Turning Iceland's CO2 Into Stone

Carbfix, spun out of Reykjavik Energy and the University of Iceland, has developed a method of dissolving captured CO2 in water and pumping it deep into porous basalt formations, where it reacts with the rock and mineralizes into solid carbonate within roughly two years rather than remaining a gas that could leak. Operating at the Hellisheiði geothermal plant since 2014 and now scaling up with the Climeworks-partnered Mammoth direct air capture facility, Carbfix has permanently mineralized over 106,000 tonnes of CO2 to date. In 2024 it also carried out the world's first field trial of the same process using seawater instead of freshwater at Helguvík, opening a path to coastal and offshore storage.