The world’s biggest facility for removing carbon dioxide directly from the air is running behind schedule in Iceland, after punishing Arctic conditions froze machinery and forced the Swiss company behind it to make modifications.
Launched in September 2021, the Climeworks “Orca” plant to the east of Reykjavik was hailed by Iceland’s prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir as a “milestone in the fight against climate change”.
The pioneering direct air capture (DAC) facility works by using geothermal energy to power fans that funnel air into collector units. Inside, a filter material absorbs CO2 before it is heated, piped and stored in basalt rock as calcium carbonate, permanently locking away the carbon. Operations have been ramping up towards the plant’s capacity of removing 4000 tonnes of CO2 a year.
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But Christoph Beuttler at Climeworks tells 91av that this is taking longer than planned. While the team knew Icelandic weather could be extreme, he says the winter just gone was especially harsh, with low temperatures stressing mechanical elements of the machines, including belt drives.
“It’s not high-tech stuff. We had to redesign parts of, not the core technology, but the technology around it, to adapt to the weather,” says Beuttler.
The system is now working as expected, he adds. “It’s a very good example of how important it is to deploy now and to get the experience.”
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report on 4 April highlighted DAC as a key tool for meeting the world’s target of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, in tandem with rapid and deep emissions cuts. It also showed the technology will need scaling up from the four-digit figure the Climeworks plant is aiming to capture each year to billions of tonnes if humanity isn’t to overshoot its temperature goal.
A spokesperson for Climeworks confirmed it had faced “new challenges” due to “harsh climatic conditions”, but didn’t disclose exactly how many tonnes of CO2 Orca is currently removing from the atmosphere. “We are slightly behind schedule,” they say, adding the plan was always for a gradual increase to full capacity by September 2023 at the latest.
at Arizona State University, one of the early pioneers of DAC technology, says such teething troubles for a new technology should be expected. “The only way to learn about these problems and fix them is to try things out. Different climes will have different impacts. The other reason it is important is this is what brings the cost down,” he says.
DAC is currently considered one of the most costly ways of removing CO2, at around $600 per tonne compared with less than $100 a tonne for tree-planting.
Developers need to show that DAC can be scaled up not just in a technical sense, but in terms of public acceptance of the cost and appearance of the technology, says at the University of Manchester, UK. “Projects like Orca are key to learning lessons on the way to larger-scale deployment,” he adds.
Climeworks is planning a bigger project called “Mammoth”, which would have 10 times the capacity of Orca. “I cannot share the location yet, but you’ll hear very soon,” says Beuttler. Climeworks co-founder Jan Wurzbacher has previously told 91av the firm is exploring CO2 storage in Norway and Oman.
With a business model largely based on helping corporations trying to meet their net-zero targets, the company hasn’t yet made a profit, but on 5 April it announced it had raised a further . It faces competition from a slew of start-ups, as well as more established players such as Canada-based Carbon Engineering, which is planning a major plant in Scotland.
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