One of the greatest global calls for change is the
phenomenon of global warming. A multi-faceted
problem, climate change demands all kinds of
solutions.
On a panel discussion at the World Economic Forum in 2018, Accenture Chief Technology Officer, Paul Daugherty encountered the Swiss company Climeworks—which focuses on direct air capture of carbon dioxide. A nascent technology but a highly promising one that helps remove the historically emitted CO2 from air, thus lowering the amount of carbon dioxide—crucial to limit global warming to safe levels. The air-captured CO2 can either be safely stored for millions of years, or recycled as raw material for synthetic fuels or other materials in a circular economy.
In 2017, Climeworks commissioned the world’s
first commercial-scale direct air capture plant as
well as the world’s first carbon dioxide removal
plant. As Climeworks was working toward scaling
up this much-needed climate technology,
Accenture joined forces to accelerate this
ambition.
Climeworks: The fight against global warming goes digital
To address the issue of global warming, the
world needs to lower its carbon emissions.
Climeworks, a Swiss company specializing in
carbon dioxide air capture, filters CO₂ directly
from ambient air—the world’s first commercial
carbon removal technology.
Accenture, with its vast resources and varied offerings, was extremely well-positioned to help Climeworks grow and thrive and became the company’s Innovation Partner, to help identify and implement digital solutions to further its success. The partnership demonstrated not only the huge promise of the company’s technology, but the breadth and depth Accenture’s skills, industry expertise and capabilities around the world.
Leveraging its multi-industry perspective, Accenture helped Climeworks answer key questions about its go-to-market strategy. What are the use cases for the CO2 being extracted from the air? In which industries and markets can it be sold? These were the kinds of foundational questions that helped the company finetune its strategy.
Accenture and Climeworks embarked on several workflows:
Focusing at first on the facility in Switzerland, the
teams worked together to build a digital plant
solution that would help optimize operations by
moving from reactive to proactive issue
management. For example, the digital plant
allowed for the real-time monitoring and detection
of anomalies related to critical components; the
optimization of energy consumption and the ideal
balancing of performance, cost, and life cycle; and
the correlating of CO2 production outputs and
forecasts with weather and other factors.
Designaffairs, a company recently acquired by Accenture, did the visual design of the new Climeworks CO2 air capture plant in Iceland, working to harmonize the utilitarian structure with the breathtaking Icelandic wilderness landscape. The team traveled to Iceland and mapped the area with drones and other digital technology to get the aesthetics right—a prerequisite of the Icelandic government. The new plant recently received a “Green Good Design Award” from the European Centre.
Accenture introduced Climeworks to a variety of its longtime clients that were interested in the carbon removal technology. For example, Climeworks joined the Microsoft Startup Program and also gained Shopify as a client for its CO2 removal offering, with that company investing 23% of its $5 million sustainability fund. Accenture also connected Climeworks with some of its aviation clients, with the goal of ultimately forming a consortium of companies that could use the synthetic fuel created by the captured CO2. This outreach included publishing points of view on the Climeworks website.
Throughout, Avanade (a partnership between Accenture and Microsoft) has been working to help Climeworks’ journey to the cloud, unifying what had been a fragmented IT system.
"When we partnered with Climeworks in 2018, they were beginning to scale and we hoped they would
let us support them in their journey to grow - because we believe in their mission. It turned out that we
can help them with many interesting digital capabilities including engineering expertise. I am looking
forward to continue our great partnership and help making Climeworks even more successful – for us
and the next generation."
— Stéphane Piqué, Industry X Lead Switzerland
A valuable difference
The collaboration has helped Climeworks make major strides on its scale-up roadmap. And one that promises to have a significant impact on global climate change—and help live up to the company’s vision of inspiring one billion people to be a part of their mission to remove CO2 from air—by offering their service where anyone can contribute in carbon dioxide removal.
Additionally, the successful digital plant solution will now be used at the plant in Iceland—a first in a planned program of scaling by building more facilities. Learnings of the partnership will be applied in the new large-scale direct air capture and storage plant “Orca” in Iceland, which will capture 4000 tons of CO2 each year to store them safely and permanently deep underground through natural mineralization.
4,000
Orca plant in Iceland will capture 4000 tons of CO2 each year to store them safely and permanently deep underground through natural mineralization.
Most importantly, Climeworks has successfully taken major steps towards scaling their much-needed climate technology to combat climate change. Specifically, direct air capture helps realize negative emissions to achieve climate targets and neutralizes unavoidable emissions to reach net-zero, or even negative emissions—all working together to stay within the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.
Get involved
You too can become a Pioneer. Act now.
Whether you are an organization or an individual, you can join the journey toward a climate-positive world. Learn more about how you can enable Climeworks to remove CO2.
