Take: Is carbon removal a fantasy? | Living Planet Podcast

Tue, 16 Jun 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Take on a YouTube video from DW Podcasts, originally posted 2026-06-15. Watch the source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r79u6fuxdo

TL;DR

DW podcast revisits Climeworks: Mammoth (36 kt/yr nameplate) has captured “just a couple thousand tons” total since 2024 opening. Useful public airing of numbers practitioners already knew.
Climeworks CTO Helen Cox attributes underperformance to humidity, temperature, and geothermal sulfur degrading sorbent in the field — not lab conditions. Honest mechanism, rarely articulated this plainly to a general audience.
The 1 Mt by 2030 target is treated as effectively dead. Overdue framing for the mainstream press.
Reporter cites the 2 million m³ of air per ton CO2 thermodynamic floor — solid, non-sensational.
Verdict: useful as a talking-points refresher and as something to send to non-CDR colleagues. Limited new signal for practitioners.

DW’s Living Planet (episode link) revisits direct air capture (DAC) six years after reporter Sam Baker first covered Climeworks, and the framing is “what happened to the hype?” The substantive claim is that Climeworks’ Orca (4 kt/yr nameplate) and Mammoth (36 kt/yr nameplate) plants in Iceland have collectively captured only a few thousand tons since Mammoth came online in 2024, putting the company’s stated 1 million tons by 2030 target out of reach. CTO Helen Cox, on the job about a year, is the on-record voice walking the reporter through what went wrong.

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Take: Is carbon removal a fantasy? | Living Planet Podcast