After the federal election, critics of the Liberal’s climate change targets had something new to ponder: what Prime Minister Trudeau meant by Canada reaching“net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”.In Alberta, some commentators and pundits took that to mean further difficulties for the oil sands in general and Alberta in particular. Over the Christmas break, however, a Canadian company made headlines regarding their latest project, in Texas, that pulls CO2 out of the air and sequesters it, permanently, underground..Carbon Engineering Ltd. (CE), a Canadian-based clean energy company, was founded in 2009 and “grew from academic work conducted on carbon management technologies by Professor David Keith’s research groups at the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon University,” according to the website..“CE is privately owned and is funded by investment or commitments from private investors and government agencies (including) Bill Gates, CNRL founder Murray Edwards, Chevron Technology Ventures, and Australian mining and petroleum company BHP.”.One facility can, according to their data, pull around one megatonne of C02 from the air per year, equivalent to the work of 40 million trees. Alberta’s oil sands emit roughly 70 megatonnes..The process uses fans to suck air into a liquid (potassium hydroxide) that binds to CO2. The liquid is then heated and turned into solid pellets. The solid form can either be sequestered or mixed with hydrogen and turned into another product like diesel and gasoline, creating clean burning, sulphur-free fuel..CE says the fuel would be useable in most current transportation models without requiring any modifications..The pilot project was set up in Squamish, B.C. in 2015 with private investments and assistance from the provincial government. Initial costs of the process were originally estimated to be around $600/tonne. After running the facility for two years, however, they discovered the costs would be significantly lower; between $94 and $232/tonne. .Fuels created from the lower end of the capture price would cost around $1 per litre to produce, Carbon Engineering’s CEO Steve Oldham said last year..Getting to net-zero.Oil companies already use a process by which they inject CO2 into the ground to push oil closer to the surface. If the process is tight, the CO2 stays in the ground, allowing the production to claim a credit, essentially, of sequestration for production..Reusing CO2 in hydrocarbon fuels can also reduce reliance on the production and refining of fossil fuels for gasoline, and will also produce a net-zero product. Further, emissions can again be recycled through the same process and reused..“I would never say to anybody that you want to put all your eggs in one basket – the future of the planet is very important for us all,” Oldham said last year..“But having the technology built, available, ready to go, with no harmful chemical side-effects, less land-usage… that’s a good thing.”.Environmentalists are wary of the technology being used to justify the continued reliance on fossil fuels, however..“It’s a huge concern,” Tzeporah Berman, a former board member of Alberta’s Oil Sands Advisory Panel told BBC news in 2018..“We need to be working together to figure out how we move away completely from fossil fuel – that’s our moral and economic challenge but these technologies provide a false hope that we can continue to depend on fossil fuels and produce and burn them, and technology will fix it.”.Technology has brought solar, wind, hydro, electric, carbon capture and now atmospheric carbon removal. It is estimated that carbon removal technologies will become a trillion dollar per year industry.
After the federal election, critics of the Liberal’s climate change targets had something new to ponder: what Prime Minister Trudeau meant by Canada reaching“net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.”.In Alberta, some commentators and pundits took that to mean further difficulties for the oil sands in general and Alberta in particular. Over the Christmas break, however, a Canadian company made headlines regarding their latest project, in Texas, that pulls CO2 out of the air and sequesters it, permanently, underground..Carbon Engineering Ltd. (CE), a Canadian-based clean energy company, was founded in 2009 and “grew from academic work conducted on carbon management technologies by Professor David Keith’s research groups at the University of Calgary and Carnegie Mellon University,” according to the website..“CE is privately owned and is funded by investment or commitments from private investors and government agencies (including) Bill Gates, CNRL founder Murray Edwards, Chevron Technology Ventures, and Australian mining and petroleum company BHP.”.One facility can, according to their data, pull around one megatonne of C02 from the air per year, equivalent to the work of 40 million trees. Alberta’s oil sands emit roughly 70 megatonnes..The process uses fans to suck air into a liquid (potassium hydroxide) that binds to CO2. The liquid is then heated and turned into solid pellets. The solid form can either be sequestered or mixed with hydrogen and turned into another product like diesel and gasoline, creating clean burning, sulphur-free fuel..CE says the fuel would be useable in most current transportation models without requiring any modifications..The pilot project was set up in Squamish, B.C. in 2015 with private investments and assistance from the provincial government. Initial costs of the process were originally estimated to be around $600/tonne. After running the facility for two years, however, they discovered the costs would be significantly lower; between $94 and $232/tonne. .Fuels created from the lower end of the capture price would cost around $1 per litre to produce, Carbon Engineering’s CEO Steve Oldham said last year..Getting to net-zero.Oil companies already use a process by which they inject CO2 into the ground to push oil closer to the surface. If the process is tight, the CO2 stays in the ground, allowing the production to claim a credit, essentially, of sequestration for production..Reusing CO2 in hydrocarbon fuels can also reduce reliance on the production and refining of fossil fuels for gasoline, and will also produce a net-zero product. Further, emissions can again be recycled through the same process and reused..“I would never say to anybody that you want to put all your eggs in one basket – the future of the planet is very important for us all,” Oldham said last year..“But having the technology built, available, ready to go, with no harmful chemical side-effects, less land-usage… that’s a good thing.”.Environmentalists are wary of the technology being used to justify the continued reliance on fossil fuels, however..“It’s a huge concern,” Tzeporah Berman, a former board member of Alberta’s Oil Sands Advisory Panel told BBC news in 2018..“We need to be working together to figure out how we move away completely from fossil fuel – that’s our moral and economic challenge but these technologies provide a false hope that we can continue to depend on fossil fuels and produce and burn them, and technology will fix it.”.Technology has brought solar, wind, hydro, electric, carbon capture and now atmospheric carbon removal. It is estimated that carbon removal technologies will become a trillion dollar per year industry.
