Key take-aways:
Five Climeworkers reflect on the biggest milestones of the year 2024: Mammoth, Project Cypress, Climeworks Solutions, certification under the Puro Standard, and our Generation 3 technology.
Enabled by our strong partnerships and a dedicated team of engineers, scientists, and commercial experts, these five milestones have shaped Climeworks’ scale-up path for 2025 and beyond.
On top, Climeworks celebrated its 15th anniversary as the most experienced carbon removal company in the industry.
Mammoth
Reflections by Steven Sloots, Senior Project Manager Mammoth
In May, we marked a pivotal moment for Climeworks and the Direct Air Capture industry by inaugurating Mammoth, our second and the world’s largest Direct Air Capture facility. Together with our customers, partners, and media representatives, we celebrated what this achievement means: a leap forward in scaling technological carbon removal.
Reflecting on this milestone, I feel immense pride. Mammoth, designed to capture up to 36,000 tons of CO₂ annually once fully operational, demonstrates that we can scale Direct Air Capture iteratively and quickly - in this case, by a factor of roughly ten compared to its predecessor, Orca.
Building Mammoth, however, was far from easy. We broke ground in June 2022, and over the following months, the Icelandic winter tested every aspect of our work. High winds and freezing temperatures didn’t deter our team, however, who installed and commissioned the first twelve of the plant’s 72 collector containers with resilience and determination.
This achievement would not have been possible without the dedication of Climeworkers from a number of disciplines. From scientists researching and refining our technology in the lab to engineers applying learnings from Orca to design and scale up the plant, and construction and commissioning teams bringing it to life on the ground, everyone played a vital role in turning Mammoth into a reality.
On top of adding important carbon removal capacity to an ever-growing market, Mammoth also represents an important learning hub, delivering insights into how we scale Direct Air Capture. Every operational hour provides valuable data, helping us optimize efficiency and reliability as we work toward megaton-scale carbon removal by 2030 and gigaton-scale by 2050. These lessons are already guiding our next steps, including developing our megaton Direct Air Capture Hub in the United States.
Project Cypress
Reflections by Darcee Adam, Project Director
Over the past year, we have made significant strides in our plans for Project Cypress. Beginning in early 2024, the project was awarded USD 50 million by the U.S. Department of Energy under the Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs program. Climeworks’ portion of the project, Project Cypress Southwest, is proposed for construction near Vinton, Louisiana. The facility will be built in stages with the first with a design capacity of 300,000 tons of CO₂ annually; the completed facility will be designed to capture at least one million tons of CO₂ per year.
In the months following the announcement, we have been actively engaging with the local community through a series of open houses, meetings with community leaders, and gatherings with fence-line neighbors. As a result of these engagements, local sentiment and support are beginning to grow in our favor.
We then announced our partnership with CapturePoint Solutions later in the year, marking another key milestone. This collaboration integrates Climeworks’ Direct Air Capture technology with CapturePoint’s CO₂ storage expertise, enabling safe, permanent sequestration in geological formations.
The project is progressing with Front-End Engineering and Design which supports the process of preparing for and filing required federal, state, and local permits. Once filed, permits will take several months to a year for review at all levels of government.
While there is a long road ahead to realizing Project Cypress, 2024 has helped lay a strong foundation. We couldn’t be prouder of the entire team working tirelessly on this monumental task.
Climeworks Solutions
Reflections by Charlotte Festa, VP Product
The launch of Climeworks Solutions stands out as a pivotal milestone of 2024. We developed the portfolio offering to meet the evolving demand for a Climeworks-approved package of carbon removal solutions that leverages the best of technology and nature. The launch in April was, therefore, a testament to Climeworks’ commitment to scale not only a single technology, but an entire industry to help fight global warming.
Climate scientists, industry associations, and governments are increasingly calling for the durable removal of CO₂ from the atmosphere, on top of drastic emissions reductions. New technologies and standards have continued to emerge while the possibility of a compliance market for carbon removal has become more concrete, leaving businesses with the enormous task of building their know-how at the same rapid pace.
Climeworks Solutions is our answer to the increasing pressure to engage with this market. We provide a tailored, end-to-end solution that caters to the highest quality standards to ensure that one ton of CO₂ purchased equals one ton of CO₂ removed. Biochar, Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage, our proprietary Direct Air Capture technology, Enhanced Rock Weathering, and Reforestation can all find their place in a Climeworks portfolio.
