Climeworks opens the biggest carbon removal plant: What you need to know

Picture courtesy: QZ

Climeworks, a company that empowers people to reverse climate change by permanently removing carbon dioxide from the air, built an installation called Orca. Orca plant will capture 4,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. A brand new Orca facility started operating in Iceland Wednesday. Experts say that the facility could eventually play an important role in reducing greenhouse gases that are warming up the planet.

Climeworks says the company can grow quickly as efficiency improves and costs decrease, in order to achieve carbon-neutral goals.

According to International Energy Agency, it is recommended to pull nearly a billion metric tons of CO2 (carbon dioxide) from the atmosphere every year. “This is a market that does not yet exist, but a market that urgently needs to be built,” said Christoph Gebald, a Swiss engineer who co-founded and co-directs Climeworks.“This plant that we have here is really the blueprint to further scale up and really industrialize,” he added.