The air we breathe will soon become cleaner as the first carbon capture plant opened in Switzerland. It is founded by Climeworks and is capable of removing 900 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) from the ambient air annually.

The CO2 is then filtered and supplied to numerous customers like farmers. It can also be used to make carbonated drinks and carbon-neutral fuels. Climeworks claims that by using filtered CO2, its customers are actually helping to lower their dependence on fossil fuels and reduce overall emissions.

The company claims that this is a historic step and is in accordance with the Paris Agreement, in which the countries of the world have pledged to limit the global temperature rise of two degrees Celsius.

Climeworks was founded by engineers Christoph Gebald and Jan Wurzbacher, who first came up with the idea for the Direct Air Capture (DAC) plant in 2008 after visiting the greenhouses of agricultural enterprise Gebruder Meier Primanatura AG in Hinwil, Switzerland. 

They found that the farm was ordering large quantities of CO2 that were delivered by a truck which had to cover large distances. The duo came up with the idea of capturing CO2 directly from the surrounding air, filtering it and selling it to Gebrüder Meier as a raw material delivered via gas pipeline. 

Finally, their idea has taken form and the first carbon capture plant sits atop a waste utilization plant in view of Meier brothers' greenhouses 400 metres away.