Climeworks Stock

Most everyone who’s committed their career to solving the climate crisis comes to the field because they have something they want to save. It’s the mountains for Christoph Gebald, whose startup, Climeworks AG, is among the pioneers of sucking carbon dioxide from thin air.

The U.S. Department of Energy is investing up to $1.2 billion in giant vacuums that suck carbon out of the air in an effort to slow global warming. So-called direct air capture, or DAC, is an emerging technology that has not scaled up enough to make much of a difference in the fight against global warming. That may be about to change. The money from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law will now help fund two DAC hub projects, one in Texas and one in Louisiana. They will eventually remove more carbon per year than all of the current projects combined.