The Exchanges

Q Alright, so Jan, first of all, tell me a little bit about your background. I know you studied to be a mechanical engineer, right, initially, right?

A That's right. Uh, that's, that's correct. I actually came to Zurich back in 2003. Personally, I'm originally from Hamburg in Germany, um, but now almost 19 years ago, moved to Zurich. I wanted to study here at ETH Zurich, the main technical university. And, uh, well, that was thought to be for three years or five years at first, but then as it happened, really at the, at the first day when you're introduced to the university, then we were organized and Small groups of students to get a tour through the, through the university, and I happened to be in the same group as Christoph was, and then the two of us became friends very quickly, really, in the first days, and, um, both had the dream of founding a company, and, uh, well, then it happened just, uh, six years later.

AI assessment note: “That's right. Uh, that's, that's correct. I actually came to Zurich back in 2003.”

Q Wow. And, and it's really, and because you have to build these massive facilities to just begin to suck in air, right?

A Oh, that's right. And, I mean, for us as a company, that's, that's a large amount, uh, that, that's much more funding than we had available before the, the, Previous financing round that was at around a hundred million. But if you look at it from the other side, if you look at what this world needs to invest into corresponding infrastructure, into such types of technology, that's still a tiny sum, right? We, we need to invest, as you said, we need to invest 1,000,000,010 of billions, and hundreds of billions. And that's, that's what we see on the horizon now. So governments start understanding what is needed. There are programs like the Department of Energy, Is starting to, to, um, promote those type of technologies. They are creating funding programs to, like, increase the speed of scaling. Think of it as the very, very early phases of the solar PV and wind industries, where you had the first prototypes out there, and there are also massive programs helped scaling that up, and that was a great success story, right? Today, solar PV is the cheapest method on earth To create electricity. How great is that? And it didn't take that long. And like the, the initial expectations on how this technology could first scale, and second, reduce costs. They were like, outperformed massively. Like, 10 years ago, you would have been called crazy if you had predicted a solar PV plan producing s…

AI assessment note: “Oh, that's right. And, I mean, for us as a company”

Q know, spend some money to offset your emissions, and they might plant some trees or something. Is that essentially the same principle happening on a larger scale? Because I know there are big companies like Microsoft and Audi and, and Shopify and that are, are they essentially saying, look, we want to do our part. We're going to pay you X number of dollars in order to offset our emissions.

A Yes, that's, that's very similar. So it's, it's, it's really the pioneering ones among the large corporates who have come up with very ambitious, like either net zero or even net negative goals of becoming carbon neutral or carbon negative. And those companies who are our customers are typically the ones who have, who have had a very sophisticated look at the market and looked at what is available. And like Microsoft has done a great deal of work there. And then they, they, Employed a bunch of scientists who looked at the different ways, and they, they turned out, uh, with, with the, uh, Understanding that what we are doing at Climeworks is really what they believe is ultimately scalable, and that's why they are using our service. As you said, they pay us to remove a certain amount of tonnage of CO₂ from the atmosphere and, and, and then put it on the ground for them in a really, really long-term permanent way, right? So it's, it's fully additional, so it's not, it's not some certificates from some project that might have happened anyway, so it's, it's additional, um, It's, it's permanent and it's safe, and those are the attributes that are, that are so important to them.

AI assessment note: “Yes, that's, that's very similar. So it's, it's, it's really the pioneering ones”

Q All right, Jan, let's just talk for a moment about just the challenge of doing this, right? Because we're talking about six to ten billion tons of carbon needs to be removed from the Earth's atmosphere every year by twenty-fifty. Right now, how much carbon is being removed from the, from, from the Earth's atmosphere every year through this technology?

A Well, right now, as we speak, Kleinbergs, we have the largest operating plant running. That's, that's our orca plant in Iceland. We're speaking of thousands of tons per year. So it's, it's, it's a small scale. So we need to thousandfold that to get to millions of tons. And like this, 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, that's what will happen. Uh, we are doing that, uh, like a handful of other companies are working towards that. So, so that's, that's happening. Then the next question is how can we scale up from millions of tons to billions of tons? If you look at what, what other industries have done, again, referring to solar PV or the wind industry, they did something like, uh, 10 X every 10 years. Uh, if we can do the same, maybe we can do twice as fast as them. Uh, Then it is feasible that we can scale to the billions of tons per year scale by mid of the century. So by really, and that's where we need to go. So other industries have shown that you can do that. Uh, it's not impossible. And also in terms of, in terms of size, maybe, maybe let me give you one example, just that you have like something to, to imagine in terms of what does it mean in terms of equipment that you need to put around, uh, on the, to put, put on earth. Our, Plants are built out of modular syste…

AI assessment note: “That's our orca plant in Iceland. We're speaking of thousands of tons per year.”

Q day, simply by living in a home, In a developed country, in even minimizing my electricity and water usage, my global carbon footprint is much higher than somebody in India, or somebody in China, right? And so, what would motivate somebody on their own to just send you money every month? Um, to remove carbon on their behalf? Like, what do they get out of it aside from feeling good?

A Yeah, well, uh, you know, we, we also have to think what we need during this first phase, during, like, during this decade we're currently living in. So what they get out of it is, well, for themselves, they have taken care of their carbon balance, but they have also enabled a new industry, and that is, I think, what is, what is most intriguing. It's like, I'm fully with you, like, 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 two taxes or CO two burdens or incentives, um, that, that we need for the masses. Right. And for, for really removing, removing billions of tons of CO two from the air, but that's not what we need now. Like for the next 10 years, Climeworks and the other companies around us, this whole industry, they need like A couple of billion, or let's say, 10 or 20 of billions, and that's a relatively small amount, so like, those pioneering customers on the private and on the corporate side, they are really enabling us to do the next scale-up step and to get to the next level. Once we are there, we need more than that, that is clear, but it's really, what they are getting out of it is being a pioneer and enabling a new industry, which I think is a pretty cool…

AI assessment note: “what they are getting out of it is being a pioneer and enabling a new industry”

Q century, so, twenty-fifty, we have to remove six to 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year, in addition to reducing emissions, which seems like a massive, enormous, daunting task. So let's, let's understand What has to happen here on the, on the carbon capture side? Basically, we need to have giant turbine engine fans all over the world just sucking in air and filtering out carbon.

A Yeah, first of all, you're making exactly the right point, Guy. You said it, you said additionally, and that's, that's a very important point. Like when we started Climeworks, many people asked us, hey, is that really what we need to do today? So why are you bothering capturing CO two out of the air? While there are still so many coal power plants and so many cars and planes, uh, driving and flying around and producing CO two, should we not stop first, first all of these? And, and the answer to that is we could have asked that question maybe two, three decades ago. Then we, we, that this would still have been possible, but it's just too late. Like it's, it's too late to ask that question. So the only chance of meeting the goals of the Paris agreement is, Being bold on both ends. So, so again, the major portion has to come from reduction of emissions, from switching to renewables, but then to address these ten billion tons of CO₂ that need to be removed, we don't have a big portfolio of things to do. So you asked, what does that mean? Does that mean we have, like, huge giant turbines all over the world? Well, there are a few things we can do. We can, very simply speaking, plant trees. They take CO two out of the air.

AI assessment note: “Well, there are a few things we can do. We can, very simply speaking”