The World’s Biggest Carbon Removal Plant Comes Online in Iceland
Climeworks’ Mammoth plant will pull 36,000 tons of CO2 out of the air a year as it aims to reach 1 million tons by the end of the decade.
Collector containers at the Climeworks Mammoth plant in Hellisheioi, Iceland, on May 8.
Photographer: Heida Helgadottir/Bloomberg
Amid the steam rising around Iceland’s Hellisheioi station sits a newly built warehouse surrounded by giant fans run by carbon removal startup Climeworks. Dubbed Mammoth, the project is now the world’s biggest plant to suck carbon dioxide from the air.
The plant is a critical step in the race to remove billions of tons of carbon a year by mid-century, a move that will likely be needed to keep global warming to relatively safe levels. It also illustrates the increasingly competitive landscape for companies trying to suck carbon from the sky.