Leading B.C. clean tech firm calls for more funding for carbon capture

A Burnaby company is attracting international investment in its cutting-edge technology to tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

Inside Svante’s massive Burnaby manufacturing plant, large robotic arms are moving piles of specially engineered filters. Svante describes their technology as a generational leap in carbon capture – the process of capturing CO2 emissions and burying them deep underground.

“We’re producing the components that allow the capture of CO2 out of smokestacks and out of the air,” says Brett Henkel, the company’s senior vice president of business development. He co-founded Svante after quitting his previous job to research a way to solve a major challenge in carbon capture – separating CO2 from nitrogen.

“It’s been a worldwide challenge to crack the nut on how to separate those two molecules in the least expensive way possible,” says Henkel.

Svante is confident it’s cracked the nut. Eighteen years after Henkel began experimenting in his garage, the pioneering clean tech firm employs more than three hundred people and has attracted plenty of public and private sector investment.

“Just look at the ownership of our company. We have brand names like Samsung, 3M, Suncor, Cenovus, Chevron, Temasak, a global investment fund out of Singapore,” he says.

The B.C. and federal governments are keen on carbon capture to help them reach their emissions targets. Combined, B.C. and the Canada Growth Fund have committed more than $140 million in funding for Svante.

Svante is targeting hard-to-tackle emissions from heavy industry like steel, concrete, pulp and paper.

One of Svante’s pilot projects is at the Lafarge Cement Plant in Richmond. It’s been capturing one tonne of CO2 from the plant every day. Henkel says the pilot has been successful and it’s allowing them to design commercial plants on a large scale.

Svante is hoping to build its first carbon capture project with Mercer’s Peace River pulp mill in Alberta. They’re in the engineering phase now, and it’s estimated the project would cost more than half a billion dollars.

The enormous cost of carbon capture has long been a criticism from environmentalists. Carbon capture has been around for decades, but the results have been underwhelming. Plus, critics say carbon capture shouldn’t be a substitute for transitioning away from fossil fuels.

“We’ve been spending billions of dollars around the world since the 1990s without too much effect…it simply hasn’t worked,” says Chris Bataille, of Columbia University’s Centre on Global Energy Policy.

Bataille adds that CCUS (carbon capture, utilization and storage) hasn’t worked because we’ve been chasing the wrong technological methods, and carbon pricing and other greenhouse gas regulations haven’t been strong enough.

Despite the challenges faced in the sector, Bataille and companies like Svante are calling for more public and private investment to scale up Canadian carbon capture technology and make it commercially viable around the world.

“I believe we eventually need a policy framework that results in decarbonization of industry which could include a higher carbon price,” says Henkel. He adds getting projects going now would create much-needed high-paying Canadian jobs.

Henkel compares this shift to decarbonize industries to another historical turning point.

“We figured out how not have to garbage on our front yard, we figured out how to have a sewage system. I think this is another thing we can figure out,” he says.