Climeworks has started operations at the world's largest direct air carbon capture plant in Iceland; stashing CO2 in Louisiana's salt aquifers is next.

Over in Iceland two massive direct air capture (DAC) plants priced in the low triple-digit millions to build are costing close to $1,000 per metric ton to pull carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But that's only the beginning – they will build even bigger next time.

Climeworks' carbon capture technology is coming to America.

Early on the scene in 2009, Swiss industry leader Climeworks has been wholly focused on the process of pulling CO2 from the atmosphere while improving efficiency, scaling up, and lowering the cost per ton. DAC is still expensive, but it is one of the fastest ways to drive down the main contributor to global warming.

Climeworks COO Douglas Chan explained that between its original Orca plant and new Mammoth plant, both in Iceland, the company saw a 10-20% reduction in capital expenditures per ton of CO2 captured while its operations and maintenance costs went down by half. The idea is to get the price tag from $1,000 down to $100 per metric ton, a cost that will reduce as the scale of plants increases. By 2030, Climeworks CEO Jan Wurzbacher expects the costs to be around $300/t.

The Mammoth facility in Iceland expects a capacity of up to 36,000 tons of CO2 captured per year when in full swing, and it will function as further testing and refining of the technology to finally export at an even larger scale to the U.S., according to Giana Amador, executive director of advocacy group Carbon Removal Alliance.

The biggest issue in the move may be the kind of power used in the process. Running a huge carbon capture plant takes a lot of power, but clean geothermal energy powers Mammoth's needs.

Climeworks

CEO Jan Wurzbacher (left) said commercial demand had been so high that over its 12-year lifespan, the Orca plant was nearly sold out of carbon credits.

Carbon capture in the U.S.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that the deployment of CO2 removal projects, including direct air capture, is still the best bet to counterbalance emissions from hard-to-abate sectors and achieve net-zero carbon emissions in a timely manner. This allows for the technology to push forward as it has, despite the cost.

The next step for Climeworks is Louisiana's Project Cypress, which has already been awarded a contract from the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations (OCED). The project will initially be powered by renewable energy from local utilities.

The project team, also led by Battelle, a science and tech company, along with Heirloom, a DAC developer, intends to eventually install its own renewable energy generation facility as the plant is built out.

With the initial award of $50 million from OCED and an additional $51 million in private investment, the initial phase of the DAC Hub intends to remove 1 million tons of CO2 from the air every year, starting in 2030. Project Cypress is also eligible for up to $600 million in matched federal investment.

This funding from OCED will establish one of America's first DAC hubs.

The company Gulf Coast Sequestration will permanently store the captured CO2 in a Class VI deep saline aquifer, which the Environmental Protection Agency only just approved for Louisiana late last year.

Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry posted on social media that the CO2 sequestration approval "marks a significant milestone in our state's economic development."

"This approval has positioned Louisiana to become the nation's leader in safely storing carbon dioxide, contributing to nationwide emissions reduction and bringing new jobs and innovation to our state," Landry said.