Climeworks

Avoiding a climate catastrophe requires more than reducing emissions. “To limit global warming to 1.5°C, we need both rapid emissions reductions and carbon removal,” Climeworks co-CEO Jan Wurzbacher says. The company pioneered a way to remove CO₂ directly from the air, which it now does on behalf of over 160 customers, including JPMorgan Chase, Microsoft, Stripe, Shopify, and Lego. This year, Climeworks is deploying its carbon-capture technology on an even larger scale. Its new Mammoth facility in Hellisheidi, Iceland, can capture 36,000 tons annually at peak capacity—about 10 times the size of its existing Orca plant. The company intends to use its patented technology to capture a megaton of CO₂ by 2030 and a gigaton by 2050. Last year the U.S. Department of Energy awarded funding to Climeworks and its partners to build the country’s first large-scale direct air capture facilities. “Carbon removal went from a niche ‘could be’ topic when Climeworks was founded in 2009, to a globally recognized solution required to achieve net zero,” co-CEO Christoph Gebald says.