The Ledger
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Climeworks has signed direct air capture offtake contracts up to 15 years
“We've worked really hard over the last, I would say, four years to move the market to something that will actually work for project finance. In terms of offtake. So that means long duration contracts, right, over five years plus ideally 10 years or 15 years, l…”
Climeworks CFO: DAC startups risk destroying industry trust through overpromising
“What we're worried about is what's going to happen if people are not transparent about the challenges is that, that people will lose face at some point, you know, when they say, well, this is just an industry that makes a lot of promises, but doesn't really ke…”
Apley: Orca runs at 2,500 to 3,000 tons after 2.5 years
“We can reach now a performance of around two and a half thousand to 3000 tons of run rate. And that took us About two and a half years to get there.”
Climeworks plans a 250,000-ton DAC plant for its first US facility
“And the next one that we'll build is about 250,000 tons. So another sort of seven to eight X scale up that will be our first plant in the US.”
Climeworks CFO: Jumping directly from pilot to profitable commercial scale fails
“We are of the fundamental opinion that it doesn't really work to you know, deploy in the lab or at very small scale at pilot scale, and then go from that straight to the size that is required for the plant to be profitable, because that's a huge technological …”
Apley: Upfront lifecycle emissions accounting heavily reduces sellable early DAC volume
“The way that certifications work today is you deduct all of the life cycle emissions that exist for the construction of the plant as well as for the operation of the plant, the energy that you use, et cetera. And we could predict some of these, but others requ…”
Apley: Pre-treating incoming air makes direct air capture completely uneconomical
“If you do direct air capture, that's the other nature is you have to deal with the weather, how it is, because it's quickly becoming completely uneconomical if you have to pre-treat any of your incoming feedstock, so to say, right? The air that comes in.”
Climeworks raised a $650M Series F, a record for Switzerland
“On the backbone of operating Orca, and having that in the field, we then launched a new fundraise, our Series F already at the time, and that was sort of the first time when large institutional investors came into the cap table, and we managed to raise about s…”
Apley: Climeworks secured subsidized project debt for Orca DAC facility
“We actually already executed a project debt facility in one of our projects that was for Orca. And that was definitely very hard to get over the line. Also had to be subsidized because Orca isn't profitable at the size where it is.”
Apley: Direct air capture must dump CO2 if purity standards fail
“The sensitivity of the sequestration on the purity of the CO two and your ability to deliver that purity, 24, seven with all the things that happen in this type of production environment, you have to deliver really, really pure CO two doesn't really matter on …”
Apley: Proprietary technology is under 50% of Climeworks' project CapEx
“Our own tech is less than 50% of the CapEx that we need to deploy.”
Climeworks: Orca and Mammoth DAC plants are completely sold out
“So Orca and Mammoth are luckily they're already completely sold out. For the life that we expect the plant to operate.”
Ransohoff: US lacks dedicated permanent CO2 storage infrastructure like Iceland's Carbfix
“Transportation and storage of CO₂ streams is something that we are seeing a lot of the companies that apply to Stripe Climate struggle with. You know, they will have a really compelling capture technology and can essentially use lots of different storage They …”
Apley: Climeworks uses indexed long-duration power contracts in Iceland
“For example, in Iceland, we have very, very long duration energy contracts with fixed pricing and a certain indexation. So we reflect that in the customer agreements.”
Climeworks' Orca DAC plant has a nominal capacity of 4,000 tons
“Orca has nominal capacity about 4000 tons. What do we mean with that? That means it's that's what the plant was designed to capture at maximum efficiency. So maximum run rate, et cetera. And there's some losses that go away from that.”
Climeworks pitched 10x scale and cost curve improvements to equity investors
“The key milestone was scaling that technology by a factor of about 10 improving on the cost curve deploying more on the offtake side, so really building the market for these project-financeable offtakes and also making an improvement on the technology.”
Shopify received its first carbon removal deliveries from Running Tide and Climeworks
“Things have started to change in the back half of 2023 where we got our first ocean deliveries from Running Tide, and then our first DAC credit delivery from Climeworks, which is the first batch of credits we've received from them from the contract that we sig…”
Yeh: Climeworks followed a decade-long multi-step scale-up path to Mammoth
“You know, like in 2012, they build demo. Few years later, they did a bigger demo. 2017, they did their first commercial scale. And now, like a few years ago, they did Orca, and now they're going to be doing Mammoth. So they took multiple steps to get to commer…”