The Carbon Capture Materials Acceleration Centre (CCMAC) at CSIRO's Waterford campus in Perth combines automated materials discovery, standardized testing, manufacturing scale-up, and pilot validation under one roof. The $10.2 million facility, funded equally by CSIRO and the Western Australian Government, is meant to close the gap between lab breakthroughs and deployable direct air capture (DAC) sorbents. DAC removes CO2 from ambient air, but costs are still high. The IEA's 2026 World Energy Investment report puts first-of-a-kind capture costs at $500 to $1,900 per tonne, with a possible fall to around $300 per tonne by mid-century. CCMAC's role is to test whether promising materials can hold up at pilot scale, starting with CSIRO's own hybrid sorbent. The facility is open to university groups, startups, and industry. It will run for three years on staged funding, with a pilot plant targeting 100 kilograms of sorbent. CSIRO expects external users in year three and wants the centre to become self-funding through fees for service by year five.
