A load of hot air that costs the earth

From Richard Branson to the New York Times, everyone is toasting Climeworks, a start-up from the ETH. By 2025, the company aims to use its air filtration system to clean up one percent of the world’s CO2 emissions caused by fossil fuels. Its founders have an entrepreneurial approach – but their business model is based on a risky bet, at the taxpayers’ expense.

Climeworks has triggered more international hype than any other Swiss start-up. The promise made by this ETH spin-off is bang on trend: according to a statement made by its two founders, Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, the company has developed “the world’s first commercial carbon removal technology” that enables carbon dioxide (CO2) to be filtered out of the surrounding air. The New York Times’s Sunday magazine recently published a long ode to Climeworks, entitled “The Tiny Swiss Company That Thinks It Can Help Stop Climate Change”.

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