Climeworks opened a commercial plant in Switzerland that captures atmospheric CO₂ for supply and sale.

The Swiss direct air capture company launched the commercial-scale Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant, with technology that filters carbon dioxide from ambient air. The plant is supplying 900 tonnes of CO₂ annually to a nearby greenhouse to help grow vegetables.

The rooftop-mounted equipment supplies CO2 to a nearby greenhouse.Climeworks developed its technology to capture atmospheric carbon with a filter, using mainly low-grade heat as an energy source. The plant is installed on the roof of a waste recovery facility whose waste heat powers the DAC plant.

During the capture process, CO₂ is chemically deposited on the filter surface. Once the filter is saturated, the CO₂ is then isolated at a temperature of about 100°C. The pure captured CO₂ gas can then be sold to customers in markets, including commercial agriculture, food and beverage industries, the energy sector and the automotive industry.

In this installation, the plant provides CO₂ through an underground pipeline to a greenhouse 400 meters away.

The plant will operate as a three-year demonstration project in co-operation with the partners Gebrüder Meier and KEZO, and with a contribution towards non-amortizable costs by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE).

“Highly scalable negative emission technologies are crucial if we are to stay below the two-degree target of the international community,” says Christoph Gebald, co-founder and managing director of Climeworks. The company has a goal of removing 1% of global CO₂ by 2025. To achieve this, the company estimates that around 250,000 DAC plants will be necessary.