The world’s largest vacuum is now operational and on a mission to help combat climate change. Built by Swiss company Climeworks, the facility, dubbed the “Mammoth,” is a direct air capture plant that was designed to suck up planet-heating pollution.
Climeworks assembled the plant in Iceland. When it is at full capacity, the Mammoth is reportedly able extract 36,000 tons of carbon from the air. That quantity is equivalent to removing nearly 8,000 gas-powered cars from the road for a year. The plant’s creators project that by 2050, the plant will have pulled out a gigaton of CO2 from the atmosphere. This emissions reduction would be equal to eliminating around two-thirds of all gas vehicles across North America for a year.
Once the plant takes carbon out of the air, the facility transports it underground where those greenhouse gases naturally transform into stone. Meanwhile, the energy the Mammoth needs to make all this happen comes entirely from clean geothermal power.
However, cost implications are a major factor in the efficacy of this type of technology. While $100 per ton of carbon removed is considered the threshold for affordability, the Mammoth currently operates at a significantly higher cost: around $1,000 per ton.
Despite this obstacle, Climeworks co-CEO and co-founder Jan Wurzbacher remains optimistic about the future trajectory of costs for the Mammoth. The company’s target is to reduce the expense to $300 per ton by 2030, eventually reaching the crucial $100 mark by 2050.
