The annual report reads like any industrial company's — throughput up, unit costs down, order book extended — except for what the plant produces: verified atmospheric carbon removal, sold forward to corporate buyers, at a margin. The facility's operators posted the industry's first profitable year, a result the sector's own roadmaps did not project until the 2030s.
Two curves crossed to make it possible. Capture costs fell by half in four years as modular units replaced bespoke engineering; simultaneously, removal prices firmed as corporate net-zero commitments matured from pledges into procurement, and registries tightened until verified removal became a scarce, premium product.
The scale caveat is honest and repeated by the operators themselves: one profitable plant removes in a year what global emissions add back in minutes. But profitability transforms the trajectory — capital that would not touch a subsidy-dependent sector is now underwriting a build-out measured in hundreds of plants.