Climeworks is a private Swiss company, founded in 2009, commercializing a direct air capture technology, to pull CO2 out of the atmosphere. It has raised $125M by early-2021.
Its first CO2 removals facility is running and a second is under construction. Current CO2 removal costs are likely above $1,000/ton. It uses a dry process with much lower water intensity than, say, Carbon Engineering.
The main innovation visible in Climeworks’ patents is a DAC plant with optimized air flow, passing CO2 through layers of fabric housing CO2-adsorbing materials. This is an important breakthrough to avoid steep pressure drops (and their resultant energy penalties) in DAC.
Based on reviewing Climeworks’ patents, we were unable to de-risk sub-$200/ton CO2 costs, which is the base case in our economic models.ย ย