The federal government recently revealed that it is investing in four carbon capture-based clean technology projects.
Canada’s Minister of Energy and Natural Resources, Tim Hodgson, announced more than $21 million toward Alberta-based carbon capture and storage technologies through Natural Resources Canada’s Energy Innovation Program.
“We are taking action to make Canada a conventional and clean energy superpower,” Hodgson said, by “getting good products to market, cutting emissions, creating jobs and delivering the technologies that will power our economy for decades to come.”
Funding recipients include OCCAM’s Technologies, which is getting $2M to test modifications to diesel engines to enable cost-effective, small-scale carbon capture using exhaust gas recirculation.
“OCCAM’s Technologies is advancing breakthrough solutions to reduce emissions from internal combustion engines,” says CEO Matthew Henderson, which he describes as “one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize.”
OptiSeis Solutions, which garnered capital last year via Emissions Reduction Alberta’s Emerging Innovators Challenge, is receiving $500K to advance subsurface analysis technologies for measurement, monitoring and verification of CO2 geological storage.
“Results from this project will help advance cleaner, data-driven technologies for enabling Canada’s low-carbon energy future,” posits chief executive officer
Andrea Crook.
Enbridge will receive $4M, while Enhance Energy gets $5M.
Enbridge is now “closer to delivering a safe, reliable and scalable CO2 transportation and storage solution to help Alberta industries in the region meet their decarbonization goals,” according to Colin Gruending, an executive vice president with the company.
Enhance, meanwhile, is building a carbon capture hub to support Canada’s Carbon Management Strategy by developing a storage solution that permanently sequesters CO2 emissions from a variety of sources.
“This is a great example of how [Carbon Capture Utilization and Storage plays] a role in making Canada an energy and emissions reduction superpower,” commented Candice Paton, vice president at Enhance, which was founded in 2008 and is now known for its Origins technology.
And a sizeable $10M is earmarked for the Bow Valley Carbon Storage Demonstration Project, which will seek to build a system that can capture 40,000 tonnes of CO2 per year from the Interpipeline Cochrane Natural Gas Extraction Plant.
“Bow Valley Carbon will store existing CO2 emissions from Inter Pipeline’s Cochrane Extraction Plant and validate further potential for carbon sequestration in Western Alberta,” says Paul Hawksworth of Bow Valley Carbon Cochrane. “It will also create a path for long-term emissions reduction across the region and give other industrial emitters in the region the opportunity to meet their decarbonization goals.”
Since 2021, the government of Canada has investing millions of dollars into R&D projects that aim to advance the commercial viability of carbon capture, utilization and storage technologies.