SWISS inks carbon dioxide removal agreement with Climeworks

Swiss International Air Lines (SWISS) and the Lufthansa Group have forged a long-term partnership with Climeworks, a Swiss-based company. The partners intend to work together to promote the scaling up of Climeworks’s innovative technology for removing carbon dioxide (CO₂) from the air via a process known as direct air capture or DAC. As Climeworks’s first airline partners, SWISS and the Lufthansa Group have signed a carbon dioxide removal agreement that will take them a further major step forward towards their ambitious sustainability objectives. The new partnership will initially extend to 2030, but also contains options for procuring further carbon removal volumes.

“We are delighted to have secured SWISS and the Lufthansa Group as our first partners from the aviation sector for our direct air capture technology,” said Jan Huckfeldt, Climeworks’s Chief Commercial Officer. “Their interest and involvement confirm the demand within the airline industry for quality long-term solutions to eliminate CO₂. And their commitment is vital to our endeavours to scale up our technology. Through their involvement on the carbon removal front, SWISS and the Lufthansa Group are playing a pioneering role, and are underlining their firm commitment to achieving net-zero emissions within the airline sector.”

With its direct air capture technology, Climeworks is a global leader within the carbon removal field. DAC is a vitally important method of removing CO₂ directly from the atmosphere and storing it permanently underground. The airline sector will need to take advantage of both DAC and further negative-emission technologies if it is to achieve its ambitious carbon emissions goals. Climeworks already operates the world’s biggest DAC and carbon storage facility, which is located in Iceland, and has extensive further growth plans.

DAC technologies also offers a scalable means of procuring atmospheric CO₂ for use as a raw material in manufacturing the next generation of synthetic fuels, which are also known as sustainable aviation fuels (SAF). The use of such synthetic fuels is vital to the decarbonisation of the airline sector. SWISS and the Lufthansa Group have long been industry pioneers in this field, driving the scaling up of these key fuel technologies.