Climeworks — the company synonymous with sucking CO₂ out of the air with giant fans in Iceland — is now the single largest buyer of enhanced rock weathering credits on Earth.
Their latest partnership with Lithos Carbon expands a relationship that started in 2023, when the two companies struck a deal for 3.5 million tonnes of ERW removal over a decade. Now they’re bringing verified ERW credits to market together, with Lithos delivering its largest batch yet: 5,160 registry-certified tonnes of CO₂ removal.
That number matters. It’s the biggest verified ERW delivery to date, from a company founded just four years ago that’s already the largest ERW developer by issued credits.
Climeworks is becoming a CDR marketplace
This is the real story. Climeworks isn’t just a DAC operator anymore — they’re positioning themselves as a multi-pathway CDR platform.
Think about what that means strategically. If you’re a corporate buyer who wants high-quality carbon removal, Climeworks can now offer you:
- Direct air capture with geological storage (their Orca and Mammoth plants in Iceland)
- Enhanced rock weathering via Lithos (basalt on US croplands, 1,000+ year durability)
That’s two fundamentally different removal pathways under one roof. For buyers who want portfolio diversification without doing their own CDR due diligence, Climeworks just became a one-stop shop.
What Lithos actually does
Lithos spreads finely ground basalt rock on agricultural fields across the US. As rainwater passes through the crushed basalt, it dissolves the minerals and locks atmospheric CO₂ into stable bicarbonates that eventually wash into the ocean. The carbon stays locked away for 1,000+ years.
The clever part is the measurement. ERW has historically struggled with the “how do you actually prove it worked?” problem. Lithos attacks this with soil models and machine learning, tracking weathering rates across different soil types, climates, and application methods. It’s computationally intensive verification for a geochemically simple process.
Why this convergence matters
The CDR industry has spent years organized into tribal camps. DAC people. Biochar people. ERW people. Ocean alkalinity people. Each pathway has its own conferences, its own investors, its own Twitter arguments.
That era is ending.
When the most iconic DAC company becomes the biggest ERW buyer, it signals that the serious players understand something the pathway purists don’t: removing a billion tonnes of CO₂ per year requires all of these methods working simultaneously. No single pathway gets us there alone.
For ERW specifically, Climeworks’ involvement is a massive credibility boost. Enhanced rock weathering is still fighting an uphill battle for legitimacy in some circles — questions about permanence, measurement accuracy, and scalability persist. Having Climeworks stake their reputation on ERW credits tells the market: we’ve done the diligence, and this is real.
The CDR market is consolidating around companies that think in portfolios, not pathways. Climeworks just made the clearest move yet.
Sources
- Climeworks / Lithos Carbon partnership announcement, March 2026
- Lithos Carbon ERW delivery records, Puro.earth registry
- Original 2023 Climeworks-Lithos framework agreement (3.5M tonnes over 10 years)