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2:11

Hey, it's Guy here. So there's been a lot

2:14

of extreme weather making headlines

2:16

this winter and spring. Where I live in California,

2:19

we got hit with back to back to back

2:21

to back, endless atmospheric rivers causing

2:24

flooding, mudslides, record snowfall.

2:27

Meanwhile, there There were ice storms in Texas, tornadoes

2:30

across the Midwest, and it's been so

2:32

dry in Italy that some of the famous

2:34

canals in Venice have begun to dry out.

2:37

The United Nations has said that climate change is

2:39

supercharging these types of extreme

2:41

weather events, making them more common

2:43

and more powerful. And so in

2:46

light of all these things happening, we thought it would be a good

2:48

time to bring you my conversation from the spring

2:50

of 2022 with Jan Wirtsbacher,

2:53

co-founder of Climeworks. Climeworks

2:55

is a Swiss company that's building the world's

2:57

largest direct air capture and storage

3:00

facilities using technology that pulls

3:03

carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and

3:05

stores it permanently underground. It's

3:08

an incredibly daunting challenge,

3:11

but Jan is hopeful that his company can

3:13

be part of a larger solution that

3:15

might be able to help humanity combat climate

3:18

change.

3:18

Alright, here's the show.

3:22

Hello and welcome to How I Built This

3:25

Lab. I'm Guy Roz. So

3:27

most everyone has heard the grim predictions

3:30

about climate change, that in

3:32

order to keep our planet from warming more

3:34

than 4 degrees Fahrenheit by the end

3:36

of this century, we have to reduce

3:39

carbon emissions by more than half, and

3:41

we have to do that by 2050. But

3:44

that's not all, and I'm not trying to depress

3:46

you here, but it won't be enough

3:49

to just cut our global carbon

3:51

emissions in half. Just to keep

3:53

our planet from

3:53

getting unsustainably warm over

3:56

the next 50 years, We also

3:58

have to remove carbon.

4:00

dioxide from the atmosphere. So

4:02

to be clear, not only do we have to stop producing

4:05

it, we also have to suck it out of the air.

4:07

In fact, we have to suck a lot of it out

4:10

of the air. The IPCC,

4:12

the United Nations Group that represents

4:14

the scientific consensus on this stuff, says

4:16

that by 2050 we need to remove 10 billion

4:22

tons of carbon from Earth's atmosphere each

4:24

year. This is a huge monumental

4:27

task. The good news is

4:29

the technology

4:30

to do this exists.

4:32

It's pretty straightforward. Imagine

4:35

a shipping container outfitted with a bunch

4:37

of large fans. Each fan

4:39

essentially sucks in air, filters

4:42

that air, removes the carbon,

4:44

blows out carbon-free

4:47

air, and then injects the carbon

4:49

into rocks about a mile deep

4:51

underground. The bad news is with

4:53

our current technology, you need about 10

4:56

million of these shipping containers deployed

4:59

all over the earth to remove 10 billion

5:02

tons of carbon a year. And

5:04

the cost, at least right now, is

5:06

so high that it makes this goal

5:09

seem daunting. But a few enterprising

5:11

entrepreneurs are actually undaunted.

5:15

One of them is a German engineer named Jan Wirzbacher.

5:18

Jan and Christoph Gebald co-founded

5:20

a company called Climeworks, which has

5:22

already built carbon capture facilities,

5:25

including the biggest one on the planet in

5:27

Iceland. They call it the Orca Plant.

5:30

Right now, the Orca facility only

5:33

removes about 4,000 tons

5:35

of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

5:37

each year. That's a drop in

5:39

the bucket, but Jan believes this technology

5:42

will scale very fast. In fact,

5:44

he believes that within 30 years, the

5:47

carbon capture industry will be among

5:49

the biggest in the world. Jan

5:51

Burchbacher, welcome to the show.

5:54

Hey, guy, great to be here. All right, so

5:56

Jan, first of all, tell me a little bit about

5:58

your background. I know you- you studied

6:01

to be a mechanical engineer,

6:04

right? Initially, right? That's right.

6:06

That's correct. I actually came

6:08

to Zurich back in 2003. Personally,

6:11

I'm originally from Hamburg in Germany, but

6:14

now almost 19 years ago, moved

6:16

to Zurich. I wanted to study here

6:19

at ETH Zurich, the main technical university.

6:22

And well, that was thought

6:24

to be for three years or five years first.

