“Mammoth” Carbon Removal Plant Opens in Iceland

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Christina Thompson (Anchor, EarthxNews): The world’s largest carbon removal plant opens in Iceland. The facility, which started operating in May, is nicknamed Mammoth and has the capacity to suck roughly 36,000 tons of carbon from the air each year using a technology known as direct air capture or DAC.

Industry analysts say the process works by using chemicals to literally suck the greenhouse gases from the atmosphere like a vacuum and then store it underground. Climeworks, the Swiss-based startup that owns the mammoth plant said it plans to store the carbon underground where it will be naturally transformed into stone locking up the gas permanently.

Mammoth is the company’s second facility operating in the country. In 2021, Climeworks opened a plant named Orca with the capacity to remove 4,000 tons of carbon a year which was previously the world’s largest operational site.