Our Sustainability Editor explores a new direct air-capture technology and puts the current state of the carbon offsetting industry under the microscope…
It is claimed that a new direct-air capture technology will significantly increase the amount of carbon dioxide that can be removed from the atmosphere. Here, we investigate the circumstances around this new technology and other carbon offsetting initiatives in the voluntary carbon markets, including the forestry projects marked by scandal in 2023.
Climeworks, a leading direct air-carbon capture (DAC) company, has recently announced its latest technology, Generation 3, which will reportedly enable it to significantly expand the amount of carbon dioxide it can collect from the air. When its second site became operational in Iceland in May this year, it became the largest DAC plant globally expanding the company’s total capacity to 40,000 tons of CO2 annually. This was a large jump from their first DAC plant in Switzerland, capable of capturing only hundreds of tons of CO2. The company states that this new technology and the next plant to utilise it, to be built in Louisiana, USA, will increase this capacity to several million tons per year by 2030, with an even more ambitious target of operating multiple sites to capture billions of tons of carbon by 2050.