6:26

But then as it happened, really at

6:29

the first day, when you're introduced to

6:31

the university, then we were organized

6:33

in small groups of students

6:35

to get a tour through

6:37

the university. And I happened

6:39

to be in the same group as

6:42

Christoph was. And the two of us became

6:44

friends very quickly, really, in the first

6:47

days. And both had the dream

6:49

of founding a company. And well,

6:51

then it happened just six

6:54

years later. So the two of you, you

6:56

and Christoph Gebald were, went

6:58

to study mechanical engineering at the Swiss

7:00

Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

7:03

And you both had the intention

7:05

of maybe one day starting a business. Tell me what,

7:07

at that time, what you thought you might want to do

7:09

with your life. Yeah,

7:12

that's a good question. Probably we didn't have that

7:14

many thoughts. It's rather this dream

7:17

of building up something by your

7:20

own. I mean, I was always

7:22

interested in solving hard

7:25

technical problems. That's maybe one ingredient

7:27

from my end. And on

7:30

the other hand, I,

7:32

you know, when I was in school, I organized parties

7:35

and I did some stuff here and there. And I always thought

7:37

like doing something, building up something,

7:39

that that was always something I was

7:41

intrigued by and Christoph

7:44

pretty much the same. So it was really when we

7:46

met and we asked each other, Hey, what do you want to do

7:48

one day? We didn't know about direct

7:50

air capture. Or of course we knew about

7:52

the climate topic and climate change,

7:54

but it was not at a level of attention

7:57

where it is today, back in those days. so we

7:59

had tried it.

8:00

really just a stream, hey, one day we found

8:02

a company. And that was something that drove

8:04

us through the studies somehow. So we always like,

8:07

if we were at a student party, we would high five

8:09

and say, hey, we found a company one day, right?

8:12

Yeah, let's do it. And then, yeah, then. So

8:14

that was kind of the beginning.

8:16

All right, so you and Christophe are

8:18

friends and in this mechanical engineering

8:21

program. And

8:23

how did you start to kind

8:25

of learn about this

8:27

idea of direct air capture, which we're going to talk about in

8:29

a sec, but tell me how this idea even

8:32

developed. So

8:34

it was not us who had this idea for the

8:36

first time. There was actually a project

8:39

at the Swiss Institute of Technology.

8:41

It was a project at the Professorship

8:44

of Renewable Energy Carriers by Professor

8:46

Steinfeld. And he

8:49

is a researcher who's been working

8:51

for the past 20 years

8:53

or more than that on solar

8:56

fuels or solar materials. So he developed

8:58

solar driven reactors that could

9:01

produce renewable hydrocarbons.

9:04

So basically turn

9:05

concentrated sunlight into something valuable.

9:08

And he, like a couple

9:10

of years before we started, he had this idea and

9:12

he said, hey, if we want to do that at large scale,

9:16

we need a closed cycle. So we need to take

9:18

CO2 out of the air. We can then combine

9:20

it with sunlight and water and make, say, renewable

9:23

jet fuel out of that. Then the jet fuel is

9:25

burned. the CO2 is emitted again to the atmosphere,

9:28

and then you have to recapture it from the air. So you have

9:30

to turn it around in a cycle.

9:32

That's what can be then really long-term

9:34

sustainable. And then so there was this idea,

9:37

there was a project on that, totally different

9:39

technology. And when we started, it was kind of

9:41

the job of coming up with a different technology,

9:43

which is more efficient, which is more scalable. So

9:45

really when we started, it was like, I remember

9:48

the first days after we had

9:50

incorporated Clamworks, Like the

9:52

first thing I did is really sitting

9:54

down with a blank sheet of paper

9:57

and writing down pure

9:59

numbers like doing Going back off the envelope

10:01

calculations, estimations, what can we

10:03

do, what cannot we do? I

10:06

can give you an example. To take a ton

10:08

of CO2 out of ambient air, you

10:11

need to filter around 2 million

10:13

cubic meters of air. One out

10:15

of 2,500 molecules in the air is CO2, only one

10:18

out of 2,500. So

10:22

imagine you

10:24

walk on the Broadway or whatever and imagine

10:26

you need to pass 2,500 people until

10:30

you find one person

10:32

that you're looking for. And then you continue walking, you need

10:34

to pass another 2,500 people until you find one person.

10:38

So that's literally what a CO2 capture

10:40

system does. So you need to filter a

10:43

lot of air to take

10:45

a significant tonnage of CO2 out of the air.

10:48

All right. We know that

10:51

there has to be a vast reduction

10:53

in carbon emissions in order to mitigate

10:56

the worst effects of climate change. But

10:59

it's not

11:00

enough. I think people don't, most of us don't

11:02

understand that it's not enough to just stop

11:04

burning carbon. And I think the reduction,

11:06

it has to be something like 45% reduction by 2030 alone.

11:10

And

11:13

on top of that,

11:15

we also need to remove

11:17

carbon from the atmosphere. I

11:20

think the UN's report, the latest

11:23

IPCC report says something like, by

11:25

the middle of this So 2050,

11:28

we have to remove 6 to 10 billion

11:31

tons of carbon dioxide from

11:33

the air every year

11:36

in addition to reducing

11:38

emissions, which seems like a massive,

11:42

enormous daunting task. So

11:45

let's understand

11:46

what has to happen here on

11:48

the carbon capture side.

11:50

we need to have giant turbine

11:53

engine fans all over the world just

11:56

sucking in air and filtering

11:58

out carbon. Yeah, first of all, you- You're

12:00

making exactly the right point, Guy.

