Carbon capture-tech companies from Vancouver and Switzerland – Svante and Climeworks – will cash in on roughly $800 million in American government funding to build direct air capture hubs in the U.S.
Climeworks is a Swiss company with direct air carbon capture technology similar to Carbon Engineering, the B.C. company that was acquired by Occidental Petroleum in August 2023 for US$1.1 billion. It captures CO2 directly from the atmosphere. The captured CO2 can then either be geologically sequestered, or used for various industrial purposes.
Svante is a Vancouver company that developed a novel filter technology that captures CO2, and which can be used in either direct-air or point-source CO2 capture (i.e. from industrial flue stacks).
Svante is still putting the finishing touches on a new manufacturing plant in Vancouver, where it will make the filters that captures CO2 and the rotary contactor machines (contactor blocks) that removes it.
Through a collaboration deal that Climeworks and Svante have signed, Svante will supply Climeworks with contactor blocks for three large CO2 capture projects in the U.S.
The US Department of Energy tapped Climeworks to develop three carbon capture hubs in the U.S. – in Louisiana, California and North Dakota. According to Climeworks, the company is eligible for US$600 million in government funding. Neither company has disclosed how much the contract will be worth to Svante.
Svante says it has been anticipating and preparing for the agreement with Climeworks, which will take up “a significant portion” of Svante’s new production capacity.
“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,” Svante CEO Claude Letourneau said in a press release.
“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.”
“We are focusing on the massive growth of our carbon removal technology to create climate impact,” said Climeworks co-founder and co-CEO Jan Wurzbacher. “Svante is one of the key players in the ecosystem to support us in our journey to scale to a gigaton capacity.”
