Direct Air Capture Has Its First Commercial Plant Running and the Cost Curve Is Finally Becoming Visible

The Technology That Takes Carbon Out of the Air Rather Than the Smokestack

Direct air capture is the technological process of removing carbon dioxide directly from atmospheric air, rather than capturing it from the concentrated emissions stream of a power plant or industrial facility, by flowing ambient air across a sorbent material that selectively binds carbon dioxide and releases it as a concentrated pure stream when the sorbent is regenerated by heat or electrical input. The atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, approximately 425 parts per million in 2026, is far lower than the fifteen to twenty percent CO2 concentration in post-combustion flue gas from a power plant, making direct air capture thermodynamically and energetically more demanding per tonne of CO2 captured than point-source carbon capture from concentrated emission streams. The energy penalty of capturing CO2 from air rather than from stack gas is the fundamental physics constraint that determines the minimum energy input per tonne of CO2 that any DAC technology can achieve regardless of engineering optimisation, and it is the primary driver of the high cost per tonne of CO2 removed that has made DAC the most expensive carbon removal technology and the subject of debate about whether the energy and capital resources it consumes would be better deployed reducing emissions at source rather than removing the historical accumulation from the atmosphere.

The direct air capture market, projected to grow from negligible commercial scale in 2023 toward $5.5 billion by 2033 at over fifty percent annual growth from a small base, is entering the phase where the first large-scale commercial plants whose operational data generates the cost reduction trajectory information that determines whether the DAC industry follows the solar photovoltaic and lithium battery cost curves that turned expensive niche technologies into mass-market commodities. The US Department of Energy's investment of $1.2 billion in four Regional Direct Air Capture Hubs under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the 45Q enhanced tax credit whose $180 per tonne DAC rate makes the economics of the first DAC plants viable at current technology costs, and the forward purchase agreements that Microsoft, Stripe, Shopify, and other corporate buyers have committed to for DAC carbon removal credits, are together creating the policy, financial, and market demand infrastructure that the DAC industry needs to execute the first generation of commercial plants whose learning curve data will determine the technology's long-term viability.

Climeworks and the Mammoth Plant

Climeworks, the Swiss direct air capture company, operates its Mammoth DAC plant in Iceland, which reached commercial operation in 2024 with a nameplate capture capacity of 36,000 tonnes of CO2 per year, making it the largest operational direct air capture plant in the world by a factor of over ten relative to the company's previous Orca pilot plant whose 4,000 tonne per year capacity was the previous commercial DAC reference. The Mammoth plant uses solid sorbent contactors whose modular design allows individual collector units to be manufactured in a factory and assembled at the plant site, a scalable architecture that Climeworks argues enables the manufacturing learning curve cost reduction that repeatable factory production creates rather than the site-specific bespoke construction cost of large industrial plants. The plant's operation on Iceland's geothermal electricity and heat supply creates the near-zero carbon energy input that makes the CO2 captured by the Mammoth plant genuinely permanent atmospheric carbon removal rather than the carbon-positive or carbon-neutral outcome that DAC powered by fossil electricity would create. Climeworks' subscription model, in which corporate buyers purchase carbon removal certificates at current prices ranging from approximately $1,000 per tonne toward the $300 to $400 per tonne target that the company projects at scale, creates the recurring revenue that funds the plant operations whose cost per tonne must fall to the $100 to $200 range that climate modelling scenarios require for DAC to contribute meaningfully to net-zero targets at scale.

1PointFive, the Occidental Petroleum-backed DAC company, is developing its Strathcona DAC plant in Alberta, Canada, which has received $500 million in US Department of Energy Hub funding and whose liquid solvent DAC technology using potassium hydroxide and calcium oxide to capture CO2 from air differs from Climeworks' solid sorbent approach in its higher energy requirements but potentially lower capital cost per unit capacity at large scale. Heirloom Carbon Technologies, the California DAC startup whose enhanced mineral weathering approach accelerates the natural CO2 absorption of calcium and magnesium oxide minerals, received a $600 million DOE Hub award and has completed its first pilot plant, demonstrating the diversity of DAC approaches whose relative cost curves at commercial scale remain an open commercial question whose resolution the first large-scale commercial plants are generating.