12:02

You said it, you said it additionally. And that's

12:05

a very important point. Like

12:07

when we started Climeworks, many people

12:09

asked us, hey, is that really

12:11

what we need to do today? So why are you bothering

12:14

capturing CO2 out of the air while

12:16

there are still so many coal power plants and

12:18

so many cars and planes driving

12:20

and flying around and producing CO2? Should we

12:22

not stop first all of these?

12:25

And the answer to that is, We could have asked

12:28

that question maybe two,

12:30

three decades ago, then this

12:32

would still have been possible, but it's just too late. Like,

12:35

it's too late to ask that question. So the

12:37

only chance of meeting the goals of

12:39

the Paris Agreement

12:40

is

12:41

being bold on both ends. So

12:43

again, the major portion has to come

12:45

from reduction of emissions, from switching

12:47

to renewables, but then to address

12:50

these 10 billion tons of CO2

12:52

that need to be removed, we don't have

12:54

a big portfolio of things to do. So you asked,

12:56

what does that mean? Does that mean we have like

12:58

huge giant turbines all over the world?

13:01

Well, there are a few things we can do. We can

13:04

very simply speaking

13:05

plant trees. They take CO2

13:07

out of the air. Right. However, they have

13:09

some issues attached to them. So

13:12

first of all, it's good. We should plant as many trees

13:14

as possible. And by the way, we should avoid burning

13:17

down trees and deforesting trees

13:19

in the first place and then plant more. But

13:21

or and let's not say but.

13:24

and trees need a lot of area and

13:26

they are not necessarily there forever. They

13:29

might burn down and the land might degrade,

13:31

they might not be growing for the next thousands of

13:33

years. So that CO2 that is stored in trees

13:36

is not necessarily bound

13:37

for thousands of years. And

13:40

very simply speaking, if we just do the calculation,

13:43

what about capturing these 10 billion

13:45

tons of CO2 from the air just

13:47

by planting trees or doing similar biological

13:49

methods, then you'll end up with huge

13:52

areas that you need to fill with new trees.

13:54

It's like you need something like the area of whole

13:56

Europe or twice the area of India. And

13:59

that's very...

14:00

likely not feasible. I mean, right now, we

14:02

are entering a food crisis, very likely,

14:04

if we look what's happening on the world markets. So

14:07

typically, the area we have at

14:09

our disposal for planting

14:11

anything, we need it rather for food production. So

14:14

that's then where technical solutions

14:16

come in, such as Climeworks, as we are doing.

14:19

If you build machines, like we

14:21

are doing, you can do it on

14:24

much, much less area. So

14:26

you are about a thousand times more area

14:28

efficient. So at the same area where

14:31

you can take one ton out of the

14:33

air with trees, you could take a thousand tons

14:35

out of the air with machinery. So that's important. You

14:37

need substantially less area. You need

14:39

energy. So you need, for example, solar

14:42

or wind or geothermal, like you would

14:44

want to use typically renewable energy. So

14:46

that's the thing. So you can scale

14:48

technology-based

14:50

solutions for direct air capture to

14:53

a scale of 10 billion

14:55

tons of CO2 from the that's possible. So it'll

14:57

probably, it'll not be one technology, it'll

14:59

be not one solution. We need a lot

15:01

of things to do it, but technological

15:04

or like scaling up such

15:07

diamond air capture similar solutions will

15:10

have to

15:11

carry a major part of these 10 billion

15:13

tons. Otherwise, there's, it's

15:15

just not going to happen. Okay.

15:18

So you

15:19

decide that you are going to build a

15:21

company around capturing

15:23

and removing carbon dioxide from the

15:25

atmosphere. This is not a simple

15:28

business proposition. You need a lot

15:30

of money to do this kind

15:32

of work.

15:33

Just put aside the science part

15:36

of it. Let's talk about the business part

15:38

of it. And once you sort of proved this

15:40

concept out,

15:42

how did you go about

15:44

building and getting financing

15:47

to start to build these commercial

15:50

scale direct air

15:52

capture plans? No, definitely

15:54

that was a big challenge in particular, given

15:57

the fact that when we started 2009,

16:00

In 2010-11, what we

16:02

were proposing was not generally accepted.

16:05

People were even fighting us. There were professors writing

16:07

articles saying you should not invest

16:10

in direct air capture, because

16:12

it's a waste of resources. We should focus on

16:14

getting our coal power plants off the grid, just

16:16

to give an example. The world was

16:19

probably not ready

16:21

to accept

16:22

that it was too late just to stop

16:24

burning coal. And that is something

16:26

that has fundamentally changed over the past, say, five

16:28

years or But when we started, we weren't there

16:31

yet. So you said, how did we start? We

16:33

started actually looking for niche

16:35

applications. So we did something totally different.

