How carbon capture can help slow climate change | 60 Minutes

Last month the world’s top climate scientists delivered a sobering warning. Their mammoth report to the UN boiled down to one message: act now, before the climate breakdown becomes unstoppable. The report says extreme weather has forced millions of people from their homes and devastated food supplies. Oil and gas emissions are at a record high. The UN report calls for drastic cuts in fossil fuels. But if our old technologies got us into this mess, can new ones get us out? Among politicians, corporations and billionaires, one new technology is gaining traction. It’s called direct air capture that vacuums carbon dioxide out of thin air and locks it away underground. Sound like science fiction? We thought so too until we went to Iceland to see the world’s first commercial Direct Air Capture plant in operation.

Here on a frigid plain near the Arctic Circle, worries about an overheating planet seem far away. Yet tiny Iceland has put itself on the front line, with a new kind of machine that will fight climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the air. This is ORCA — the first commercial direct air capture plant on earth.

Bill Whitaker: What are these fans? How does this work?

Carlos Haertel: Here you see the back side of these collectors where the air is being pulled through the system by aid of these fans.

Carlos Haertel is chief technology officer for Climeworks, the Swiss company that built ORCA. He told us, as the fans draw air in, the carbon dioxide is trapped by a special filter inside these giant collectors—each the size of a shipping container. The captured CO2 is then siphoned off to storage tanks. We had to shout over the powerful fans as a bitter wind whipped around us.  

Bill Whitaker: So you didn’t come for this wonderful weather?

Carlos Haertel: No, we did not. We knew that the winters were harsh, but it’s a good real-life test as well for the plant.

Bill Whitaker: What you’re describing almost sounds like science fiction, but what you’re saying is that we can actually do this?

Carolos Haertel: People never doubted the fundamental physics or chemistry of it. But realizing it under real-life conditions is a whole different matter. And that’s what this system shows. It can be…