Is Climeworks certified by a 3rd party?

Climeworks is the first carbon removal company worldwide to achieve certification of its Direct Air Capture with storage activities under the Puro Standard for its Orca plant in Iceland, which has been operational since 2021.

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Climeworks strives to provide the highest quality CDR (Carbon Dioxide Removal) service and promotes a high-integrity approach across the industry. We center our development on MRV (monitoring, reporting, and verification): scaling operations and standards simultaneously—not sequentially—is necessary. 

Climeworks has long been advocating for stringent standards in the voluntary carbon market and the need to clearly distinguish between emissions reductions and carbon removals to protect the market’s integrity (see, for example, Climeworks’ statement from April 2023).

Climeworks is actively calling for harmonized international standards for CDR, enabling certification based on a robust assessment of activities. 

More than advocating for it, Climeworks has taken steps itself: 

1. September 2022: Climeworks and Carbfix developed the world's first full-chain methodology dedicated to CDR via DAC and underground mineralization storage (see here). This methodology has been validated by the independent quality and assurance leader DNV.  

2. January 2023: Based on this rigorous methodology, Climeworks provided third-party verified CDR services performed at Orca to its first corporate customers. Climeworks CDR services were verified by DNV after a successful audit.

3. Climeworks is the first carbon removal company worldwide to achieve certification of its Direct Air Capture with storage activities under the Puro Standard for its Orca plant in Iceland. The Puro Standard is the first comprehensive standard for engineered carbon removal methods in the voluntary carbon market, and it was developed in collaboration with Puro.earth, Climeworks aligns with the recently published guidance on core carbon principles by the Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (IC-VCM) and complies with the code of best practice issued by the Voluntary Carbon Markets Integrity Initiative (VCMI). Climeworks furthermore gains approval from the International Carbon Reduction and Offset Alliance (ICROA) as it endorses the Puro Standard. 

In parallel to selecting the Puro Standard for certification, Climeworks continuously evaluates further options to collaborate with independent standards to incorporate our activities in a third-party registry. Climeworks is advancing robust MRV and certification efforts with the Gold Standard and Verra’s Verified Carbon Standard within the CCS+ Initiative. The company is moreover closely following and contributing to the developments of the EU carbon removal certification framework, the U.S. MRV projects funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, and international standards under the UNFCCC Article 6 framework. 

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