Hellisheiði

The Hellisheiði carbon storage project in southwest Iceland is a major CO₂ capture and permanent mineralization effort led by the Icelandic company Carbfix in partnership with ON Power (the operator of the Hellisheiði Geothermal Power Plant) and supported by EU funding under initiatives like the Silverstone project. Carbfix developed a process that dissolves CO₂ in water and injects it deep into basaltic rock formations, where it reacts with the rock to form stable carbonate minerals, effectively turning greenhouse gas into stone underground. Since initial injections began in 2012, multiple injection points have been used; a permit under the EU CCS directive now authorizes four injection wells at the Hellisheiði industrial park with the capacity to store up to about 106,000 mt CO2 per year (3.2 million tonnes over 30 years) The project is scaling up with facilities capturing CO₂ both from geothermal plant emissions and direct air capture units on site (including Climeworks’ Orca and Mammoth DAC plants), aiming to make the Hellisheiði site a near‑zero‑emissions geothermal operation and a global model for basalt mineral storage.