A firm said on Thursday that it has begun effectively removing carbon dioxide from the air and burying it underground, marking what may be a significant turning point in the battle against climate change.
Climeworks reported that it had successfully removed CO2 from the atmosphere using its Icelandic plant and had buried it there. Risk management firm DNV independently validated the activity, and the startup’s first corporate clients, Microsoft, Shopify, and Stripe, purchased the carbon credits that resulted from it.
Climeworks AG developed direct-air capture technology to extract air from the atmosphere, filter it, and bury it to lessen the effects of climate change brought on by human activity.
To offset its emissions, the firm from Switzerland is selling carbon credits to significant carbon-emitting businesses like Microsoft.
The first time a business has successfully harvested and stored CO2 from the open air at a significant scale using a method that had been independently confirmed, Climeworks Chief Executive Christoph Gebald stated to The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
Businesses buy carbon credits to offset their own carbon emissions. Microsoft said in 2020 that it would completely eliminate its carbon impact since the company’s start in 1975.
Climeworks, a company founded in 2009, has successfully shown that its direct-air collection method is effective. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, Thursday’s achievement is the first time a business has removed a sizable quantity of carbon from the air utilising a third-party verification procedure.
Climeworks pull ambient air through a filter that captures a significant quantity of CO2 using enormous, vacuum-like machines. This filter is then heated to over 100C, mixed with water, and piped into a stone storage facility designed to keep contaminants out of the atmosphere for aeons.
Commercial carbon capture plants owned by the company exist in Iceland and Switzerland and have a yearly removal capacity of around 4,000 metric tons of CO2.
Despite Climeworks’ assertions that their machines provide one of the few alternatives for large-scale carbon removal, carbon capture methods have drawn criticism for the enormous quantities of energy and resources needed to produce them.
Climeworks refuses to disclose the amount of carbon extracted, a crucial indicator for determining the significance of carbon capture in reducing global warming.
According to a business representative, Iceland’s carbon-capture facility will be able to remove 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually once it reaches total capacity, which it has not yet done. That is almost similar to the annual CO2 emissions from 800 automobiles.
There is growing agreement among scientists and decision-makers to stop the worst consequences of global warming. Humanity will need to remove carbon already released into the atmosphere and cut greenhouse gas emissions nearly in half.
Along with low-tech solutions like planting trees and repairing wetlands, the high-tech promise of directly removing carbon from the atmosphere has caught the public’s attention and billions of dollars from investors.
A carbon-capture hub will be built by Climeworks on the Gulf Coast of the United States, where it expects to remove 1 million tons of CO2 annually by the end of the decade.