Quebec eyed as prime spot to suck carbon from atmosphere

One day early next month, in the shadow of Iceland's mountain peaks, high-powered fans are expected to begin to pull in air from the surrounding countryside.

Carbon dioxide will be isolated, converted to liquid and pumped underground, where it will, over time, solidify into rock. 

The plant, known as Mammoth, is set to be the largest direct air capture and storage facility in the world, designed to bring in up to 36,000 tonnes of CO2 per year. It runs on renewable energy from a nearby geothermal power plant.

Climeworks, the company behind the project, views the launch as another stepping stone for the technology, which proponents say could play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the years ahead.

"You only learn from building. You only scale from building," Daniel Nathan, the company's chief project development officer, said in an interview from Copenhagen.

Direct air capture (DAC) — which involves removing carbon from the atmosphere, rather than at the source of production, such as oilsands facilities — has attracted hundreds of millions in financing in Canada and around the world.

In Canada, the sector is still in its early stages. Deep Sky, a project developer based in Montreal, is aiming to establish carbon removal projects starting in Quebec, where access to cheap hydroelectric power is a draw for the energy-intensive technology.

But questions remain about whether direct air capture is the best use of limited public funds and resources as the world seeks to reduce climate-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

According to the International Energy Agency, DAC projects should not be seen as "alternative to cutting emissions or an excuse for delayed action, but they can be an important part of the suite of technology options used to achieve climate goals." The IEA said the United States is a world leader in terms of funding and support for DAC.

Over the past year, Deep Sky has announced a number of planned pilot projects and has secured $75 million in funding, from a number of private firms as well as Investissement Québec, a provincial funding agency.

Damien Steel, the company's CEO and a former venture capitalist, envisions a global "multi trillion dollar" industry in the not-so-distant future. The goal for Deep Sky is to build a plant to capture and store carbon in Quebec within the next three years, potentially in the valley of the St. Lawrence River. Steel also wants to establish plants in western Canada.

"We need to build an industry that's multiple times the size of the oil and gas industry," he said. "What Saudi Arabia is to the oil and gas industry Canada could be to carbon removal."

First, though, the company plans to test out 10 direct air capture technologies from startups to determine which one is best suited for Quebec's humid summers and frigid winters.

"Most of these companies today are literally kids in a garage. I've been to the garage, the garage goes up, there's a DAC unit sitting inside," he said.