Jun 30, 2022 · 37m · how-i-built-this
HIBT Lab! Climeworks: Jan Wurzbacher
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This Lab, host Guy Raz interviews Climeworks co-founder Jan Wurzbacher to discuss the engineering, commercialization, and global scaling of direct air capture technology to permanently remove billions of tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 35.5% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.5 Guest teaching 4.1 Guest disagreement 0.4 Guy pushing back 1.5
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:46 Dismissing the sequential 'stop emissions first' argument
Jan firmly rejects the premise that emissions must be stopped before starting atmospheric removal, stating that era of optionality passed decades ago.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 32:03 Guy challenges reliance on consumer virtueGuy directly counters the consumer subscription model by arguing that human beings are rarely motivated by pure altruism without economic mandates.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 9:46 Jan's land math comparing trees to direct air captureJan educates the host on the comparative area efficiency of DAC, demonstrating that biological sequestration would require an area twice the size of India during a food crisis.
Guy holds their own ▶ 7:27 Guy cites precise IPCC climate reduction targetsGuy displays command of climate science by citing exact 2030 percentage cuts and 2050 gigaton removal metrics from recent IPCC assessments.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jan's Background and Meeting Co-Founder Christoph Gebald | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | Guy prompts Jan about his educational background at ETH Zurich and early ambitions with co-founder Christoph Gebald. Jan shares personal anecdotes in an agreeable, narrative tone. | |
| The Genesis of Direct Air Capture and Climeworks' Founding | 1 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Jan explains the origins of direct air capture research at ETH Zurich and illustrates the physical challenge by explaining that only one out of 2,500 air molecules is CO2. | |
| The Scale of the Challenge: Trees vs. Mechanical Air Capture | 6 | 6 | 1 | 1 | Guy demonstrates strong context on IPCC targets and emissions reduction timelines. Jan builds on this by explaining why biological methods like tree planting cannot scale alone due to land competition and permanence issues. | |
| Early Commercial Applications: Selling CO₂ to Greenhouses and Coca-Cola | 5 | 2 | 0 | 1 | Guy uses the SodaStream analogy and astutely observes that selling CO2 to Coca-Cola doesn't permanently sequester carbon. Jan readily confirms that beverage carbonation was merely a stepping-stone niche market. | |
| Mid-Interview Break and Show ID | 2 | 6 | 0 | 0 | Following the mid-roll reset, Jan educates the audience on the technical process of adsorption, low-temperature desorption, and permanent mineralization in basalt rock with Carbfix. | |
| Scaling Up Hardware and Financing Carbon Removal | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Guy inquires about capital intensity and Jan contextualizes their $650M Series F within the broader historical cost-reduction curves seen in solar PV. | |
| Sizing the Infrastructure and Energy Requirements | 5 | 5 | 1 | 4 | Guy pushes on the immense physical and energy footprint required, imagining vast desert facilities. Jan reframes the physical scale using shipping container throughput at Shanghai port and explains renewable siting strategy. | |
| Mid-Interview Break and Re-Introduction | 4 | 4 | 1 | 3 | Guy presses on corporate motives for buying offsets without regulatory mandates. Jan explains how pioneer buyers like Microsoft validate rigorous, permanent removal solutions. | |
| Individual Subscriptions and the Future Regulatory Market | 5 | 4 | 1 | 5 | Guy challenges the realism of relying on voluntary individual subscriptions, arguing most people won't pay out of virtue. Jan agrees that regulation is required long-term but explains early subscribers act as catalytic bridge capital. | |
| The Long Race: Optimism on Overcoming Climate Change | 3 | 4 | 0 | 1 | Guy notes the overwhelming magnitude of removing gigatons while Orca removes 4,000 tons, comparing it to an urgent sprint. Jan grounds his long-term optimism in historical tech scaling. |
Statements from this episode (14)
Wurzbacher: Capturing one ton of CO2 requires filtering 2M cubic meters of air
“Like to take a ton of CO₂ out of ambient air, you need to filter around two million cubic meters of air.”
Wurzbacher: Removing 10B tons of CO2 via trees requires Europe-sized land
“If we just do the calculation, what about capturing these ten billion tons of CO₂ from the air just by planting trees or doing similar biological methods, then you'll end up with huge areas that you need to fill with new trees. It's like you need something lik…”
Wurzbacher: Direct air capture is 1,000x more area-efficient than trees
“If you build machines like we are doing, you can do it on much, much less area. So you are about a thousand times more area efficient. So at the same area where you can take one ton out of the air with trees, you could take a thousand tons out of the air with …”
Wurzbacher: Climeworks sold its first captured CO₂ to greenhouses and Coca-Cola
“Our first Plant we built here in Switzerland, and that is taking, that's still an operation, that is taking CO₂ out of the air to then sell the CO₂ to a greenhouse. They are fertilizing their plants with CO₂, and also to Coca-Cola, who are making sparkling dri…”
Wurzbacher: Selling captured CO₂ to beverage makers has zero climate benefit
“Like, in terms of climate effects, that market is totally irrelevant. Like, is that a market? Could you grow a sustainable business on that? Yes, sure. So you, we could have decided just to become a small, medium-sized company developing direct air capture pla…”
Wurzbacher: Injected CO₂ turns into stone underground within two years
“They have developed this method where they inject the CO₂ in underground porous rocks, where the CO₂ is mineralizing with the rocks, so within two years, the CO₂ is just turned into stone there”
Wurzbacher: Direct air capture will scale and drop in cost like solar
“And that's the same, what has had to happen in our industry, and I'm sure that will happen over the next
two decades to come.”
Wurzbacher: Direct air capture will reach million-ton scale by 2030
“This industry is set up to scaling up to the million tons per year scale in the next couple of Years towards the end of this decade. So that's what will happen. We are doing that like a handful of other companies are working towards that.”
Wurzbacher: Capturing 1% of emissions requires 750,000 shipping container-sized units
“You would need something like 750,000 containers for that, which Is that a large number? It's actually not a large number. It's actually what goes through Shanghai port in two weeks, right? It's like, it's not a lot compared to global economy.”
Wurzbacher: Carbon removal will match today's oil and gas industry in size
“What we are talking is the creation of a new industry of the size of today's oil and gas industry. That that's basically it.”
Wurzbacher: Climeworks' Orca plant captures 4,000 tons of CO2 annually
“Everyone has eight containers, so that ends up then with a total nominal capacity of, ah, 4000 tons of CO₂ per year that can be captured.”
Wurzbacher: Climeworks is building a capture plant 10x larger than Orca
“Like, based on that, we are now building a 10 times larger plant.”
Wurzbacher: Climeworks has surpassed 14,000 direct individual subscribers
“We've had since beginning over 14,000 customers, and that's increasing”
Wurzbacher: Reaching gigaton-scale carbon removal requires government mandates and taxes
“95% of the population Would likely only do this when they are forced to it. And that's eventually to get to billions of tons of CO two removal. We need regulation. We need corresponding legislation. We need governmental procurement programs that might be CO tw…”