EIT Climate-KIC supported Climeworks raises over €67 million to expand its carbon dioxide removal capacities

In The News 02 Jun 2020

Climeworks, the world leader in capturing CO2 from air, supported by EIT Climate-KIC, has successfully raised €67 million (CHF 73 million) in equity from private investors. This is the largest private investment into direct air capture to date. The funding will help to drive forward the company’s scale-up roadmap and expand its carbon dioxide removal capacities.

Humans have increased atmospheric CO2 concentration by over a third since the Industrial Revolution began. These emissions have already increased global temperatures by around 1°C since pre-industrial times. There are two ways of dealing with CO2 emissions today. The first one is not emitting them in the first place: We can do so by reducing our consumption, using current technologies more efficiently and shifting to low-carbon technologies. The other option, which comes in addition to the first one, is to permanently remove carbon dioxide from the air.

Founded by engineers Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, Climeworks is one of the global leaders in carbon dioxide removal. The company’s patented technology captures CO2 directly from the air using clean energy. The air-captured carbon dioxide is then either returned to earth, stored safely and permanently away for millions of years, or it is upcycled into climate-friendly products such as carbon-neutral fuels and materials, fertiliser for greenhouses or bubbles in your fizzy drinks. The Climeworks direct air capture technology runs exclusively on clean energy, and the modular CO2 collectors can be stacked to build machines of any size.

The successful financing round takes the Swiss company, which went through EIT Climate-KIC’s Accelerator programme in 2012 and 2013, another step closer to achieving its vision of capturing one per cent of global CO2 emissions by 2025. This new round of funding brings the total sum invested in Climeworks since it was founded in 2009, to over CHF 120 million and will be used to expand Climeworks’ carbon dioxide removal capacities, help to further scale and optimise the direct air capture technology and make it accessible to more stakeholders.

“We are very thankful for the long-term commitment of our investors, who shared our vision of a climate-positive world from the very beginning. This financing round will take Climeworks to the next level and help us make an ever-bigger contribution to reversing climate change. We aim to inspire one billion people to remove carbon dioxide from the air—and this investment will contribute to achieve that goal,” says Christoph Gebald, Co-founder and Co-CEO of Climeworks.

Learn more.

 
Location
Switzerland
Related Focus Area
Sustainable Productions Systems
Related Goal
Goal 8: Reduce industry emissions

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