16:37

Our first plant we built

16:40

here in Switzerland, and that

16:42

is taking, that's still an operation, that is taking

16:44

CO2 out of the air to then sell

16:46

the CO2 to a greenhouse. They are fertilizing

16:49

their plants with CO2 and also to

16:51

Coca-Cola, who

16:52

are making sparkling drinks with it. So

16:55

anyone who's got like a soda stream

16:57

at home basically no sort of

16:59

version of this is, because it's basically a cartridge

17:02

of CO2 that you put in your SodaStream

17:05

to make bubbly water. So this is really

17:07

interesting. So you were basically

17:09

initially, just to kind of see if there

17:11

was a market for this

17:12

product, which is captured CO2, you're

17:15

selling it to Coca-Cola and presumably

17:18

that is not sustainable. I mean, we're

17:20

not drinking enough Coca-Cola or any carbonated

17:23

beverage to account for all

17:25

of the carbon in the atmosphere,

17:27

right? It's not enough. It's just kind

17:29

of a, I

17:30

guess, an initial step to

17:32

show that what you could do with this. Exactly.

17:35

Like in terms of climate effects,

17:38

that market is totally irrelevant.

17:41

Like is that a market? Could you grow

17:43

a sustainable business on that? Yes, sure.

17:45

So we could have decided just to become

17:48

a small, medium sized company,

17:51

developing direct air capture plans

17:53

and building them around the world to supply beverage factories.

17:56

It could have been an option, but that was not what we

17:58

were interested in.

18:00

zero impact on the climate. Exactly. Well,

18:02

and just keep in mind, like when you drink your

18:04

Coke, right, the CO2 comes out again.

18:06

So it's not a permanent storage of

18:08

the CO2. So those first plants, they were not meant

18:11

to reduce the CO2 content of the atmosphere.

18:14

It was just an initial market that

18:16

we were tapping into to scale our technology.

18:19

I guess when you burp after you drink your Coca-Cola,

18:21

it's going right back into the atmosphere. That's exactly

18:24

how it works. All right, we're going to take a quick

18:26

break. When we come back, we're going to hear more from

18:28

Jan Wirzbacher

18:30

and what he has built

18:32

and what he's building with Climeworks and

18:35

carbon capture technology. Stay with us, you're listening

18:37

to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Roz,

18:39

back in a moment.

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20:32

Hey, welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I am talking

20:35

with Jan Virchbaher. He's the co-founder

20:37

and CEO of Climeworks, a company that

20:40

is creating direct air carbon capture

20:42

technology. Okay, let's talk about

20:44

the technology now, sort of the

20:47

kind of the next phase of this, which

20:49

is somewhat different than, you

20:52

know, removing carbon and then selling

20:54

it to Coca-Cola in the agricultural

20:57

industry to use. It's about like injecting

20:59

a deep underground

21:02

and permanently storing it. Tell

21:04

me how that works. How does it basically, how does it work? So

21:07

start with the first part, the Climeworks Direct

21:09

Air Capture Plant. So we have our

21:12

modular

21:13

containers that we call CO2 collectors

21:15

and they contain a filter material. You

21:18

can imagine that as kind

21:20

of a sponge, like a sponge likes water

21:22

and would suck up water. And

21:24

this filter material is similar like a sponge. It

21:27

has a high surface area. It is very

21:29

porous. And it just

21:31

reacts with CO2 when CO2

21:33

molecules pass by. So we have this filter inside

21:35

the containers. And then in a first step

21:39

of our filtering process, we just turn

21:41

on the fans that are at the side of the filter

21:43

box. We pull air

21:45

through the filter. That takes about

21:48

one to two hours after which the material

21:50

is full. It's saturated with CO2. Then

21:53

we close the lids of these filter boxes.

21:55

We heat them up to around 100

21:58

degrees Celsius. That's 200 something

22:01

Fahrenheit. It's like boiling

22:03

water temperature. We don't need high

22:06

temperature. We don't need fancy stuff to

22:08

do it. Just heat it up a little bit. You can even

22:10

do that with solar heat. And

22:12

by that temperature increase,

22:15

the CO2 is released again from the

22:17

surface of the filter material. And

22:19

you can turn on a pump that is then sucking

22:22

out basically the pure concentrated

22:25

CO2 from the filters. You can then

22:28

hand it over to injection. That's what we

22:30

do in Iceland with our partners from Carpfix.

22:33

They have developed this method where they inject

22:35

the CO2 in underground porous

22:38

rocks, where the CO2 is mineralizing

22:40

with the rocks. So within two years, the CO2

22:42

has just turned into stone there. And

22:44

then

22:44

on the other hand, our filter will just start

22:46

again from the beginning. So we'll cool it down, expose

22:49

it to the next portion of airflow, we'll

22:51

capture more CO2, and then this can go

22:53

on for years. After like a couple of years, you have

22:55

to replace the filter then. Wow.

22:57

So you and your co-founder

22:59

Christophe decide that it's

23:02

not enough to just, you know, sell this

23:04

the CO2 to, you know, Coca-Cola. Tell

23:07

me what the next step was. I mean, you first

23:09

of all,

23:10

to build these plants on a large scale,

23:13

even on a small scale, you need hundreds

23:16

of millions of dollars, right? Yeah,

23:18

that's right. It's capital

23:20

intensive. We are building hardware. We're putting

23:22

tons of concrete and steel in the ground

23:25

to start capturing CO2. And while

23:28

that's why we have just closed our financing

23:31

round number six in the history of the company

23:33

just in April 2022. And

23:36

what was the amount that you raised? That

23:38

was 650 million US. Wow.

