Climeworks Wins Funding For Direct Air Capture & Storage In Norway

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Climeworks, the company responsible for the world’s first and largest Direct Air Capture and Storage (DAC+S) plant in Iceland, has been awarded €2.3 million by Enova, a state enterprise owned by Norway’s Ministry of Climate and Environment. The multi-million euro boon for the world leader in DAC facilities will fund a feasibility study to bring DAC+S to Norway, a world leader in renewable energy.

Climeworks’ winning proposal investigates building a multi-kiloton-capacity DAC+S plant in Norway by 2030. Project Norse Pine is one of nine projects awarded, whose combined targeted capture capacity will remove 1.7 million tons of CO2 per year or roughly half of all emissions from Norway’s passenger cars. In a country where 98% of energy comes from renewable sources like hydropower, adding DAC+S to the equation would accelerate progress towards the Paris Agreement’s net-zero targets.

Norway’s demonstrated commitment to clean energy makes it an ideal location for Climeworks’ next DAC+S plant. Their facilities require a reliable clean energy source, and permanent storage options. Norway, boasting a two million square kilometer continental shelf capable of storing several gigatons of CO2, is a global leader in the development of large-scale geological CO2 storage.

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Norway would follow its neighbor, Iceland, as the second Scandinavian site for Climeworks, which has been scaling up DAC+S exploration globally. Last fall, the company announced plans to build a facility in Kenya; it recently won federal funding for facilities in the US; and has plans to expand in Canada with Montreal-based Deep Sky.

What does this all add up to? Having opened its first small-scale DAC facility in 2014, followed by a commercial facility in 2017, Climeworks has a decade’s worth of experience removing and storing CO2 from the atmosphere. Orca, in Iceland, is the world’s largest DAC+S site capable of removing 4,000 tons of CO2 annually. If Climeworks is able to expand globally, it would establish DAC+S as a formidable solution for scalable carbon removal, even as corporations and governments struggle to reduce carbon emissions.

Nils Kristian Nakstad, CEO of Enova, said, “We are pleased to be able to support Climeworks’ work in the development of industrial carbon removal projects. This technology will play a decisive role in the transition to a low-emission society, and this project is an important step in the right direction.”

Andreas Aepli, Chief Financial Officer at Climeworks, said, “We are thrilled and honored to have been awarded funding from Enova for a feasibility study in Norway for our project Norse Pine. This will undoubtedly accelerate direct air capture as a climate solution, both in the Nordics and globally — something we are truly grateful to Enova for enabling.”

Climeworks seems to have cracked the code in finding and collaborating with governments and private enterprises to fund and develop DAC+S around the globe. These are countries that have demonstrated their commitment to meeting Paris Agreement targets through investing in emerging and proven technologies, like Climeworks’ projects. In addition to funding DAC exploration projects, an external investigation commissioned by the Norwegian Environment Agency has assessed several economic support mechanisms like reverse auctions, reverse tax credits, public procurement, and direct investments to sustainably support the CDR technology. CDR technology development plus sustainable funding equals a winning combination for companies like Climeworks.

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