The Cost Curve and the Path to $100 per Tonne

The cost reduction trajectory for direct air capture from the current $1,000 per tonne commercial pricing to the $100 to $150 per tonne that climate policy modelling identifies as the level at which DAC can contribute at gigaton scale to net-zero scenarios is the central question that the next decade of commercial plant deployment will begin to answer. The cost reduction must come from three sources: learning-by-doing improvements in the sorbent cycling efficiency, fan design, and process integration that operational experience at each plant generates; manufacturing scale that reduces the per-unit cost of the collector modules through volume production; and energy cost reduction through co-location with low-cost renewable electricity and heat whose operating cost contribution to the total cost of CO2 capture is the largest single component above the capital cost.

Top 10 Companies in Direct Air Capture Technology Globally

1. Climeworks: Swiss DAC company with Mammoth plant in Iceland capturing 36,000 tonnes CO2 per year; its solid sorbent modular collector design and its geothermal-powered operation create the world's largest operational DAC plant whose cost reduction trajectory from $1,000 toward $300 per tonne defines the commercial benchmark.
2. 1PointFive (Occidental): US DAC company with liquid solvent Strathcona Alberta plant backed by $500 million DOE Hub funding; its Occidental oil and gas operational expertise and its large-scale liquid solvent DAC technology create the US commercial DAC leader whose plant construction and operational cost data will be the most commercially significant cost reduction evidence.
3. Heirloom Carbon Technologies: US enhanced mineral weathering DAC company with $600 million DOE Hub award; its calcium oxide mineral CO2 absorption acceleration and its first pilot plant create the low-capital mineral weathering DAC approach whose energy requirements differ from sorbent-based DAC and whose cost curve may diverge from the solid and liquid sorbent technologies.
4. Carbon Capture Inc.: US solid sorbent DAC company with modular DAC units powered by geothermal and waste heat; its modular architecture and its partnership with geothermal operators create the DAC company whose energy co-location strategy reduces the operating energy cost that is the largest single driver of DAC's current high cost per tonne.
5. Global Thermostat: US DAC company with amine-based solid sorbent DAC whose low-temperature regeneration enables use of industrial waste heat; its low-regeneration-temperature sorbent chemistry and its industrial waste heat co-location strategy create the DAC technology for the industrial site applications where waste heat availability reduces energy cost substantially.
6. CarbFix: Icelandic CO2 mineralisation company with basalt rock CO2 injection for permanent geological storage of DAC-captured CO2; its partnership with Climeworks for Mammoth plant CO2 storage and its permanent mineralisation storage technology create the CO2 storage component of the DAC value chain whose storage permanence is the verification standard that carbon removal credit buyers require.
7. Verdox: US electrochemical DAC company with electroswing adsorption DAC technology funded by Bill Gates's Breakthrough Energy; its electrochemical CO2 capture whose electrical rather than thermal regeneration potentially reduces energy cost and its MIT research origins create the electrochemical DAC approach whose cost trajectory at scale could differ from thermal-regeneration sorbent DAC.
8. Sustaera: US DAC company with structured sorbent contactors for low-cost DAC deployment; its Georgia Tech-developed sorbent architecture and its DOE funding create the research-stage DAC company whose structured sorbent approach addresses the pressure drop and airflow resistance limitations of packed sorbent bed designs.
9. Noya: US DAC startup repurposing existing cooling towers as DAC contactors; its retrofit cooling tower DAC concept that uses existing airflow infrastructure rather than purpose-built collector units creates the low capital cost DAC approach whose installed infrastructure utilisation reduces the capital cost component that drives much of current DAC's cost premium.
10. Frontier (Stripe, Alphabet, Shopify, McKinsey): US advanced market commitment fund with $1 billion committed to purchase DAC and other carbon removal credits; its offtake commitment that provides the advance revenue that DAC companies use to secure project financing and its buyer consortium create the demand-side infrastructure that early DAC commercial projects require to achieve financial close.