Helin Cox, Chief Technology Officer at Climeworks, discusses the cost and scale-up of direct air capture on Episode 33 of Scaling Green Tech, a podcast by Adopter.

Cox breaks the cost of direct air capture into three parts: site selection, plant operations and maintenance, and the technology itself. Within the technology, cost comes down to how much CO2 a plant captures per year for a given investment, and how much energy that takes. Both are governed by the sorbent, which is why Climeworks runs a 30-person team on material synthesis and modification, and why sorbent life matters as much as sorbent performance. Climeworks tests those materials against real site conditions in Zurich, in a mid-scale rig that conditions air from 40 degrees Celsius at 15 per cent humidity down to minus 25, and in a mobile testing unit shipped to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where Riyadh reaches 45 degrees at under 10 per cent humidity. Cox places direct air capture against roughly 40 gigatonnes of annual fossil fuel emissions, of which she says 80 to 90 per cent must be dealt with through emission reductions, leaving carbon removal for hard-to-abate sectors.

This episode is relevant for carbon removal buyers, CDR and DAC project developers, climate hardware founders scaling first-of-a-kind plants, and deep tech investors assessing risk-adjusted returns.

Guest profile

Helin Cox is Chief Technology Officer at Climeworks.

Cox’s early career was spent at Honeywell UOP, working first as an R&D development engineer and then in the field, starting up first-of-a-kind industrial plants and learning where laboratory results fail in operation. She went on to commercialise new technologies at UOP and eventually ran its new product portfolio for renewable and sustainable technologies, covering green hydrogen, blue hydrogen and long-duration energy storage. At Climeworks, she leads a technology organisation of more than 100 people across materials, equipment, process design and testing.

Climeworks is a Swiss carbon removal company founded in 2009 that develops direct air capture technology, develops and operates carbon removal plants, and sells carbon removal to corporate buyers. The company runs an innovation centre in Zurich housing wet chemical labs, a maker space and mid-scale testing, operates the Mammoth plant in Iceland, and has opened a project development office in Calgary to assess opportunities in Canada. Alongside direct air capture, Climeworks offers a portfolio of carbon removal that includes nature-based solutions and biochar.

Company website:https://climeworks.com/

Find Helin Cox on LinkedIn

Topics covered

• Explaining direct air capture 

• Where Climeworks sits in the carbon removal market

• Inside the Climeworks innovation centre in Zurich

• The direct air capture cost stack: site, operations, technology

• Sorbent performance, sorbent life and energy demand

• Mid-scale rigs and the mobile testing unit for real site conditions

• Voluntary buyers, offtake agreements and risk-adjusted returns

• Regulation, 45Q and Canada's investment tax credit

• The lift-off price and what solar cost reduction actually came from

• Fail-fast culture, the maker space and the stage-gate process

• Generation 3 structured sorbents at Mammoth

• Advice for founders scaling first-of-a-kind technology