Direct Air Capture

Direct Air Capture (DAC) uses chemical processes to filter CO2 directly from ambient air. Climeworks, the Swiss pioneer, operates commercial DAC plants in Iceland: Orca captures about 4,000 tons of CO2 per year, while Mammoth, switched on in 2024, is designed for up to 36,000 tons per year and became the world's largest direct air capture and storage plant by nameplate capacity.

The real bottleneck is energy. Pulling CO2 out of thin air means processing enormous volumes of it, because carbon dioxide makes up only about 0.04% of the atmosphere. The machines must move and heat huge amounts of air to release the captured gas, so a meaningful DAC industry would need vast supplies of clean power — otherwise the energy used could undo the carbon removed.