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And now, I’ve had the opportunity to go and see it for myself.
One part of that overall puzzle is, indeed, direct air capture company Climeworks.
One segment of Orca’s direct air capture array.
Climeworks is a Swiss company set up by two mechanical engineers in 2009.
How does Climeworks do its Climework?
One such technology being explored is direct air capture, led by pioneers like Climeworks.
One segment of Orca’s direct air capture array.
Climeworks' Orca plant is impressive to behold.
The Orca plant can absorb 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere every year.
Replaced with trees, the same land area would only absorb around 4.7 tons of carbon dioxide per year.
Trees also release much of the carbon they store when they die.
Iceland has a unique and dramatic landscape.
There, the carbon remains trapped and mineralized for anywhere up to 10,000 years.
DAC+S facilities can theoretically be set up wherever renewable energy is available. Iceland’s geothermal abundance makes it a great location for Climeworks.
It’s a particularly exciting solution that, even in its infancy, is proving potentially incredibly scalable.
Companies like Microsoft have decades of carbon emissions they are seeking to account for.
More on that shortly.
For Climeworks and similar companies, the business model revolves around selling carbon credits, occasionally called carbon offsets.
And scaling up is exactly what’s next for Climeworks.
Earth will survive our activity but we potentially won’t be around to see it.
Each Bing Chat or ChatGPT query requires server run time to process, of course.
In2023, Microsoft conceded that emissions had risen by 0.5%.
I do wonder if Microsoft will release its figures for the past year in 2024.
I joked with Climeworks about them building a sky-scraper-sized DAC-S plant to accommodate offsets.
Indeed,Climeworks' websitelists ambitions to eventually scale to gigaton levels of absorption.
Bring on the sky-scraper carbon vacuums.
