In a May 31 press release, Swiss company Climeworks announced the launch of the world’s first commercial carbon dioxide capture plant. The plant, located on the roof of a waste recovery facility in Hinwil near Zurich, uses a patented direct air capture (DAC) process to remove CO₂ from ambient air. Climeworks is supplying the captured CO₂ to a greenhouse 400 meters from the plant to assist in growing vegetables. The company's agreement with Gebrüder Meier Primanatura AG, which operates the nearby greenhouse, marks the first commercial application of direct air capture technology.

Climeworks' modular DAC system. Image credit: Climeworks

Climeworks founders Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher developed the process to capture carbon using a filter and low-grade heat as an energy source. CO₂ is first deposited on the filter surface, and once the filter is saturated the carbon dioxide is isolated at around 100° C. Climeworks envisions selling this captured CO₂ to customers in the agriculture, food and beverage, energy and automotive industries.

According to the press release, commercial carbon capture could hold a key to the negative emissions technology necessary to achieve goals set by the Paris climate agreement, but the scale would need to grow exponentially. “Highly scalable negative emission technologies are crucial if we are to stay below the two degree target of the international community,” says Christoph Gebald. “The DAC technology provides distinct advantages to achieve this aim and is perfectly suitable to be combined with underground storage.

“We’re working hard to reach the goal of filtering one percent of global CO₂ emissions by 2025,” Gebald continued. “To achieve this, we estimate around 250,000 DAC-plants like the one in Hinwil are necessary.”