The companies have agreed to jointly plan the supply of Svante’s contactor blocks for three major Climeworks projects, intending to lead to a commercial-scale supply agreement, where Climeworks would purchase Svante’s contactor blocks for its planned megaton direct air capturing hubs in the US.
The US Department of Energy has selected Climeworks to develop three of these hubs, in Louisiana, California and North Dakota, making the company eligible for a total of more than US$600 million in government funding.
The collaboration allows both partners to agree on intermediate goals, and to jointly proceed to the next phase of development.
“Delivering large-scale direct air capture 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 nascent direct air capture industry, playing a critical role in meeting the world’s net-zero ambitions.”
Svante is in the final stages of building its commercial filter manufacturing facility, The Centre of Excellence for Carbon Capture and Removal, in Vancouver, Canada. The Centre is equipped to supply both the industrial point source post-combustion carbon capture market and the direct air capture market. Svante has anticipated and prepared for the event where the agreement with Climeworks takes up a significant portion of the Centre’s capacity and has secured additional coating capacity with its partner, 3M.
With the extended collaboration, Climeworks secures best-in-class technology supporting its scale-up journey. A crucial part of the direct air capture process involves filter material trapping CO2 from the ambient air, and Svante’s filter technology will further enhance the performance of the carbon dioxide capturing 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.”
