Svante, Climeworks Sign Agreement to Develop DAC Solutions

Climeworks has entered into a collaboration and supply agreement with Svante Technologies, which outlines the joint plan to supply Svante contractor blocks for three large-scale Climeworks CO₂ projects. The partners intend to lead a commercial-scale supply agreement, whereby Climeworks will purchase Svante’s contractor blocks for the planned megaton direct air capture (DAC) hubs in the United States.

“Delivering large-scale DAC required us to approach this collaboration with flexibility on the development of project specifications while retaining rigorous accountability for the success of the overall project,” says Claude Letourneau, President and CEO of Svante. “We’ve been closely collaborating with Climeworks over the past three years, and because of that proximity, we felt comfortable entering into this kind of arrangement. The combination of our advanced technologies represents a significant step forward in the DAC industry, playing a critical role in meeting the world’s net-zero ambitions.”

The Department of Energy (DOE) selected Climeworks to develop these DAC hubs in Louisiana, California, and North Dakota, enabling the company to receive a total of more than $600 million in federal funding. The collaboration allows both partners to agree on intermediate goals and to cooperate on the next phase of development.

Svante is in the closing stages of construction for its commercial filter manufacturing facility, The Centre of Excellence for Carbon Capture and Removal, in Vancouver, Canada. The facility is prepared to supply both the industrial point source post-combustion carbon-capture market and the DAC market. Svante’s agreement with Climeworks makes up a significant portion of the Centre’s capacity and an additional partner, 3M, has secured coating capacity.

As part of the agreement, Climeworks has now secured technology to support its scale-up strategy. Svante’s filter technology contains material to trap CO₂ from the ambient air, and it will further enhance the performance of carbon-capture for the DAC process.

“We are focusing on the massive growth of our carbon removal technology to create climate impact,” says Jan Wurzbacher, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Climeworks. “Svante is one of the key players in the ecosystem to support us in our journey to scale to a gigaton capacity.”