The world’s largest pollution vacuum started operating in May. Built in Iceland by Swiss company Climeworks, the direct air capture and storage plant named Mammoth is designed to draw in air, filter out up to 36,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually and either store it permanently underground, reuse it or transform it into solid products.

 This is the second large-scale carbon vacuum by Climeworks. Its predecessor, which launched in 2021, captures 500 tons of CO2 each year. Both facilities are powered by a geothermal power plant. According to Jan Wurzbacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Climeworks, the company intends to scale up its technology to remove 1 million tons of carbon per year by 2030 and 1 billion tons by 2050.