Climeworks, one of the Carbon Drawdown Initiative’s portfolio companies, has established new headquarters in Calgary, Alberta.
Why Calgary
Alberta offers something few other jurisdictions can match: deep expertise in carbon management, established subsurface storage infrastructure, and a supportive regulatory environment for carbon capture projects. Calgary’s Energy Transition Centre (ETC) — where Climeworks is setting up — brings startups, researchers, investors, and industry leaders under one roof.
It’s a deliberate choice. Alberta has decades of experience managing CO₂ underground, originally for enhanced oil recovery but increasingly for permanent geological storage.
The Test Plan
A mobile DAC test facility will launch in Calgary by fall 2026, collecting real-time performance data in cold-climate conditions. This builds on Climeworks’ extensive operational experience in Iceland (where temperatures regularly drop below -10°C) and extends their dataset to Canadian winter conditions.
The key question: how do DAC systems perform across different temperature extremes? Climeworks is methodically answering this by testing in:
- Cold climates: Iceland and now Alberta
- Hot, arid climates: KAPSARC hub in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
This multi-climate testing strategy is critical. DAC can’t be a solution that only works in Iceland. It needs to perform reliably across geographies and seasons.
The Saudi Connection
Climeworks simultaneously announced a strengthened partnership with the Royal Commission for Jubail and Yanbu (RCJY) to advance large-scale DAC in Saudi Arabia. This isn’t just about testing — it’s about building the commercial pipeline for DAC deployment in the Middle East.
CDI’s Perspective
CDI invested in Climeworks because they represent the frontier of commercially viable direct air capture. As CDI’s portfolio spotlight noted, Climeworks’ systematic approach to scaling — from prototype to Orca to Mammoth — shows how CDR companies should mature.
The Calgary expansion continues that trajectory. More data, more climate zones, more confidence in the technology before scaling to megatonne capacity.
Source: Carbon Herald