Switzerland’s Power-to-X story usually begins with two ingredients: renewable energy and recycled CO₂. The first is increasingly within reach. The second — a steady, affordable and sustainable supply of CO₂ — remains one of the hardest parts of the value chain to solve. A young St. Gallen company called fortyfour is tackling exactly that problem, and on 4 June 2026 its work was recognised with the Rohdiamant (“Raw Diamond”), the prize for the best early-stage start-up at the 15th St. Galler Kantonalbank (SGKB) and Startfeld young-entrepreneur awards.

fortyfour draws CO₂ straight out of the ambient air and delivers it where it is needed — on demand and on site. The CHF 10,000 award is modest in absolute terms, but the recognition lands on a technology that sits squarely at the heart of what Power-to-X needs in order to scale.

Turning the atmosphere into a local CO₂ supply

fortyfour describes itself as a climate-tech start-up pioneering Direct Air Capture for Utilisation (DAC-U). Instead of pulling atmospheric CO₂ out of the air in order to bury it underground, fortyfour recovers it in order to use it — turning the air itself into a feedstock supplier. Its compact, solar-powered systems are built to be installed directly at the point of demand, removing the need for tanker deliveries and the fossil-fuel combustion that conventionally produces industrial CO₂.

The first market is horticulture. Greenhouses depend on elevated CO₂ levels to accelerate photosynthesis, and fortyfour says its on-site units can lift plant growth by up to 30% while supplying CO₂ exactly when crops need it — during peak daylight, not merely when a heating boiler happens to be running. Smart controls shift operation to low-price electricity hours, trimming energy costs at the same time. A first pilot installation is due to go live this summer.

How it works

The process is a closed loop built around a proprietary liquid sorbent:

  • Air movement. A contactor draws large volumes of air through the system in a slow, even flow that keeps energy use low.
  • CO₂ capture. The liquid sorbent flows cross-current to the incoming air; specialised molecules selectively bind the CO₂ and absorb it into a stable solution.
  • Controlled release. Temperature and pressure are precisely adjusted to release the CO₂ again as a concentrated, pure stream that is ready for use.
  • Solvent regeneration. The sorbent is reconditioned and reused many times over, keeping the loop efficient.
  • CO₂ supply. The output is tailored to the application — from moderate purity for agriculture to high purity for food, beverage and industrial uses.

Because fortyfour optimises for utilisation rather than geological storage, it claims meaningful cost advantages over conventional Direct Air Capture, where the economics have long been the sticking point.

Why this matters for Power-to-X

Every synthetic PtX product — e-methanol, e-kerosene, e-methane, e-chemicals — is built from renewable energy with recycled CO₂. Sourcing that CO₂ sustainably and affordably is a structural bottleneck for the whole industry. Direct Air Capture is one of the cleanest answers, because CO₂ taken from the atmosphere and later re-released closes a genuinely circular loop rather than locking in new fossil emissions. Critically, it does not create any incentive to burn more fossil fuel — the line SPIN draws between acceptable and unacceptable CO₂ use.

fortyfour itself looks beyond the greenhouse. It notes that today’s industrial economy already consumes more than 200 million tonnes of CO₂ a year, and projects that demand could exceed six gigatonnes by 2050 as e-fuels, carbon-negative materials and synthetic chemistry mature. A decentralised, cost-competitive way to source recycled CO₂ on site is exactly the kind of building block that turns those Power-to-X pathways from concept into infrastructure.

A tangible piece of Swiss engineering

For the jury, the appeal lay in the combination of ambition and concreteness. “The business idea behind fortyfour is compelling, tangible and sustainable — another fine example of Swiss engineering,” said Christian Schmid, jury president and CEO of SGKB. “If they succeed in implementing the idea economically on site, it is highly scalable.”

Scalability is the open question every early-stage hardware company faces, and the pilot this summer will be the first real test. But the direction of travel is clear: compact, solar-powered, on-site CO₂ drawn from thin air is precisely the sort of innovation the Swiss Power-to-X ecosystem will lean on as it moves from pilot to scale. fortyfour is one to watch.