A Swiss company will start to extract carbon dioxide from thin air in Iceland on Thursday, seeking to transform the gas into rock far below ground in a first test of a costly technology meant to slow climate change.
The engineering experiment, by Swiss firm Climeworks with Reykjavik Energy, will cost hundreds of dollars to extract each ton of greenhouse gases from nature and entomb it permanently underground.
Climeworks plans to suck 50 tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over a year — roughly the greenhouse gas emissions of a single American family — using special fans and chemicals in the European Union-backed project.