On November 8, the world’s largest plant designed to suck carbon dioxide out of the air and turn it into a solid mineral will celebrate being up and running for two months. Climeworks, the Swiss company behind the enormous Orca machine, says it has proven that this could be an effective tool to add to the world’s arsenal to fight climate change.
According to Digital Journal, the plant is named “Orca,” after the Icelandic word “orka” meaning “energy,” and is the result of a partnership between Swiss start-up Climeworks AG, which specializes in capturing carbon dioxide directly from the air, and the Icelandic carbon storage firm Carbfix.
“Like, imagine when we started, 14 years ago, there was absolutely no support for what we were doing,” said Christoph Gebald, 38, a German-born engineer and one of the founders of Climeworks, who’s now based in Zurich, Switzerland. “I’m very excited about where we are.”
According to CBC Canada, scientists have known for decades how to take CO2 out of the air, but applying the technology on a large scale and in a way that makes economic sense has been elusive. Climeworks has the only existing commercial direct air capture machine, and right now, itis the largest in the world.
Orca has the capacity to permanently remove and store more than 4,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. Located just on the outskirts of Reykjavik in Iceland, the enormous machine is sucking carbon from the air as you read this.
Orca sits adjacent to ON Power’s Hellisheiði geothermal power plant and runs on 100 percent renewable energy. The same machine can be replicated, built, and turned on pretty much anywhere, as long as there is a clean energy source nearby and available storage conditions.
And having readily available renewable energy is key to the success of the enormous machine. Proponents of so-called carbon capture and storage believe these technologies can become a major tool in the fight against climate change. However, critics of the technology argue that it is prohibitively expensive and might take decades to operate at scale.
But as Reuters points out, prices are being driven down as more companies and consumers look to reduce their carbon footprint. There are currently 15 direct air capture plants operating worldwide, capturing more than 9,000 tons of CO2 per year, according to the IEA.
n July, hundreds of Canadian and American environmentalists joined forces to call on governments to stop investing in carbon capture, arguing it takes the focus off reducing emissions. However, this appeared to be aimed largely at the oil, gas, and coal industries and their investments to capture and sequester pollutants coming out of the stack.
Direct air capture of greenhouse gases – along with other strategies is one way we can mitigate the effects of climate change, and yes, it will cost all of us. Gebald said in a fight as all-consuming as climate change, technology can play a crucial role.
“We need direct air capture as a solution for stuff we cannot reduce otherwise. It’s emissions from agriculture, it’s emissions from operations that physically have a hard time to avoid CO2, like aviation,” Gebald told CBC News via Zoom as a CBC crew toured the Orca plant.
