Coca-Cola HBC Partners with Climeworks to Introduce Air-Captured CO2 in Beverages

Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland is expected to implement Climeworks’s DAC technology to deliver the world’s first beverage containing air-captured CO2. The technology will be used for carbonation of the beverages.

Zurich/Switzerland – Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland is on the verge of introducing air-captured CO2 use in the beverage industry, collaborating with Swiss Direct Air Capture firm Climeworks. The beverage industry forms a crucial platform to further scale a technology relevant to achieving climate targets. Coca-Cola HBC Switzerland, a subsidiary of Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company, which in turn is one of the largest bottlers of The Coca-Cola Company, has decided to use Climeworks’ air-captured CO2.

The beverage industry is one of the world’s largest users of CO2 feedstocks, using 10 million tonnes of CO2 per year— and thus an attractive pioneer market for Climeworks to commercialise its Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology and further reduce costs. Drink carbonation could provide the commercial platform needed to deploy DAC on industrial scales, bridging the gap between today’s first commercial installations and the scale of production required for gigaton applications like renewable fuel production and large-scale carbon dioxide removal.

In order to guarantee the highest purity standards required for using CO2 in beverages, Climeworks works with Pentair Union Engineering, the world leader in purification and liquefaction of high quality CO2. Pentair Union Engineering and Climeworks have been collaborating since 2016 in Cap Drinks (E!10323) – an EU-funded project, co-funded by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation – to develop a containerised product providing beverage-grade CO2 from Climeworks air-captured CO2.

Further support is granted from Stadtwerk Winterthur’s climate fund, as well as the Environmental Technology Promotion of the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment FOEN. Climeworks’ modular DAC plants can be mass-produced for large-scale deployment and use mainly low-grade heat as an energy source for filter-based CO2 capture.