Skytree lands €1 million to take its air-captured CO₂ to Iceland

Climate tech company Skytree has secured a €1 million development loan from Invest International, the Dutch state-backed financing institution, to prepare its first carbon capture hub abroad. The project, called a Skypark, will be built in Iceland.

The money pays for the groundwork rather than the machines themselves: engineering, permits, site studies, and turning early letters of intent from future customers into binding contracts. Development runs through the rest of 2026. Skytree's machines are scheduled to be installed in 2028, when commercial operations are expected to begin.

Why anyone buys CO₂

Plenty of businesses need carbon dioxide: greenhouse growers feed it to their plants, drink makers use it for fizz, and it goes into dry ice and food packaging.

Most of that CO_₂ is a by-product of industries such as ammonia production and oil refining, and supply is getting tighter. Emitters increasingly pump their carbon dioxide underground for permanent storage instead of selling it. Trucking and shipping it long distances is getting pricier. And turbulent energy markets have made prices swing.

Iceland is a good test case as it imports most of its CO_₂, but it has plenty of geothermal energy, which the Skypark will use for both the electricity and the heat its machines need.

How the technology works

Skytree's machines do what is known as direct air capture: they take CO_₂ out of ordinary outdoor air. The key ingredient is a solid material called a sorbent, coated with chemicals called amines that latch onto carbon dioxide molecules, a bit like a sponge soaking up water. The sorbent moves slowly through stacked mesh panels while air passes through, so as much of it as possible comes into contact with the air.

Once it is loaded with carbon dioxide, the sorbent travels into a separate sealed chamber under vacuum, where it flows between hot plates. The heat makes it release the CO₂, which is collected as a pure gas, and the cleaned sorbent goes back to capture more. Because capturing and releasing happen in different chambers, the machine doesn't waste energy heating and cooling the same equipment over and over.

Most of the heating happens at around 80°C, warm enough to come from waste heat or geothermal sources, which suits Iceland well. Skytree says its latest machines use as little as 0.9 MWh of energy per tonne of CO_₂ when heat is fully reused, more than 80% less than its early versions.

CO₂ as a service

Customers won't buy any machines. Each Skypark is its own company, bringing together an energy partner, investors, and local buyers who sign long-term contracts for CO_₂ at a stable price.

Iceland follows Skytree's first Skypark, launched in the Netherlands with Lingezegen Energy in June. More are planned: as Skytree's Camille Hanna put it, "the model travels."