Climeworks: How two Germans want to filter millions of tons of CO2 out of the air

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It sounds like a mix between a miracle weapon and a washing machine, but it is a proven process: Climeworks systems filter CO2 from the air, which is called technology “Direct Air Capture”. The Swiss company, backed by the Germans Jan Wurzbacher and Christoph Gebald, has managed to become one of the most important providers worldwide. Especially since the systems from Climeworks have a business model, even if the process is still quite expensive.

“We knew from the start that our technology could be used on a very large scale”said Jan Wurzbacher . “Even before the foundation, we were looking for the first applications and approached everything very commercially.” They asked themselves: Who needs CO2? It started with a greenhouse, then delivered to beverage producers. The gas is now being pumped into the ground as a service for customers like Microsoft and Audi.

In the machines, the air is sucked into a chamber by fans, the CO2 is caught by a kind of sponge – and then heated and separated. Jan Wurzbacher and Christoph Gebald researched the process during their studies at the ETH in Zurich. In 2009 they founded Climeworks.

Large plant in Iceland

They opened their first commercial project in 2017 in Hinwil, near Zurich. In 2021, Climeworks launched the first large facility in Iceland, called Orca, where the CO2 is stored directly in the ground. Orca is supposed to manage 4000 tons per year. At that time, it was the world’s largest facility for direct capture and storage from the air. Nevertheless, Climeworks has even more ambitious plans: “We are currently planning a system ten times as large”, said Wurzbacher. The location will be announced soon.

The Hamburg native reported that Climeworks is primarily working on two fronts: larger plants with better performance at lower costs. It’s no use just having prototypes, you’re always learning “out in the field”. The plant in Iceland alone needs two years to really get up to speed. “That’s our strategy, to get plants up and running as quickly as possible, to determine what’s working well and what’s not working so well. And to do the whole thing as commercially as possible – so that we can reach millions of tons and no longer thousands as quickly as possible by the end of this decade.”

The demand is definitely there: “The past two years have felt like a ride on the exponential function”, said Wurzbacher. At around 500 euros per ton, the costs are currently still too high. You have to go down to 100 euros once. Wurzbacher expects that this will take around ten to 15 years. By 2030, you could come to 200 to 300 euros per tonne of CO2.

the “Direct Air Capture Technology” is in addition to the planned reductions in CO2 emissions and to natural methods in which plants and trees store CO2. In order to reduce the approximately 40 billion tons of CO2 emissions that mankind emits every year, one must from 2050 “remove approximately 10 billion tons of CO2 from the air every year”said Wurzbacher. “It won’t be done by one company, nor will it be just one technology.” Nevertheless, he is convinced that humanity “can get climate change under control with easily scalable technology”.

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