23:41

And it's really because you

23:43

have to build these massive facilities

23:45

to just begin to suck in air, right?

23:48

Oh, that's right. I mean, for us as a company,

23:50

that's a large amount. That's

23:52

much more funding than we had available before.

23:55

The previous financing round, that was at around 100 million.

23:58

if you look at it from the other. If you look

24:01

at what this world needs

24:03

to invest into corresponding

24:05

infrastructure, into such types of technology,

24:08

that's still a tiny sum, right? We need to invest,

24:10

as you said, we need to invest billions, tens of billions

24:12

and hundreds of billions. And that's what

24:14

we see on the horizon now.

24:17

So governments start understanding

24:19

what is needed. There are programs like the

24:21

Department of Energy is starting

24:23

to promote those type of

24:25

technologies. they are creating funding programs

24:27

to increase the speed of scaling.

24:30

Think of it as the

24:32

very, very early phases of

24:34

the solar PV and wind industries, where

24:37

you had the first prototypes out there, and

24:39

there also massive programs helped scaling

24:41

that up. And that was a great success story, right?

24:44

Today, solar PV is the cheapest

24:46

method on Earth to create electricity.

24:49

How great is that? And it didn't take that long. And

24:51

the initial expectations on how

24:53

this technology could first scale And

24:56

second, reduced costs, they were outperformed

24:59

massively. Like 10

25:00

years ago, you would have been called crazy

25:02

if you had predicted a solar PV

25:04

plan producing solar electricity

25:07

at 5 cents per kilowatt hour. Today, they're

25:09

doing it at 1 cent. Yeah. So that's

25:11

massive. And that's the same what has to

25:13

happen in our industry. And I'm sure that

25:15

will happen over the next two

25:17

decades to come. All right, Jan, let's

25:20

just talk for a moment

25:21

about

25:22

just the challenge of doing this, right?

25:24

because we're talking about

25:27

six to 10 billion tons

25:29

of carbon needs to be removed from the Earth's

25:31

atmosphere

25:33

every year by 2050. Right now,

25:35

how much carbon is being removed from the Earth's

25:38

atmosphere every year through this technology?

25:41

Well, right now, as

25:43

we speak, Kleinbergs, we have the

25:45

largest operating plant running.

25:49

That's our ORCA plant in Iceland. We're

25:51

speaking of thousands of

25:53

tons per year. So it's a small scale.

25:55

So we need to thousand fold that

25:58

to get to millions of tons.

26:00

And this industry is set up to

26:02

scaling up

26:03

to the million tons per year scale

26:06

in the next couple of years towards the end of

26:08

this decade. So that's what will happen. We

26:10

are doing that, like a handful

26:12

of other companies are working towards that.

26:15

So that's happening. Then the next question is, how

26:17

can we scale up from millions of tons to billions

26:20

of tons? If you look at what

26:22

other industries have done, again, referring to solar

26:24

PV or the wind industry, they

26:27

did something like 10x every 10

26:29

years. If we can

26:31

do the same, maybe we can do

26:33

twice as fast as them, then it is feasible

26:35

that we can scale to the billions of tons per year scale

26:38

by mid of the century, so by 2015. That's

26:43

where we need It's not impossible.

26:47

And

26:49

also in terms of size, maybe let me give you one example, just that you have something

26:51

to imagine in terms of what does it mean

26:54

in terms of equipment that you need to

26:56

put around, to put on Earth, our

26:59

plans are built out of modular

27:02

systems. We call them CO2 collectors, and then

27:04

one CO2 collector has the

27:06

form of a 44-chipping container. So

27:09

how many containers would you need to

27:11

take 1% out of global emissions? So the climate

27:13

science tells us, by mid of this century,

27:16

we need to take 10, 20% out of the

27:18

emissions, out of the air. So let's take 1%

27:21

of that. And you would need something

27:23

like 750,000 containers for that, which

27:24

is that a large

27:27

number? It's actually not a large

27:29

number. It's actually what goes through Shanghai

27:31

port in two weeks, right? It's

27:33

not a lot compared to global economy. And

27:35

that's 1%, and then you can tenfold it, then

27:37

you have 10%, and then you're nearly there. Okay.

27:41

But let me ask you about this, because, and again, I am rooting

27:43

for you. We all are. We want this to work. But

27:45

I mean, I'm imagining, like,

27:47

we need to be, like, covering the

27:50

deserts of the Western the United States.

