 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels, by the middle of the century, up to 10 billion tonnes of CO2 will need to be removed from the air every year, and Climeworks aims to be part of the solution.

A new UN report released on Monday said that if any of the recent national and global climate targets were to be met, greenhouse gas pollution must peak “at the latest before 2025”.

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