The Swiss startup Climeworks, specializing in carbon dioxide capture technology directly from the air, announced two years ago that it had begun constructing a plant on an Icelandic island for this purpose. The company has already built a similar facility in Iceland that captures up to 4,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually. The new plant, named "Mammoth," will be capable of capturing 36,000 tons of CO2 per year, and Climeworks has announced that it is now operational. The company's goal is to create facilities that will capture millions of tons of carbon dioxide by 2030 and one billion tons by 2050.

Given that human activities produced over 37 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2023, the quantities captured by these plants, even in the most advanced scenarios, do not appear sufficient to provide a drastic solution to the problem. However, it is a good start, and if other companies and governments follow suit by creating similar facilities, the damage to the environment and climate could be significantly mitigated.

Climeworks' plants consist of large containers, similar in appearance to those used in the shipping industry, which use high-tech filters and fans to extract carbon dioxide. The CO2 is then mixed with water and injected deep underground, where it gradually turns into stone. Both technologies are powered by renewable energy produced by nearby geothermal plants. Notably, the US oil company Occidental is building a facility near its oil fields in Texas that will absorb about one million tons of CO2 annually.