27:52

Like, we need these containers

27:55

deployed in a massive scaled

27:58

way like now. As soon

28:00

as possible, that's right. In

28:02

terms of the area that we need to cover, it's

28:05

not that bad. If you think of all

28:07

the area that is covered for open pit

28:09

mining of lignin or coal, that's

28:11

even much worse. So, I mean, energy infrastructure

28:14

is large. And in any case, so

28:16

that infrastructure will also be large, but not larger

28:19

than other infrastructure. So

28:21

in terms of speed of scaling, in

28:24

terms of required financing,

28:26

in terms of required area and

28:28

in terms of industry output

28:31

of the world. Those are all numbers

28:33

where you can show it's feasible to

28:35

scale up. But it's big. It's a

28:37

big job we have to do. It's

28:39

a certain portion of the global economy output

28:42

that needs to go in there. But it's just like in the

28:44

end, like, you know, what we are talking is

28:46

the creation of a new industry of the

28:48

size of today's oil and gas industry. That's

28:50

basically it.

28:51

You just you chose such a complex

28:53

business to get involved with. and I commend you

28:55

for that because it's just challenge after

28:58

challenge. So we're talking about like the

29:00

challenge of scale, the challenge of financing

29:02

that scale, but

29:03

there's the other challenge that we haven't talked

29:05

about, which is right now, with few

29:08

exceptions, it's very energy

29:10

intensive to remove

29:13

carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. You

29:15

need energy to remove it.

29:17

And so right now, in order

29:19

to make this sustainable, you'd have

29:21

to use renewable energy, like in

29:23

addition to putting these

29:25

modular shipping containers full of

29:27

turbine fans all over the world,

29:29

you need to deploy like wind and solar

29:31

farms next to them to power them. Totally

29:34

right. It's at the same time an energy challenge.

29:36

The good news is there is way enough

29:38

energy arriving on this planet

29:41

every minute from the sun in terms of solar

29:43

energy, wind energy. So in terms of availability

29:46

of renewable energy capacity, that's like

29:49

not an issue at all. But it's like

29:51

when When you think of building up this infrastructure,

29:54

you really need to do both. So you need to build the

29:57

direct air capture plans, and at the same time,

29:59

you need to build some.

30:00

renewable energy producing capacity,

30:02

which on the other hand, however, can also be a good thing

30:04

if you build direct air capture plans, let's

30:06

say, in regions where there is not a good

30:09

electricity supply, no good electricity grids,

30:11

there can be good synergies, right? You can support

30:14

local communities by the same

30:17

solar PV fields and wind farms that are built

30:19

up to deploy direct air capture. But

30:21

you need to do both. The good thing is,

30:24

since we're doing direct air capture, we are very

30:26

flexible in terms of location. air is

30:28

everywhere. So we have our CO2

30:30

source everywhere. We are really looking

30:32

to where is the

30:34

best place to source sufficient

30:36

renewable energy. And then the second question

30:39

is, where can we store the CO2? Fortunately,

30:41

there are many, many regions around

30:43

the world where you can do safe

30:45

and permanent CO2 storage in saline

30:48

aquafires, in the salt rock,

30:50

as we do it in Iceland, which is the best way to

30:52

do it because the CO2 is just mineralized and

30:54

turned into stone. So that's That's a great way

30:56

to do it, but there are many other ways. So we are basically,

30:59

what we're doing is mapping the world for

31:01

renewable energy potential and storage

31:03

potential and where the two intersect. Those

31:06

are the sweet

31:06

spots for large scale deployment of direct air

31:08

capture. We're gonna

31:10

take a quick break, but we'll be back in just

31:12

a moment with more from Jan Wirzbacher, co-founder

31:15

of Climeworks. Stick around, you're

31:17

listening to How I Built This Lab.

31:25

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31:27

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31:29

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32:30

Hey,

32:34

welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy

32:36

Roz. I'm talking with Jan Versbacher.

32:39

He's the co-founder and CEO of Climeworks.

32:42

It's a company that's working to develop

32:44

and deploy carbon capture technology.

32:47

All right, so you built, and I

32:49

think it debuted just

32:51

recently in last year, a plant

32:55

in Iceland called Orca. And

32:58

presumably you built it in Iceland

33:00

because Iceland is basically geothermally

33:03

powered. I mean, most of their

33:04

energy comes from geothermal power.

33:07

And so I'm assuming that this plant

33:10

in Iceland doesn't require, you

33:12

know, fossil fuels. That's right. So

33:14

that's really Iceland is the sweet spot of

33:16

starting to do what we're doing. You have geothermal

33:19

heat and electricity to

33:21

power our plant. And we do have

33:24

the developed storage sites and

33:26

storage reservoirs where we can inject

33:28

the CO2 on the ground where it is then mineralized.

33:31

It's really those two factors. So

33:33

this facility in Iceland, how many containers

33:35

does it have? That one has eight containers,

33:38

so that ends up then with a total nominal capacity

33:40

of 4,000 tons of CO2 per year

33:42

that can be captured. And it's exciting,

33:45

but really it's designed to prove the concept,

33:47

to show what is possible. It's

33:49

both. For us, it's exactly to prove the concept.

33:52

Of course, we learn a lot from that. Based

33:54

on that, we are now building a 10 times larger

33:56

plant. We will take of

33:58

course all the the learnings. Bye. But at

34:00

the same time, it's also the first commercial

34:02

plan. So we are providing CO2

34:04

removal services with that plan to our

34:07

corporate and private customers as well.

