Inside the world’s largest carbon capture plant, sucking CO2 from the skies

The huge fans have just started whirring at Mammoth, the Climeworks facility in Iceland that will remove 36,000 tonnes a year — but that is still a tiny fraction of global emissions

A new plant that sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere has been hailed as an important milestone in mitigating climate change, although so far it is only a tiny fraction of what is needed
A new plant that sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere has been hailed as an important milestone in mitigating climate change, although so far it is only a tiny fraction of what is needed
Benjamin Cooke in Iceland
The Times

At the foot of a dormant volcano in Iceland, the Swiss company Climeworks has kickstarted a geological process of its own. The eggy smell of sulphur wafts across the valley in plumes of geothermal steam, but Climeworks’s technicians are concerned with a more insidious gas: carbon dioxide.

Using energy from a nearby geothermal power station to power an array of steel fans, they are taking the planet-warming gas out of the air, then locking it away deep within the solidified lava underfoot. The company has been operating a small facility in this valley since 2021, but has just switched on its successor, a plant nine times the size called Mammoth.

Mammoth is the largest “direct air capture” facility in the world. Once fully up and