Climeworks — the Swiss company that built the world’s first commercial direct air capture plants — just opened its Canadian headquarters in Calgary. And it’s not just a symbolic office: they’re planning what could become the company’s largest DAC facility anywhere.
The Alberta Play
A small team is already working out of the Energy Transition Centre in downtown Calgary. By fall, Climeworks will deploy a mobile testing unit (currently being tested in Saudi Arabia) to see how its technology handles Alberta’s extreme cold. If you’re going to run a DAC plant through a Canadian winter, you’d better test it first.
The real prize is a full-scale plant somewhere in Alberta. Climeworks co-founder Christoph Gebald says it could exceed Mammoth, their current flagship in Iceland, which targets 36,000 tonnes of CO₂ removal per year.
Why Calgary?
Alberta checks several boxes for DAC deployment:
- Abundant clean electricity — crucial for energy-intensive DAC
- Geological storage options — deep saline aquifers and depleted oil and gas reservoirs for permanent CO₂ sequestration
- Existing industrial infrastructure — pipelines, engineering expertise, regulatory familiarity with subsurface operations
- Government support — Canada has invested heavily in CDR, including the new Advance Carbon Removal Coalition backed by BMO, RBC, and Shopify
It’s also a strategic hedge. With $1.2B in US DAC hub funding recently cancelled by Washington, Canada suddenly looks a lot more attractive for DAC investment.
From Iceland to North America
Climeworks currently operates two plants in Iceland: Orca and Mammoth. Both use geothermal energy and inject captured CO₂ into basalt, where it mineralizes. Alberta would require a different storage approach — likely deep geological injection — but the capture technology transfers.
CDI has invested in Climeworks and continues to track their scaling path closely.
The DAC industry needs more than one viable region. If Climeworks can make Alberta work, it proves DAC isn’t just an Icelandic story — it’s a global one.
Sources: CBC News, Energy Conference Network