34:09

All right. Explain this, because I'm assuming

34:11

it's like basically companies that are just

34:13

paying you to offset their

34:16

carbon emissions. This is...

34:17

It's like when you buy a plane ticket, you have the option

34:19

to spend some money to offset

34:21

your emissions and they might plant some trees or something. Is

34:24

that essentially the same principle happening on a larger

34:27

scale? Because I know there are big companies like Microsoft

34:30

and Audi and Shopify that

34:32

are, are they essentially saying, look, we

34:34

want to do our part, we're going to pay you

34:36

X number of dollars

34:38

in order to offset our emissions.

34:41

Yes, that's very similar. So it's

34:43

really the pioneering ones among

34:46

the large corporates who have come up

34:48

with very ambitious

34:49

like either net zero or even net

34:52

negative goals of becoming carbon neutral

34:54

or or carbon negative. And those

34:57

companies, our customers, are typically the ones

34:59

who have had a very sophisticated look at the market

35:02

and looked at what is available. And Microsoft

35:04

has done a great deal of work there. And then

35:06

they employed a bunch of scientists to

35:08

look at the different ways. And they turned out

35:10

with the understanding that what

35:12

we are doing at Climeworks is really what they believe

35:15

is ultimately scalable. And that's why

35:18

they are using our services. As you said,

35:20

they pay us to remove certain

35:22

amount of tonnage of CO2 from

35:25

the atmosphere and then put

35:27

it on the ground for them in a really,

35:29

really long-term permanent

35:31

way. So it's fully additional. So

35:34

it's not some certificates from

35:36

some project that might have happened anyway. So

35:38

it's additional. It's

35:41

permanent and it's safe. And those are the attributes

35:43

that are so important to them.

35:45

Well, here's what I'm trying to understand, because

35:48

what did they get out of it, aside from doing their

35:50

part for the planet, which they should, but

35:53

really, where do they get out of it? And you mean,

35:55

aside from being able to say, hey, look, we're

35:57

actually doing this voluntarily because there's no requirement.

35:59

They don't have to.

36:00

have to do it? Well, not yet,

36:02

first of all. So they are all anticipating

36:04

that things will come up, and they

36:06

are already showing up on the horizon. But

36:09

on top of that,

36:10

it can be a very vital element

36:12

of their business for a simple fact, because

36:15

their customers and their stakeholders

36:18

might just ask them to do it. So

36:20

those companies who are currently our customers, they

36:23

know that if they can provide

36:25

CO2 neutral or CO2 negative products to

36:27

their customers. And

36:31

in particular, achieved with a technology that

36:34

is really bulletproof, such as we are providing that, that has hard

36:36

economic benefits on their business model. And

36:39

then we spoke about corporates a

36:41

lot. Important is that we are also serving just

36:43

private individuals. When we started this, actually,

36:46

in 2016, 17, a

36:49

lot of people asked us, hey,

36:52

it's cool what you're doing at Climeworks. You're taking CO2

36:54

out of the air. That's then when we decided,

36:57

after being an engineering company, a hardware

36:59

company for many years, which we still are, for

37:01

the first time, we introduced the digital business

37:04

model. And we opened a webshop, which

37:06

is active today. So everyone like

37:08

you and I, we could go to climeworks.com and

37:11

have our personal subscription to

37:13

remove a certain amount of CO2

37:15

from the atmosphere every month with

37:18

our plans. And that's been quite successful. So

37:20

we've had, since beginning, over 14,000

37:22

customers.

37:24

That's increasing. And that's really, for us, that's

37:27

a good thing. Like the fact that so many individuals

37:29

are into that then drives also more

37:31

corporate actions. Right.

37:33

I mean, I understand why

37:35

some people would be motivated to do that because they

37:38

are good global citizens. But the reality

37:40

is humans are motivated by different things

37:43

and generally not by being

37:45

virtuous. I mean, look, you and I

37:47

may try and live as virtuously

37:50

as possible. I drive an electric car, I bike most

37:52

of the time, I buy food from a farmer's

37:54

market, But I know at the end of the day, simply

37:57

by living in a home, in

37:59

a developed... country

38:01

in even minimizing my electricity

38:03

and water usage, my global carbon

38:05

footprint is much higher than somebody

38:07

in India or somebody in China,

38:10

right? And so what would motivate

38:12

somebody on their own to just send

38:14

you money every month

38:16

to remove carbon on

38:18

their behalf? Like what do they get out of it aside

38:20

from feeling good? Yeah, well, you

38:23

know, we also have to think what we

38:25

need during this first phase during like

38:27

during this decade we're currently living in. So

38:29

what they get out of it is, well, for themselves.

38:32

They have taken care of their carbon balance,

38:34

but they have also enabled

38:36

a new industry. And that is, I think, what is

38:39

most intriguing. I'm fully with you. Like 95%

38:42

of the population would likely only

38:44

do this when they are forced to it. And that's eventually

38:46

to get to billions of tons

38:48

of CO2 removal. We need regulation.

