Dive Brief:
- Climate tech startup Spiritus unveiled plans to launch a direct air capture and sequestration site in central Wyoming on Tuesday. The Orchard One facility will begin operations in 2026, according to Spiritus.
- The Los Alamos-based company said it aims to create a “carbon orchard” capable of capturing and sequestering up to 2 megatons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere annually. The facility also seeks to make direct air capture more accessible by “driving a tenfold reduction” in cost compared to current standards, bringing the price tag down to under $100 per ton.
- “Direct air capture has traditionally been costly and, in many ways, energy intensive,” a Spiritus spokesperson told ESG Dive over email, noting that unlike most other facilities, Orchard One will collect carbon from the atmosphere through passive contact. This method relies on a sorbent technology created by Spiritus — which helps pull carbon dioxide from the air over a porous, solid-phase material — instead of utilizing industrial fans which increase energy consumption.
Dive Insight:
The Orchard One facility will conduct all sequestration operations onsite, which will also eliminate transportation costs and curb financial and environmental consequences that would otherwise need to be accounted for according to the spokesperson.
Spiritus’ sequestration process — the storage part of carbon removal — also uses less heat, it said. The company’s in-house procedure to capture and store carbon requires less than 212 degrees Fahrenheit, down from the 1650 degrees Fahrenheit needed by other carbon removal solutions that use kilns, according to the spokesperson.
Spiritus said its proprietary sorbent achieves rapid sorption and desorption rates at a fraction of the cost most sorbents are priced at. The spokesperson also noted the startup’s sorbent is reusable and automatically put out for carbon collection again once the previously captured carbon has been removed from it.
“Our approach, a first in the industry, brings high-efficiency carbon removal within the economic reach of broader markets,” Charles Cadieu, co-founder and CEO of Spiritus, said in a press release. “Leveraging our proprietary sorbent technology and achieving substantial reductions in energy consumption, we’re moving to reduce the cost of direct air capture to under $100 per ton.”
The Orchard One facility is being backed by Khosla Ventures, who spearheaded its funding, and its operations will be overseen by Spiritus’ recently hired head of carbon removal infrastructure, Mindy Ren. Ren’s resume includes leadership roles at ExxonMobil, Tesla, and Meta.
The company also said it had secured customers for its first round of carbon removal services, including Frontier, Watershed and Terraset. Though Spiritus declined to reveal the specifics of carbon removal services purchased.
