Removing Carbon From the Air Enters Its Awkward Teen Years
Direct air capture could become a trillion-dollar industry, but only if startups and their backers figure out how to grow up.
Climeworks is part of a direct air capture effort at the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant in Iceland.
Photographer: Arnaldur Halldorsson/BloombergIf you want to understand the potential of direct air capture, or DAC, all you have to do is see its end product: solid rock. The world’s first plant to pull carbon dioxide from the air and turn it into stone has been operating in Iceland for nearly two years, and the fruits of its labor were on display last week at Climeworks’ DAC Summit.
Sitting under glass and beneath a spotlight, a nondescript-looking gray cylinder of rock roughly the size of a water bottle containing carbon the company’s technology had removed from the air using massive machines was the centerpiece of the summit held in Zurich. It’s a wonder that could someday be in a museum, among the first few tons of carbon mechanically taken out of the atmosphere in the fight against climate change.