Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland teams up with Climeworks to pioneer air-captured CO2 use in the beverage industry
The world’s first beverage containing air-captured CO2
Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland is on the verge of introducing air-captured CO2 use in the beverage industry, collaborating with Swiss Direct Air Capture firm Climeworks. The beverage industry forms a crucial platform to further scale a technology relevant to achieving climate targets. Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, which in turn is one of the largest bottlers of The Coca-Cola Company, has decided to use Climeworks’ air-captured CO2.
The beverage industry is one of the world’s largest users of CO2 feedstocks, using 10 million tons of CO2 per year— and thus an attractive pioneer market for Climeworks to commercialize its Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology and further reduce costs. Drink carbonation could provide the commercial platform needed to deploy DAC on industrial scales, bridging the gap between today’s first commercial installations and the scale of production required for gigaton applications like renewable fuel production and large-scale Carbon Dioxide Removal.
In order to guarantee the highest purity standards required for using CO2 in beverages, Climeworks works with Pentair Union Engineering, the world leader in purification and liquefaction of high quality CO2. Pentair Union Engineering and Climeworks have been collaborating since 2016 in CAPDrinks (E!10323) - an EU-funded project, co-funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation - to develop a containerized product providing beverage-grade CO2 from Climeworks air-captured CO2. Further support is granted from Stadtwerk Winterthur’s climate fund, as well as the Environmental Technology Promotion of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN.
Climeworks’ modular DAC plants can be mass-produced for large-scale deployment and use mainly low-grade heat as an energy source for filter-based CO2 capture.
Climeworks co-founder and Director Jan Wurzbacher:
“By entering the beverage market with Coca-Cola HBC as a global key player, we are continuing our path of commercializing our DAC technology, which began with the world’s first commercial plant in May 2017.”
The pioneering plant in Hinwil, Switzerland was followed in October 2017 with the launch of the CarbFix2 project in Hellisheidi, Iceland, which uses geothermal heat as an energy source to capture CO2 and then store it in basalt rock. Climeworks is excited by the chance to collaborate with a beverage industry leader as part of their overarching goal of capturing one per cent of CO2 emissions by 2025.
Climeworks co-founder and CEO Christoph Gebald:
“We are very happy to be entering the beverage market together with Coca-Cola HBC. During the last years, Coca-Cola HBC has been an exceptionally supportive partner and invaluable in moving the application of DAC in the beverage industry forward - something we are very thankful for.”
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