COPENHAGEN

- The world's largest plant to extract carbon dioxide directly from the air and store it underground will start operating today, Wednesday.

Swiss start-up CLIWORKS AG, which is behind this new technology and has partnered with Icelandic company Carbfix to develop the plant, announced today the start-up of the plant that will extract 4,000 tons of CO2. annually.

This is equivalent to the annual emissions of about 790 cars.

Last year, global emissions of carbon dioxide totaled 31.5 billion tons, according to estimates by the International Energy Agency.

Direct extraction from the air is one of the few technologies for extracting carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, and scientists consider it vital to reduce the global warming.

They see carbon dioxide as the reason for the increase in extreme heat waves, wildfires, floods, and rising sea levels.

The Orca plant - after the Icelandic word for energy - consists of 8 huge containers, similar to those used in sea shipping, and uses advanced technology filters and fans to extract carbon dioxide.

The carbon is then mixed with water, then pumped deep into the ground where it slowly turns into rock.

The new technology is powered by electricity generated from a renewable energy source, which is produced at a nearby geothermal power plant.

This technology is still in its infancy and expensive, but its developers hope to reduce the cost by expanding its application.

According to the International Energy Agency, there are currently 15 plants to extract carbon from the air around the world, extracting more than 9,000 tons of carbon dioxide annually.

The US oil company, Occidental Petroleum, is currently working on a facility that can extract one million tons per year of carbon dioxide from the air near some of its Texas oil fields.

Occidental has reported that it plans to build facilities to capture carbon from the air in Abu Dhabi and Algeria, and says it will be a leader in this shift, as will Tesla's leadership in electric vehicles.

The removal of carbon dioxide from the air is seen as a necessary measure to reduce the worst effects of global warming.

In an interview with Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub - which was broadcast by Al Jazeera's leadership page last March - Occidental said that Occidental's operations and its use of energy, heat and steam released the equivalent of 28.4 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2019. The company currently stores 20 million tons of carbon dioxide underground annually.

"We don't have to kill fossil fuels," Holub said at the time. "We just have to know how to make fossil fuels carbon-neutral. That's our motivation."