Airhive joins consortium of UK cleantech leaders forming UnionDAC, a British direct air capture champion

Airhive and Mission Zero, the UK’s two leading direct air capture (DAC) technology developers, have joined forces with an established low-carbon infrastructural project developer in a consortium that will build one of the world's largest facilities for capturing carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere.

UnionDAC, the new national DAC champion, will make the UK a global leader in an emerging technology that is crucial to climate mitigation and to building a future low-carbon economy. 

The International Energy Agency forecasts a need for up to 980 million tonnes of CO2 removed annually from the atmosphere through DAC by 2050, implying a market worth over $100 billion by then. DAC facilities operating today remove less than 100,000 tonnes per year globally, and capacity will need to expand rapidly to meet net zero targets.  

Partners and Project Scope  

UnionDAC’s partners blend technological expertise with experience in project development and operations. They are: 

• Progressive Energy: an expert in developing and implementing projects that bring new, often technically challenging technologies to market. The company originated the development of the HyNet project in the northwest of England. Now in construction, HyNet is a hub for carbon capture and storage, power generation, and low carbon hydrogen projects. 

• Mission Zero Technologies: a London-based electrochemical DAC technology developer with operating experience and low costs tied to its optimised energy requirements and mature supply chains. The company operates the first commercial DAC plants in the UK in Sheffield and Norfolk as well as a plant in Alberta, Canada. 

• Airhive: we are a London-based DAC developer that has pioneered a low-cost DAC technology using fluidised beds and a mineral sorbent. We already operate a plant in Teesside, England at Teesside University’s Net Zero Industrial Innovation Centre and have demonstrated our DAC system at large commercial scale in Alberta, Canada. 

The UnionDAC project’s first phase, with a combined 20,000 tonnes per year of capacity, is expected to launch by 2030. A second phase is expected to add 40,000 additional tonnes per year of capacity by 2032. 

The combined 60,000-tonne-per-year DAC facility will be at the Wilton International site on Teesside in the northeast of England. This will add a new sector to Teesside’s growing industrial decarbonisation hub, already one of the leading clusters of its kind in the world. It will also create numerous jobs and skills training in the northeast of England. 

UnionDAC intends to connect to the carbon capture and storage infrastructure of the Northern Endurance Partnership. Using pipelines that run from Teesside out over 100km out to the North Sea, NEP will soon transport CO2 from industrial emissions for safe and permanent storage deep below the seabed. 

Rory Brown, CEO of Airhive, said: “Direct air capture technology has reached a point of take-off to deliver impact at scale across the UK and the world. But this requires smart project design. Joining forces with other sector leaders makes sense when government, technology providers, and investors have interlocking roles in scaling DAC before 2030.”   

Nicholas Chadwick, CEO of Mission Zero, said: “We believe the UK possesses the perfect combination of excellence in innovation, infrastructure, and skills to champion a playbook for economic growth coupled with decarbonisation. UnionDAC exemplifies what the next chapter of that looks like for the 2030s by bringing together bankable DAC technologies in a landmark endeavour.” 

Chris Manson-Whitton, CEO of Progressive Energy said: “Progressive strongly believes that DAC has an important role to play in the low carbon economy of the 2030s and beyond. UnionDAC is a fantastic opportunity to play a role in a high growth, low carbon opportunity.” 

Support for UK Climate Goals and National Low Carbon Supply Chains 

UnionDAC will support delivery of the UK government’s net zero goals as well as signify its climate leadership on the world stage. 

It will help the country meet its carbon budget by delivering substantial domestic carbon removal capacity by 2032. The seventh (and most recent) Carbon Budget from the UK Climate Change Committee forecasts that the UK will require 8 million tonnes per year of DAC-derived carbon removal by 2050, compared to domestic production levels that are a fraction of that today. 

The UK government – like those in the European Union, Japan, the state of California, and elsewhere – is expected to stimulate demand for DAC before the end of this decade by integrating carbon dioxide removal credits into compliance-based emissions trading systems tied to national net zero targets. 

DAC-derived CO2 can also be used for industrial applications in the food and beverage, medical, transportation, and other industries. The utilisation option for DAC has enhanced its value to governments and companies who want to mitigate climate change and strengthen domestic supply chains by investing in one technology set. 

As UnionDAC leads the growth of the new sector in the UK it will also boost the supply chain for equipment, engineering and construction materials related to projects of this type and scale — first on Teesside and then in other regions of the UK and around the world. 

Ben Houchen, Tees Valley mayor, said: “Teesside is once again demonstrating why it is leading the way in UK clean technology, developing the innovative processes that will enable major industries to decarbonise, drive economic growth, and safeguard jobs."