Status
Operational
The world’s first direct air capture facility combined with CO₂ storage
Arctic Fox was our first facility in Iceland and marks the beginning of carbon dioxide removal through direct air capture. For the first time, direct air capture was combined with the safe and permanent storage of carbon dioxide. With this facility, we could demonstrate that our technology to remove CO₂ from the air is one important solution to help fight global warming.
Date
October 2017
Goal
Successfully combine direct air capture with safe and permanent underground storage
Location
Iceland, Hellisheidi
Capture capacity
Up to 50 tons of CO₂ per year
This is how it works
We remove carbon dioxide from the air with our direct air capture machines. Our Icelandic partner Carbfix then mixes the carbon dioxide with water and pumps it deep underground. Through natural mineralization, the carbon dioxide reacts with the basalt rock and turns into stone within a few years. The carbon dioxide is thus removed from the air and returned to earth, permanently and safely. More about CO₂ removal
What’s special about Arctic Fox
When the project was initiated in 2017, we installed a Climeworks CO₂ collector with a capacity of 50 tons of carbon dioxide per year. It uses the geothermal power of the local geothermal power plant as a renewable energy source. One major challenge was to make our process work under such harsh weather conditions with very low temperatures. Despite the challenges, we were able to operate Arctic Fox with great success, which is now allowing a significant scale-up of our carbon dioxide removal capacities in Iceland.
Christoph Gebald, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Climeworks
The potential of scaling up our technology in combination with CO₂ storage is enormous. Not only here in Iceland but also in numerous other regions, which have similar conditions.
Our plants
2017
Arctic Fox Our first facility in Iceland marked the beginning of permanent and safe carbon dioxide removal via direct air capture.
2022
On 28 June 2022, we announced the groundbreaking of Climeworks’ second, newest and largest direct air capture and storage plant, Mammoth.
2024
Located in Iceland, Mammoth is Climeworks' second commercial DAC+S plant and it is about ten times bigger than its predecessor plant, Orca.
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