Carbon capture - how effective really?

Those who visit the Hellisheidi power plant will see additional buildings. 

As well as a plant producing edible algae there are buildings which are apparently capturing carbon dioxide.

This article from Heimildin suggests that the actual amount of carbon being removed from the atmosphere is not even offsetting the impact of the operation itself.

It includes statistics on the effectiveness of the Mammoth plant, which has appeared on the blog previously.

Last year, Climeworks partially commissioned the Mammoth capture plant, which is expected to capture nine times more than what had been done since 2021, or 36,000 tons. That plant has only managed to capture 105 tons of CO2 in its first ten months of operation, according to information from Puro.Earth. It is responsible for verifying the Swiss company's capture and is paid for that work by Climeworks.

And also some feedback on the performance of the country against the stated aims.

The Swiss founders of Climeworks were ambitious when they started in 2009. In a 2017 interview, they said that by 2025 they planned to capture one percent of all global emissions. That amounts to 400 million tons of CO2. Those plans have not been realized, and the company has never come close to achieving that. They also planned to reduce the cost of capturing each ton of CO2 from the atmosphere to about $100. Today, a ton of CO2 costs about $1,000, according to the Climeworks website – ten times more than the target this year.

The full piece is worth reading.