Climeworks joins project to trap CO2

The Swiss company Climeworks has launched a pilot plant in Hellisheidi, Iceland, that can capture carbon dioxide directly from the air to be pumped into underground rock formations, effectively locking the greenhouse gas away for good. Installed on the grounds of a geothermal power plant, the new direct air capture plant joins a project called CarbFix2, led by Reykjavik Energy and funded partly by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program. CarbFix2 is an extension of the decade-old CarbFix project, which has injected 18,000 metric tons of CO2 dissolved in large amounts of water deep into the surrounding basalt-rich rock. The dissolved CO2 reacts with basalt to form solid carbonate mineral, a transformation that occurs relatively quickly, according to a 2016 study by CarbFix researchers. Previously, the CarbFix project sequestered waste CO2 from the neighboring geothermal power plant, which releases about 3% of the CO2 emitted by a