REPORT – The “land of ice” is home to the largest site of carbon dioxide capture in the atmosphere.
The Thjodvegur 1 S, the main road in Iceland, crosses a landscape of lava fields at the foot of the Hengill volcano. In the distance, away from the road, in the southwest of the island, some 25 km from Reykjavik, a strange building looms on the horizon. Eight black containers 10 meters high, stacked in a U-shape, next to a hangar, stand in this desert of moss and green-orange stones. Schoolchildren who have come to visit the nearby geothermal power plant of Hellisheidi, the second most powerful in the world, scrutinize, intrigued, the strange building.
The latter is called Orca and is none other than the largest site in the world for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. At the origin of this ambitious project, inaugurated on September 8, 2021: the Swiss start-up Climeworks, at the forefront of the fight against global warming.
Buried 800 meters
The technology used differs from the traditional method of capturing carbon from the chimneys of steelworks, refineries and cement works. She…
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