- Today, Climeworks completes the commercial operation phase of its first technology generation in Hinwil, Switzerland, as the company focuses on scaling its permanent carbon dioxide removal (CDR) service via direct air capture and storage (DAC+S) internationally.
- Hinwil and the partners who made the project possible played a vital role in Climeworks’ scale-up journey — listed in alphabetical order: Audi AG, Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland Ltd., the federal offices of energy (SFOE) and for the environment (FOEN), the Gebrüder Meier Gemüsekulturen AG, the Klimafonds Stadtwerk Winterthur, and the Zweckverband Kehrichtverwertung Zürcher Oberland KEZO.
- Back in 2017, Climeworks made history with the launch of its operations in Hinwil: they represent the world’s very first commercial DAC facility, which provided air-captured CO2 to customers for utilization. This existing market for CO2 helped to kickstart the company’s scale-up journey, proving the technical as well as commercial viability of Climeworks’ technology — an important milestone for the entire DAC industry.
- The insights gained in Hinwil put Climeworks on track to becoming today’s most advanced DAC company: by operating its first technology generation on industrial scale, Climeworks generated important learnings on operational excellence, equipment reliability, and overall plant project management. This enabled the company to bring to life a second technological generation represented in Iceland at the current ‘Orca’ facility and its next plant ‘Mammoth’. By following such short innovation cycles and fast deployment steps, Climeworks aims at continuously bringing more high-quality CDR capacity to the market, while generating substantial field experience for next tech generations along the scale-up.
Today, Climeworks completes the commercial operation phase of its DAC facility in Hinwil, leading to the phase-out of its first generation technology. This allows the company to sharpen its focus and further move along the journey towards gigaton DAC+S capacity by 2050.
“The operations in Hinwil contributed immensely to proving Climeworks’ technical and commercial viability. They allowed us to commercially deploy our technology for the first time, demonstrating that market demand for DAC exists, while providing 5-year field experience under real-life conditions that informed the development and deployment of our following tech generations, such as the Orca plant in Iceland”, says Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks.
“We are humbled to celebrate the completion of this chapter with our partners in Hinwil, who played a vital role in enabling us to implement our technology in the field on industrial scale for the first time — a pivotal moment for Climeworks and the entire industry. We therefore want to thank all involved partners that helped to realize our DAC operations in Hinwil: in particular the Gebrüder Meier Gemüsekulturen AG and the Zweckverband Kehrichtverwertung Zürcher Oberland KEZO, as well as Audi AG, Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland Ltd., the SFOE, the FOEN, and the Klimafonds Stadtwerk Winterthur”, says Christoph Gebald, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks.
Climeworks now doubles down on its DAC+S scale-up journey to gigaton: Orca, the world’s first DAC+S plant, was launched in September 2021, and the groundbreaking of Mammoth, Climeworks’ newest and largest DAC+S plant, was announced in June 2022. Both plants are located in Iceland, and the permanent storage of CO2 is provided by Climeworks’ storage partner Carbfix. In addition, Climeworks undertakes DAC+S project development in Oman, Norway and the USA.
Background on Climeworks’ DAC operations in Hinwil
In Hinwil, Climeworks’ air-captured CO2 was provided to customers for utilization — an existing market for CO2, which enabled the first commercial operation of Climeworks’ DAC technology. This was an important milestone both from a technology and a market perspective, putting Climeworks on track to becoming today’s most advanced DAC company.
Climeworks started its operations in Hinwil in May 2017, initially launched as a demonstration project in cooperation with the partners Gebrüder Meier Gemüsekulturen AG, the Zweckverband Kehrichtverwertung Zürcher Oberland KEZO, and financial support of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy (SFOE). The Gebrüder Meier AG was the first pioneering customer of Climeworks’ air-captured CO2, using it for enhancing vegetable growth at a nearby greenhouse. KEZO provided both the location to build Climeworks’ DAC facility and an energy source to power it, and the SFOE supported the project with a contribution towards non-amortizable costs. In 2019, Climeworks started to provide air-captured CO2 to an additional customer: Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland Ltd., who used the CO2 for the carbonation of its mineral water VALSER – the first time DAC was used for the beverage industry. The project was supported by Audi AG, the Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) and the Klimafonds Stadtwerk Winterthur.
Technologically, Climeworks’ operations in Hinwil moved the company to a new order of magnitude. From capturing grams in 2009 under lab conditions, to kilograms on demonstration-scale in 2011, and to tons with the first small-scale DAC plant in 2014 — Hinwil enabled a capture capacity of hundreds of tons of CO2 per year.
By successfully designing, building and operating the DAC facility in Hinwil, Climeworks built up operational excellence for the continuous production of CO2 using DAC, which involved ramping up, operating and maintaining the facility as well as ensuring full production traceability. Since Climeworks delivered air-captured CO2 to Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland Ltd., it worked on maximizing the purity of its CO2 to be compliant with the highest food and beverage standards. This led to Climeworks’ certification under the FSSC 22000 food safety and ISO 9001-2015 quality standards in 2019 and subsequent years with the latest re-certification successfully completed in June 2022.
By successfully designing, building and operating the DAC facility in Hinwil, Climeworks built up operational excellence for the continuous production of CO2 using DAC, which involved ramping up, operating and maintaining the facility as well as ensuring full production traceability. Since Climeworks delivered air-captured CO2 to Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland Ltd., it worked on maximizing the purity of its CO2 to be compliant with the highest food and beverage standards. This led to Climeworks’ certification under the FSSC 22000 food safety and ISO 9001-2015 quality standards in 2019 and subsequent years with the latest re-certification successfully completed in June 2022.
Commercially, Climeworks demonstrated for the first time that DAC creates value and that a market demand exists among established companies such as Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland Ltd. Operating its DAC technology to supply air-captured CO2 to commercial customers under the highest standards enabled Climeworks to develop from a start-up into an operational company very early on.
About Climeworks
Climeworks empowers people and companies to fight global warming by offering carbon dioxide removal as a service via direct air capture (DAC) technology. At Orca, Climeworks’ DAC facility in Iceland, the CO2 is permanently removed from the air by capturing and geologically storing it for thousands of years with Climeworks’ storage partner Carbfix. Climeworks’ DAC facilities run exclusively on clean energy, and our modular CO2 collectors can be stacked to build machines of any capacity.
Founded by engineers Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher in 2009, Climeworks is on a journey to climate impact at scale. To do so, we strive to inspire 1 billion people to act and remove CO2 from the air. Climeworks is spear-heading the DAC industry globally, with the world’s largest DAC facility and storage installation in operation and a team of 300 Climeworkers determined to contribute to a net-zero future. Our growing customer base includes over 160 companies, including multinationals such as Microsoft, BCG, UBS or Swiss Re, as well as more than 18,000 individual Climate Pioneers.
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