38:50

We need corresponding legislation. We

38:53

need governmental procurement programs. that

38:55

might be CO2 taxes or CO2

38:57

burdens or incentives, that

38:59

we need for the masses, and for really

39:02

removing billions of tons

39:04

of CO2 from there. But that's not what we need now.

39:07

For the next 10 years, Climeworks

39:09

and the other companies around us, this whole industry,

39:12

they need a couple of billion

39:14

or let's say 10 or 20 of billions.

39:16

And that's a relatively small

39:18

amount.

39:19

Those pioneering customers on the private and

39:21

on the corporate side, they are really enabling

39:24

us to do the next scale up step

39:26

and to get to the next level. Once we are there,

39:28

we need more than that. That is clear. But it's

39:31

really, what they are getting out of it is being a pioneer

39:33

and enabling a new industry, which I

39:35

think is a pretty cool thing. So essentially you

39:37

are setting yourself up for a future

39:40

where most governments around

39:42

the world will require their

39:44

citizens and their businesses to

39:46

pay some kind of tax to

39:49

offset their emissions. in

39:51

order to do that, they're going to have to use the

39:54

technology that you are developing, if

39:56

you're a leader in this industry in 10

39:58

years,

39:59

then it could be

40:00

very profitable business. That's

40:02

definitely the case. As you said it in the very beginning, we

40:04

do have to be a profitable business

40:07

in order to become climate relevant. There's no

40:09

other way. And so it's not

40:11

it's not charity what we're doing. We have

40:13

to become a business. That's the only way how we can

40:15

change the world for better.

40:17

It's a it's a huge,

40:20

huge undertaking. I mean, just

40:22

the work that you have put into this over

40:25

the last 13 years give

40:27

this amazing facility in Iceland, but

40:30

still just 4,000 tons a year. I

40:34

mean, I shouldn't say it that way because it's an incredible achievement,

40:36

but man, it just feels so daunting

40:39

and overwhelming. Do you ever

40:41

feel that way? Yeah, you know, we've

40:43

been doing this for almost 13 years now.

40:45

And I think Christoph and I have just always

40:48

been running and running. And it's a marathon

40:50

we're on. Maybe we are at kilometer 5 or

40:52

kilometer 10, but it's a bit like, you know, when you're starting

40:55

a marathon, you shouldn't think

40:57

of kilometer 40 when you're at

40:59

kilometer 5, but you should rather like,

41:02

make sure that you that you save your forces

41:04

for the next five and the next five and the next five kilometers.

41:07

That's a bit what it is. And look at where we're coming

41:09

from. We started with capturing

41:11

milligrams of CO2 from the air with our

41:13

laboratory reactors. And it went from milligrams

41:15

to grams, from grams to kilograms, from

41:18

kilograms to tons, from tons to thousand

41:20

tons. So we did

41:21

quite a few scale-up

41:23

steps already. So there are a few left.

41:25

Of course, those are the largest ones then, but

41:28

we need something to do for the next 10 to 15 years,

41:31

right?

41:32

It's like a marathon, but it's also like

41:34

a sprint. It's also like the 100-meter dash,

41:37

because

41:37

time is running out. Sometimes

41:39

it does feel like a sprint indeed. That's right. But

41:42

yeah, on the other hand, don't forget

41:45

that people typically underestimate

41:47

what technology scale-ups can do. I always

41:49

say, well, there are many solutions

41:52

how we can approach this challenge. But

41:54

if we look at where humans are really

41:56

good in, it's massively scaling up technology.

41:59

So if we.

42:00

If we can make it developing and implementing

42:02

and scaling good technology, we

42:04

can be fast. We can be fast. There's a saying,

42:06

I think Bill Gates said that once, like you typically

42:08

overestimate what you can achieve in one year, but

42:10

you typically underestimate what you can achieve in 10 years.

42:13

And that's a bit the philosophy we are following.

42:16

And that's how

42:16

we're racing.

42:18

Yeah. And do you think we humans can reverse

42:21

climate change? Do you think we have the capacity

42:23

to be able to do that within your lifetime?

42:26

I'm convinced that we can. Yes. we

42:29

can. Yes, between us

42:32

and achieving that, there are just humans in

42:34

between. Technology and physics

42:36

can do it. It's very easy. You

42:38

can show it. We

42:40

just have to do it. Amazing.

42:44

Amazing.

42:45

Jan Bürzbacher, thanks so much. Thank

42:48

you, Kai.

42:52

Hey, thanks so much for listening to How I Built

42:54

This Lab. Please do follow us on on

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at id.wonder.com.

43:15

This episode was produced by Chris Messini

43:17

with editing by John Isabella. Our

43:20

audio engineer was Maggie Luther. Our

43:22

music was composed by Remptine Arablui.

43:25

Our production team at How I Built This includes Alex

43:27

Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman,

43:30

J.C. Howard, Liz Metzger, Sam Paulson,

43:32

Carrie Thompson, Katherine Seifer, Josh

43:35

Lash, and Elaine Coates.