A new technology absorbs carbon dioxide straight from the air and stores it permanently in underground rock.

Developer Climeworks has partnered with Reykjavik Energy for its CarbFix2 pilot project, which will see an existing geothermal power plant in Iceland fitted out with the capture and storage equipment.

The company says its Direct Air Capture (DAC) device offers safe, highly scalable geological storage and has already received funding from the EU.

The technology works by capturing carbon dioxide from ambient air, which is binded to a filter and heated with waste energy from the geothermal power station.

This allows the greenhouse gas to be bound to water, after which it is pumped more than 700 metres underground, where it reacts with the basalt bedrock and forms solid minerals.