CARBON ENGINEERING

David Keith, a Harvard professor and one of the world's leading climate scientists, had been studying geoengineering and carbon removal for decades. In 2009, he founded Carbon Engineering to commercialize Direct Air Capture — the process of pulling CO2 directly from the air using chemical solvents.

The technology is different from carbon capture at smokestacks — DAC can be placed anywhere because it captures CO2 from the atmosphere itself, not from a specific emission source. After years of R&D in Squamish, British Columbia, Carbon Engineering built a pilot plant that successfully demonstrated the technology.

Technology licensing and project development. Carbon Engineering licenses its DAC technology to partners who build and operate large-scale facilities.

Revenue comes from technology fees, engineering services, and eventually from selling carbon removal credits. Occidental Petroleum acquired the company to build STRATOS — a massive DAC plant in the Texas Permian Basin capable of capturing 500,000 tons of CO2 per year.

DAC Technology — proprietary system using liquid solvents to capture CO2 from air. Air-to-Fuels — process to combine captured CO2 with hydrogen to produce synthetic fuels.

STRATOS — the world's largest DAC facility under construction in Texas (500,000 tons/year capacity).

Academic credibility combined with oil industry pragmatism. David Keith's reputation as a top climate scientist gave the technology credibility.

Partnering with Occidental Petroleum (an oil company) was controversial but practical — Oxy had the capital, engineering expertise, and motivation (enhanced oil recovery uses CO2). The STRATOS project is the world's first large-scale DAC facility.

Cost. Current DAC costs are $250-600+ per ton of CO2 removed.

That needs to drop below $100/ton to be economically viable at scale. The technology works — the question is whether it can get cheap enough fast enough.

Competition from Climeworks (Swiss rival using a different DAC approach) and from nature-based carbon removal (trees, soil) is real.

Bill Gates (through Breakthrough Energy), Chevron, BHP, and Oxy Low Carbon Ventures invested. The Occidental Petroleum acquisition in 2023 provided the capital to scale.