FOAK isn’t the finish line. It’s just the start.

Climeworks is back in the news—and not for the reason they’d like.

Reports from Heimildin and others claim that their latest DAC (direct air capture) facility might not even cover its own emissions. That’s a brutal blow for a company that promised to remove 1% of global CO₂ by 2025.

Their CEO Jan Wurzbacher published a response. He acknowledged commissioning problems, but didn’t refute the claim that the total carbon footprint may be net positive. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Before the comments fill up with “DAC is a scam” takes, let’s pause.

In 2023, I ran a deep dive for a private investor into CO₂ removal technologies. With the help of German Minkin, we concluded that point-source capture and storage is the only viable tech at scale today. Not sexy, but it works.

Still, this isn’t about DAC vs CCS.

The real lesson here is about FOAKs. Just like with Northvolt, Climeworks shows us that building FOAK plant is one thing. Running it, scaling it, delivering on its promise—that’s something else entirely.

You need a runway, not just to build, but to ramp. To test, tweak, and run at full throttle. You also need to manage expectations: claiming “1% of global CO₂” and delivering ~1,000 tons a year is a gap you don’t want to explain to stakeholders later.

Let’s get better at building and operating FOAKs. And let’s stop mistaking commissioning announcements for commercial success.