Zurich/Austin – Climeworks has chosen the Texan city of Austin as the location for its headquarters in the USA. The pioneer in CO2 capture from the air wants to triple the size of its team in the country by the end of the year. The background to this is that the US Department of Energy is providing massive funding for three Climeworks projects.
Climeworks accelerates its growth in the USA with its new headquarters in Austin. According to a press release, the number of employees there in particular, but also at its other locations in New York, California and Washington D.C., is set to grow significantly by the end of 2024, tripling in total. The company is taking the lead in the global introduction of direct air capture (DAC). The global headquarters of Climeworks, a spin-off from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, will remain in Zurich.
The announcement of the new headquarters in Austin comes against the backdrop of the US Department of Energy closing all three DAC projects in the country with which Climeworks had applied for inclusion in its funding program last August, Accepted has: the Project Cypress in Louisiana, the Prairie Compass Hub in North Dakota and the California DAC Hub in California. According to the information provided, they are to receive state funding totaling over 600 million dollars.
Two major national economic stimulus programs of the US government, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act for clean energy, have made the USA a strategic market for Climeworks, according to the press release. In addition, there are partners in the USA with a high level of expertise in the safe and permanent geological storage of CO2 as well as large infrastructure projects. This provides Climeworks with a strong foundation to further develop its supply chain and launch on a large scale. ce/mm
