The world鈥檚 largest facility for extracting carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere is up and running in Iceland, more than quadrupling the world鈥檚 total capacity for direct air capture (DAC).
Globally, DAC projects to date only collectively capture around 10,000 tonnes of carbon per year from the atmosphere. But Mammoth, the newest plant from Swiss firm Climeworks, will extract up to 36,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually when it is fully operational this year.
The plant boasts 72 giant fans that draw in outside air and blow it past a sorbent, an absorbing material that traps carbon dioxide. The sorbent is then heated to about 100掳C, releasing the trapped CO2 ready for storage.
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Mammoth is powered by geothermal energy and the captured carbon will be stored underground in basalt rock via a partnership with Icelandic firm Carbfix. CO2 capture began this month, Climeworks said on 8 May.
Jan Wurzbacher at Climeworks said Mammoth represents a major step in the company鈥檚 ambition to expand DAC deployment. 鈥淪tarting operations of our Mammoth plant is another proof point in Climeworks鈥� scale-up journey to megaton capacity by 2030 and gigaton by 2050,鈥� he said in a statement. 鈥淐onstructing multiple real-world plants in rapid sequences makes Climeworks the most deployed carbon removal company with direct air capture at the core.鈥�
Corporate demand for carbon removal is strong, says Douglas Chan at Climeworks, a factor that will let the film build even bigger plants in the future. 鈥淭he demand is in the market,鈥� he told a media briefing on 8 May. 鈥淲e do believe that as we do scale up and bring more capacity to the market, we will be able to sell this capacity to help bring these plants to life.鈥�
But Mammoth won鈥檛 be the largest DAC plant in the world for long. Next year, Occidental Petroleum is due to open Stratos, a Texas plant that will be capable of removing 500,000 tonnes of CO2 per year.
It may mark the start of a boom period for DAC. The US government is sponsoring four DAC 鈥渉ubs鈥�, each removing and storing 1 million tonnes of CO2 per year, as part of a $3.5 billion effort to develop carbon capture and storage technologies across the country.
Companies are racing to take advantage of the new policy push. Climeworks says it wants to be capturing 1.2 million tonnes of CO2 a year by 2030 and has applied to be part of three of the US DAC hubs. Meanwhile, Occidental says it plans to build 100 plants by 2035, each capable of removing 1 million tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year.
Yet despite this rapid pace of expansion, there are fears the industry still isn鈥檛 growing fast enough to deliver on climate goals. New CO2 removal techniques, including DAC, must contribute around 3.5 gigatonnes of carbon removal by 2050 to hold warming to 1.5掳C, according to some climate scenarios. Yet current national plans expect less than 1 gigatonne to be up and running by mid-century, a Nature Climate Change听蝉迟耻诲测 .
Some are sceptical that the industry can deliver at anything like the scale needed, especially given its high price point. 鈥淚 feel like there is a DAC bubble that will eventually burst,鈥� says at the MIT Energy Initiative. 鈥淒AC may contribute in the longer term, but its cost is a big barrier.鈥�
