Guardians of Tomorrow: securing a sustainable future — Interview with Christoph Gebald, CEO and founder of Climeworks

18.07.2023 12:00, Rita Longobardi

During the summer months, we ask people who inspire the Swiss startup ecosystem to share their invaluable insights with the Venturelab community. In this captivating episode of "Guardians of Tomorrow", Venturelab has invited Christoph Gebald, CEO and founder of Climeworks, a Swiss company at the forefront of carbon dioxide air capture technology. Join us as we delve into Christoph's mission to protect the planet and ensure a livable future for generations to come.

Name: Christoph Gebald
Job title: CEO and founder of Climeworks
City: Zurich
What I do: Director, Founder and Member of the Board, I am a mechanical engineer (ETH Zürich and UC Berkeley) and hold a MSc with distinction and a PhD from ETH Zürich. Together with Jan Wurzbacher, I am responsible for the management of the company. Climeworks empowers people and companies to fight global warming by offering carbon dioxide removal (CDR) via direct air capture (DAC) technology as a service


Can you provide an overview of your company’s mission and main challenges? How does Climeworks' technology differ from other carbon dioxide removal solutions currently available in the market? 
We deliver high-quality, verified removals via permanent storage of residual and legacy CO? emissions, which, once removed, can no longer contribute to climate change. Climeworks is spearheading the DAC industry globally, with the world’s largest DAC and storage facility in operation and a team of 300 Climeworkers determined to contribute to a net-zero future. Our growing customer base includes over 160 companies, including multinationals such as Microsoft, BCG, UBS, or Swiss Re, as well as more than 19,000 individuals Climate Pioneers. Mitigating climate change is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. If global warming surpasses 1.5°C, there will be irreparable damage: dangerous sea levels, devastating extreme weather events, and waves of climate refugees. Drastic decarbonization across all industries is essential to reducing global warming, but so is addressing the high levels of carbon already emitted. By addressing both unavoidable emissions and historic emissions, carbon dioxide removal can help stop global warming, achieving a net zero future.  Exponentially scaling up our industry’s capacity will be critical over the next five years as part of a portfolio of solutions to remove gigatons of CO2 from the atmosphere. Climeworks stands at the forefront of the direct air capture industry, simultaneously pushing it to new heights through scaled-up construction and verified removals while contributing to developing rigorous industry standards for legitimate, high-quality CDR. On our roadmap to gigaton capacity by 2050, we plan to be at megaton capacity by 2030.
 


What are the scalability and cost-effectiveness aspects of Climeworks' carbon dioxide air capture technology? How does the company plan to make it accessible on a global scale?
Our commercialization and large-scale deployment are on track to reach our key objective: to deliver multi-megaton capacity in the 2030s and gigaton capacity by 2050, as climate science requires. In this regard, our flagship plant Orca and our next plant Mammoth, currently under construction, represent demonstrable steps in Climeworks' ambitious scale-up plan. We are continually exploring new markets as we look to scale and globalize our capacity. After the U.S. only recently passed historic DAC legislation, we announced a significant milestone for our U.S. deployment in early 2023, with plans to hire over one hundred U.S. employees in anticipation of several large-scale DAC projects focused on permanent carbon removal. Our early successes in designing the future of DAC+S have provided the blueprint for not just our company’s success but this essential climate technology. Ultimately, Climeworks will help define the future of what high-quality carbon removal should look like in the decades to come and continue to make a measurable and meaningful impact on the fight against climate change.



Can you provide some examples of successful projects or partnerships in which Climeworks has been involved and how they have contributed to reducing carbon dioxide levels?
Over the past 14 months, Climeworks has led the DAC industry with new investments, customers, project locations, and more:

•    In May 2023, Climeworks and JPMorgan Chase announced one of the largest purchases to date in the CDR industry between a single corporate buyer and a single CDR company, valued at over $20 million. In an earlier corporate agreement signed in 2022, Climeworks became Microsoft’s first long-term, tech-based carbon removal supplier in their CDR portfolio. They join Climeworks’ portfolio of global customers, including Stripe, Shopify, UBS, and Swiss Re.

•    In January 2023, Climeworks delivered its first 3rd party verified CDR services to some of its earliest American corporate customers (Microsoft, Stripe, Shopify). These services were performed based on Climeworks’ and Carbfix’s third-party validated methodology, making them the first and only carbon removals via DAC+S verified by a third party. 

•    In early 2023, we announced a significant milestone for our U.S. deployment, with plans to hire over one hundred U.S. employees in the near term in anticipation of several large-scale DAC projects focused on permanent carbon removal.

•    In June 2022, Climeworks broke ground on its second direct air capture facility, Mammoth, in Iceland. Mammoth will be Climeworks’ largest DAC+S facility to date, with a nominal capture capacity of up to 36,000 tons per year.

•    In April 2022, Climeworks successfully signed an equity round of USD 650 million. The investor base includes several of the most renowned and largest institutional technology and infrastructure investors globally. 


 
Given the urgency to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, what is Climeworks' strategy to accelerate the adoption and implementation of its technology worldwide?
Climeworks’ carbon removal services are setting unprecedented standards for the DAC industry. Recent investments, customer agreements, expansion plans and our rigorous work on industry measurement, reporting and verification (MRV) guidelines reflect Climeworks’ integral role in establishing a highly functioning and scalable market for high-quality carbon removal. Nevertheless, Climeworks’ efforts alone will not be enough to achieve the massive scale-up of the DAC industry as required by climate science and negative emission targets. We need the convergence of all forces: more funding (through grants, public funding programs, as well as equity and project finance), the development of both the voluntary and the compliance carbon markets, supportive policies and regulations, including high-quality standards, and a supply chain to be able to deliver on enormous scales.

Learn more about Climeworks.