Futuristic 'time machine' to turn back the clock on climate change opens: massive vacuum cleaner that sucks 1,000 TONS of carbon dioxide from the air each year launches in California

A ginormous machine which sucks carbon dioxide from the air in a bid to turn back the clock on climate change has been launched in California. 

Climate tech company Heirloom has unveiled America's first commercial direct air capture (DAC) facility in the city of Tracy, around 60 miles from San Francisco.

Comprising rows of 40-foot-tall trays filled with powdered carbon-absorbing limestone, the plant is primed to remove 1,000 tons of greenhouse gas from the atmosphere each year.

Although this is a fraction of what's needed for the US to hit its 2050 net-zero target, the facility is the first step in Heirloom's plans to rapidly expand on a global scale. 

The process began in a petri dish two years ago - and Heirloom's CEO Shashank Samala said he hopes they'll be able to vacuum one billion tons of CO2 from the atmosphere by 2035 - or 10 percent of the worldwide removal needed by 2050. 

Heirloom makes money by selling carbon removal credits to companies including Microsoft, Shopify, JPMorgan, Workday and H&M, who can then use them to offset their own emissions. 

Microsoft has agreed to purchase 315,000 metric tons of CO2 removal from the company over a 10 year period - the largest deal to date. 

Heirloom co-founder Samala said the Tracy facility is 'the closest thing on Earth that we have to a time machine'. 

'It can turn back the clock on climate change by removing carbon dioxide that has already been emitted into our atmosphere,' he said. 

'The capacity of Heirloom's limestone-based technology to capture CO2 from the air has gone from 1 kilogram of CO2 to up to one million, or 1000 metric tons, in just over two years. 

'We owe it to every climate vulnerable citizen to continue to deploy our technology at the urgent pace required to reach billion-ton scale and beyond in time to stop the worst of climate change.' 

Biden's administration has awarded $1.2 billion to carbon capture projects including Heirloom, with the next plants scheduled to be built in Texas and Louisiana. 

Scientists have warned that billions of tons of carbon dioxide will need to be removed from the atmosphere each year, and the US government is aiming to make the process more affordable in future. 

Current industry prices for carbon removal by direct air capture are around $600-$1,000 a ton, one person familiar with the situation said.        

Some of Heirloom's first sales for capture and storage were more than $2,000 per ton back in 2021. The US government is aiming to get this down to $100 a ton over the next decade.

'We've got to scale. Scale is the only way we're going to be able to move that quickly,' U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said in an interview with Reuters after visiting the Tracy site.

Working with a startup called CarbonCure, Heirloom has been harnessing the natural process of limestone formation, which occurs when calcium oxide binds with carbon dioxide absorbed from the air. 

The Tracy plant accelerates this process by heating the stone to 1,650 degrees Fahrenheit in a kiln powered by renewable electricity. 

The CO2 is released from the rock and pumped into a storage tank, while the white powdery by-product of calcium oxide is covered in water and spread across large trays. 

Robots carry each of the trays onto towering racks exposed to the air. Over the course of just three days, this powder absorbs CO2 from the air and turns into limestone again, triggering the start of the cycle.