Climeworks: Save the planet from climate change
25.01.2017
What if CO2 could become an actor of change, rather than a threat for the environment? As the Paris Agreement on climate change came into force in November 2016, leaders and scientists worldwide are pursuing a tough target to keeping global warming below 2° C. This is where the 2010 Venture Kick winner Climeworks could make a difference, thanks to its efficient solutions for capturing CO2 from ambient air. It developed a CO2 capture technology (”Direct Air Capture“, DAC), based on a cyclic capture-regeneration process, and a novel filter. It allows a significant emissions reduction through the production of low-carbon fuels and eventually enabling negative emissions when combined with a permanent carbon storage solution. Climeworks’ co-founders, Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, have set themselves an ambitious goal: capturing one percent of global CO2 emissions by 2025.
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Several commercial applications for their technology
Climeworks’ products have several commercial applications: in the short-term, the company targets large merchant markets by selling air-captured CO2 to customers like greenhouse operators or the beverage industry, which currently receive their CO2 primarily as an indus¬trial waste product and often from the combustion of fossil fuels. In 2016, Climeworks was mandated for a EUR 1 million ”Eurostars“ project with the leading company Union Engineering, with the aim to develop an onsite plant for delivery of beverage grade CO2 to bottling companies. In the mid-term, Climeworks seeks to close the carbon cycle by providing atmospheric CO2 for the production of low-carbon fuels. This enables large-scale storage of renewable energies as well as to address CO2 emissions that are otherwise hard to capture, such as those from the past or mobile sources. This is the reason why Climeworks is in a close partnership with carmaker Audi since 2013. In the long-term and in combination with storage technology, the direct capture of CO2 is one of only few technologies with the potential to capture and permanently remove several gigatons of atmospheric CO2 per year. The usage of so-called Negative Emission Technologies (NET) is considered necessary in more than 85 % of climate scenarios defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to the 2° C global warming target.
Great recognition at the 2016 Climate Change conference
Today, Climeworks has demonstrated the commercial applications of its technology and is collaborating with various consortia from industry and research in Europe. In August 2016, Climeworks opened its 100 % subsidiary Climeworks Deutschland GmbH in Dresden.
Important international recognition came mid-November 2016, as Climeworks presented its technology at the COP22 Conference in Marrakech to senior delegates of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as well as to experts of the 196 states part of COP22.