Chief Commercial Officer Jan Huckfeldt talks to Stéphane JG Girod about why organizations need to take urgent action to reduce and remove carbon emissions....
Jan Huckfeldt is one of those rare executives who want to see more competition in their industries. The outgoing Chief Commercial Officer of Climeworks, a Swiss company specializing in direct air capture technology, Huckfeldt believes that if we are to stand any chance of stemming global heating, organizations and regulators need to take more urgent action to reduce and remove CO2. Decarbonizing an organization to meet net-zero targets can be approached in three ways, he explains. Reduction involves lowering the carbon footprint through both renewable energy and energy efficiency. Avoidance involves buying credits or carbon offsets to fund emission reductions elsewhere, although its impact has been questioned.
With emissions reduction efforts insufficient and climate change escalating, however, UN scientists have estimated that billions of tons of carbon must be removed from the atmosphere each year to achieve global climate targets. This is where removal, which involves using minerals and chemicals to directly suck CO2 out of the atmosphere to address historic emissions comes into play.
Climeworks is one of the most advanced companies operating in direct air capture (DAC) technology. In May 2024, it opened the world’s largest DAC plant, Mammoth, located in Iceland, which can capture up to 36,000 metric tons of CO2 a year. This makes it ten times larger than Climeworks’ first commercial plant, Orca, also in Iceland, which has a capacity of up to 4,000 tons per year.
My personal point of view is that there is not really any competition...... As humanity, we need them all. And luckily there are a lot of new solutions coming up. Even with direct air capture, I think there are hundreds, close to a thousand companies.
However, Huckfeldt emphasizes that DAC is no magic bullet. Currently, 4,000 tons of carbon removal is only equivalent to a few thousand flights between London and New York each year. The goal is to scale up to at least one megaton annually by 2030, enabling the removal of an amount of CO2 equivalent to the emissions of a single coal power plant.
“My personal point of view is that there is not really any competition,” he says referring to other companies in the field. “As humanity, we need them all. And luckily there are a lot of new solutions coming up. Even with indirect air capture, I think there are hundreds, close to a thousand companies.”
Most of the emerging companies are in the early stages, focusing on infrastructure projects that require new technology that can’t just be bought off the shelf. Unlike software, it can often take up to 10 years to move from the lab stage to just the pilot stage, says Huckfeldt.
One of the other more advanced players is 1point5, owned by oil major Occidental Petroleum, which is building a large-scale DAC plant in west Texas, due to start operating in 2025 and capture up to 500,000 tons of CO2 a year. Oil producers, including Exxon Mobil, estimate DAC could be a multi-trillion-dollar market by 2050. But their enthusiasm for the technology has attracted criticism that it serves as window-dressing to allow polluters to keep on polluting.
Huckfeldt, who joined Climeworks in 2022 after a varied career that included a stint as the global chief marketing officer of Motorola, says CO2 removal should not be used as an excuse to stall efforts to reduce emissions. “Direct air capture alone is not going to help us. This talk of we are going to overshoot and then basically save ourselves with some magic technologies, whether it’s direct air capture or any other carbon dioxide removal solution. For me, that is completely wrong thinking,” he says.
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere won’t reverse temperature rises quickly due to system inertia and feedback loops, such as increased water vapor and CO2 release from oceans, which drive temperatures higher, he explains.
“So even if we pull CO2 from the atmosphere, that will not actually reduce temperatures for a long time. That’s concerning. Every little percentage, or every little decimal of a degree of temperature, we need to avoid by all means. And we are clearly not changing fast enough.”
Despite the need for policy changes to prioritize renewables, far more money still goes to subsidize the oil and gas industry than to renewable energy, says Huckfeldt. The challenge is that the public is not always prepared to stomach higher energy costs, as shown by the Yellow Vest movement in France where motorists revolted against a hike in fuel prices.
We cannot wait until 2049, or 2040 even, when policy demands us in a compliance market to remove carbon. We must do it now because otherwise, we will not have the technology when we need it.
To make a real climate impact, Climeworks wants to reach gigaton-scale emissions removal by 2050, which means scaling up from megaton to gigaton levels, another thousand-fold increase, over the next 20 years. “And that’s needed because when you look at the current forecast of emissions, we are clearly not on the right path.”
Climeworks has announced plans for a new plant in Louisiana, receiving help from US funding for the technology as part of the Inflation Reduction Act, which is a scale-up to megatons. It is working on further projects in the US, Canada, Norway, and Kenya as part of plans to move towards gigaton capacity.
To fund its expansion plans, Climeworks has signed offtake agreements to sell carbon removal to companies as varied as Boston Consulting Group (BCG), LEGO Group, watchmaker Breitling, and software giant Microsoft.
Huckfeldt stresses the urgency for all companies in all sectors to step up efforts to reduce and remove carbon emissions now, as achieving gigaton-scale reduction by 2050 will take massive investment. “And we can’t finance this unless there’s a market. There must be demand and the demand must be created and must come from the respective organizations,” he explains. “We cannot wait until 2049, or 2040 even, when policy demands us in a compliance market to remove carbon. We must do it now because otherwise, we will not have the technology when we need it.”
Encouragingly, even hard-to-abate sectors like heavy industry and aviation are beginning to focus on carbon reduction and removal, alongside early movers like financial institutions and tech companies, he says.
Just as our gut microbiome is essential for our health, the planet's biosphere is critical for our survival. If we fail to nurture these, we risk grave consequences.
Given the scale of the challenge outlined by Huckfeldt, what does he see as the leadership behaviors needed to drive meaningful change?
“I think when you’re at the brink of innovation, you need entrepreneurship, and you need risk-taking. And to enable risk-taking, people need to feel protected in their respective job role, to actually be able to take these risks,” he says. “It’s about having the right balance between having high expectations, stretching your people, and at the same time caring. And that combination I think is exactly the right one, what I would call tough love. You want to make sure that your employees are really stretched but are cared for.”
If you are going to lead, you also need to take care of yourself, says Huckfeldt, who has a PhD in polymer chemistry. To stay at the top of his game, he likes to run and do yoga, spend time outdoors, and avoid sugar where he can in his diet.
“Just as our gut microbiome is essential for our health, the planet’s biosphere is critical for our survival. If we fail to nurture these, we risk grave consequences. It is high time to recognize that caring for our microbiome and planet’s biosphere is not optional but of vital importance for our future.”
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