However, I strongly believe that the value of carbon removal purchases goes far beyond the number of tons removed. Every dollar spent today will maximize the return on removal as buyers lock in predictable prices, reduce financial liabilities at net zero, and unlock new business opportunities by entering the carbon removal market today.
The most rewarding aspect of introducing Climeworks Solutions was to see our vision reflected in the conversations with our clients, especially Breitling, who entered the first-ever 12-year portfolio agreement with us. The launch was a defining moment of 2024 but its impact will continue to shape our company's scale-up journey, foster innovation, and strengthen partnerships. Together, we’re proving that high-quality carbon removal isn’t just possible - it’s happening.
Generation 3 technology
Reflections by Kyle Allen, Senior System Integration and Validation Manager
In June 2024, I had the distinct pleasure of revealing our Generation 3 Direct Air Capture technology on stage at our Carbon Removal Summit - alongside the dozens of engineers who had been working hard to develop, validate, and implement this new technology over the last five years.
We have a Research & Development team at Climeworks that’s 180 people strong and includes 50 specialists dedicated to the development of Generation 3. These specialists have accumulated well over 15,000 standard CO₂ capture and release cycles, testing new sorbent materials at mid-scale, and over 50,000 accelerated capture and release cycles at small-scale to optimize the system's durability and efficiency. This has culminated in testing our full-scale contactor blocks in the Large-Scale Performance Testing Facility (LSPTF), where we have confirmed similar performance to our observations at mid-scale. We transformed our collector concept from traditional stacked collector containers to a sleek, modular new design. The redesign will increase capture efficiency, reduce costs, and boost robustness.
The Generation 3 technology uses novel structured sorbent materials replacing the packed filter beds used in previous technology generations. The new structures increase surface contact with CO₂, reducing the time to capture and release CO₂. The new filter materials also require approximately half the energy for capturing CO₂ and regenerating the sorbent on a per ton basis compared to Generation 2 and are intended to last three times longer than prior materials. Generation 3 technology represents a major milestone in Climeworks’ cost reduction strategy, which aims to achieve costs of USD 250-350 per ton captured and total costs of USD 400-600 per ton net removal by 2030. This represents an overall carbon removal cost reduction of up to 50 percent compared to today’s costs in Generation 2.
The first plant utilizing this new technology generation will be built in Louisiana as part of the megaton-scale Direct Air Capture Hub Project Cypress funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Construction is set to begin in 2026 and would mark another tenfold scale-up step towards megaton capacity.
Puro certification
Reflections by Dominik Brun, Senior MRV Quality Manager
Since its unveiling, Mammoth has set a new industry standard in Direct Air Capture and Storage plant certification. Building on the extensive learnings from its predecessor Orca, Climeworks has accelerated Mammoth’s certification timeline significantly, enabling it to deliver certified carbon credits from day one of CO₂ injection - an achievement that took over two years to realize with Orca as it was a first-of-a-kind process.
This milestone reflects the power of the cross-functional collaboration of Climeworks’ diverse teams: From engineers designing the plant to commercial experts navigating certification requirements, IT specialists supporting data accuracy and delivery, and operations teams managing day-to-day execution - every discipline played an essential role in ensuring Mammoth's certification success.
In November 2024, Mammoth successfully completed its first output audit under the Puro Standard, a significant milestone in its operational ramp-up. The “Puro Standard Output Audit Report” states: “Climeworks has successfully managed to scale up their process taking along learnings from the successful operations at Orca. They have detailed processes related to monitoring and data collection that allow for easily verifiable output when they will generate CO₂ removal certificates (CORCs).” While initial production is modest during early months, Mammoth’s robust data measurement systems ensure second-by-second tracking of every ton of CO₂ removed. This commitment to accuracy and transparency underlines Climeworks' leadership in high-integrity carbon removal solutions.
By leveraging the insights and learnings from Orca, we’ve been able to accelerate the timeline, achieving certification from day one of CO₂ injection. Personally, I find it exciting to see Mammoth come to life with a robust and efficient MRV process, ensuring every ton of CO₂ removed is verifiable and trusted.
Celebrating 15 years of Climeworks
On top of all the engineering and market progress that Climeworks made, we celebrated the company’s 15th birthday in November 2024. Watch the video for a short glimpse of Climeworks’ history:
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