Two Huge plants in Iceland operate as giant vacuum cleanersSuck air and eliminate pollution from heating carbon to the planet. This highly publicized climate technology is called direct air capture, and the company behind these factories, a clineWorks based in Switzerland, is perhaps its most publicized supporter.
But a year after opening a huge new installation, ClineWorks takes place against high opposite winds. Business Announced this month, he would dismiss around 20% of his workforce, blaming economic uncertainties and Changing climate policy priorities.
“We have always known that this trip would be demanding. Today we find ourselves navigating in a difficult period,” said CEO of ClimeWorks, Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher statement.
This is particularly true for its American ambitions. A new direct air capture factory planned for Louisiana, which received $ 50 million in funding From the Biden administration, is at stake while President Donald Trump reduces climate financing.
ClimeWorks also faces increasing criticisms to only operate a fraction of its maximum capacity and not to eliminate more climate pollution than it emitted.
The company claims that these are teeth pain inherent in creating a new industry from zero and that it has entered a new phase of the global scale. “The global trajectory will be positive while we continue to define technology,” said a spokesperson for ClineWorks.
For criticisms, however, these opposite winds are evidence that direct air capture is an expensive and shiny distraction of effective climate action.
CileWorks, which was launched in 2009, is one of around 140 direct air capture companies in the world, but is one of the largest and most funded.
In 2021, he opened his Orca factory in Iceland, followed in 2024 by a second called Mammoth. These installations aspire air and extract carbon using chemicals in a process powered by clean geothermal energy.
Carbon can then be reused or deeply injected underground where it will naturally be transformed into stone, the lock permanently. CileWorks earns his money by selling companies to companies to compensate for their own climate pollution.
The attraction of direct air capture is clear; To prevent global warming from climbing even more catastrophic levels, this considerably means the reduction of the planet’s fossil fuels. But Many scientists say that the world will also have to eliminate part of the carbon pollution already in the atmosphere. This can be done naturally, for example by planting trees, or with technology such as direct air capture.
The advantage of direct air capture is that carbon is immediately removed from air and “can be measured directly and precisely,” said Howard Herzog, main research engineer on MIT Energy initiative.
But there are great challenges, he told CNN. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has pulled up, but still represents only about 0.04%. Herzog compares the withdrawal of the carbon directly from the air to need to find 10 red balls in a 25,000 ball jar, 24,990 of which are blue.
This makes the process with high energy and expensive. Technology also takes time on a scale.
CileWorks has nowhere near the full capacity of its factories. Orca can remove a maximum of 4,000 tonnes of carbon per year, but it has never captured more than 1,700 tonnes in one year since its opening in 2021. The company claims that simple months have seen a much closer capture rate.
The gigantic factory of the company has a maximum capacity of 36,000 tonnes per year, but since its opening last year, it eliminated a total of 805 tonnes, a figure which drops to 121 tonnes taking into account the building produced carbon and by operating the plants.
“It is true that the two plants are not yet working on the capacity that we have originally targeted,” said the spokesperson for ClineWorks. “Like all transformative innovations, progress is iterative and certain measures can take more time than expected,” they said.
The third potential factory of the company in Louisiana aims to remove 1 million tonnes of carbon per year by 2030, but it is not certain that construction will take place under the Trump administration.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Energy said that an examination at the Department level was underway “to ensure that all activities follow the law, comply with the applicable judicial orders and align with the priorities of the Trump administration.” The government has a mandate “to release” American energy domination “,” they added.
The success of Direct Air Capture will also depend on the will of companies to buy carbon credits.
Currently, companies are quite free to “use the atmosphere as a waste dumping ground,” said Holly Buck, assistant environment and sustainability professor at Buffalo University. “This lack of regulation means that there is not yet a strong profitability analysis to clean this waste,” she told CNN.
Another criticism launched in ClineWorks is its inability to compensate for its own climate pollution. Carbon produced by its corporate activities, such as office space and travel, prevails over the carbon removed by its factories.
The company claims that its factories already eliminate more carbon than they produce and that business emissions “will become out of words as the size of our plants increases”.
Some, however, believe that the challenges that the ClineWorks is confronted by a broader story on the capture of direct air.
This should be “alarm clock,” said Lili Fuhr, director of the Fossil Economy Program at the Center for International Environmental Law. Climeworks problems are not “aberrant values”, she told CNN, “but reflects persistent technical and economic obstacles facing the direct air capture industry worldwide.”
“The climate crisis requires real action, not a speculative technology that overproses and exceeds sub-disappositives.” She added.
Some of Climeworks problems are “linked to first -rate normal scaling challenges with emerging complex engineering projects,” said Buck.
But technology has a steep path to become cheaper and more efficient, especially with the funding of climate policies, she added. “This type of political instability and backwards on contracts will be terrible for a range of technologies and innovations, not just the direct air capture.”
Direct air capture is definitely feasible but it is difficult, said the male of the MIT. Success will depend on a multitude of factors, including technological improvements and market creation for carbon eliminations, he said.
“At this point, no one really knows how much the direct air capture of the role will play in the future.”