Alberta has firmly led the Canadian charge on CCS. It has more CO2 storage capacity than Norway, Korea, India, and double the entire Middle East, according to the Global CCS Institute.
Back in 2007, the Alberta and federal governments established a task force on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as a way of reducing emissions from oil, gas, and energy operations. That led to a report in 2008 that said: “CCS is seen as a technological solution that allows Canada to continue to increase its energy production while reducing (carbon dioxide) emissions from these activities. . . .
“CCS is strategically important to Canada for several reasons. First and foremost, Canada is endowed with an abundance of fossil fuels (including an unparalleled oil sands resource).”
The task force noted that public support for CCS was high, with 64% of the public being open to the idea of government financial support for CCS. All that happened under the Conservative Stephen Harper government, which, in 2015, lost power to the Justin Trudeau Liberals.
Trudeau himself went on to say in 2017 these memorable words: “No country would find 173 billion barrels of oil in the ground and leave them there.”
That’s not a message repeated since, and certainly not by his relentless minister of environment and climate change, Steven Guilbeault. On CCS, Guilbeault maintains that while carbon capture and storage “is happening in Canada,” it is not the “be-all and end-all.”
Much more positively, we now have Jonathan Wilkinson, Canada’s energy and natural resources minister, saying he expects 20 to 25 commercial-scale CCS projects to break ground in Canada within the next decade.
And we finally have what Ottawa first promised in 2021: a system of tax credits for investments in carbon capture — which industry sees as a way to get those 20 to 25 carbon-capture projects built.
The tax incentive covers up to 50 per cent of the capital cost of CCS and CCUS carbon-capture projects. Although energy company Enbridge points out that tax incentives in the U.S. are more attractive than what Canada is offering.
“CCUS” is one of the carbon-capture models. It stands for Carbon Capture Use and Storage or Carbon Capture Utilization and Sequestration. Under CCUS, captured carbon dioxide can be used elsewhere (for example, to increase the flow from an oilfield, or locked into concrete). Or it can be permanently stored underground, held there by rock formations or in deep saltwater reservoirs.
Canada’s climate plan includes this: “Increased use of CCUS features in the mix of every credible path to achieving net zero by 2050.”
As well, the feds have supported a couple of smaller CCS projects through the Canada Growth Fund and its “carbon contract for difference” approach.
To date, Alberta has firmly led the Canadian charge on CCS. It has more CO2 storage capacity than Norway, Korea, India, and double the entire Middle East, according to the Global CCS Institute.
From the Alberta government’s Canadian Energy Centre
In the most recent move in Alberta, Shell Canada announced it is going ahead with its Polaris carbon capture project in Alberta. It is designed to capture up to 650,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually from Shell’s Scotford refinery and chemicals complex near Edmonton.
That works out to approximately 40 per cent of Scotford’s direct CO2 emissions from the refinery and 22 per cent of its emissions from the chemicals complex.
Shell’s announcement sparked this from Wilkinson: “The Shell Polaris announcement last week was a direct result of the investment tax credit.”
Also in Alberta, the Alberta government notes: “The Alberta government has invested billions of dollars into carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) projects and programs. . . . The Alberta government is investing $1.24 billion for up to 15 years in the Quest and Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL) projects.”
Quest is Shell’s earlier Scotford project. “The project is capturing CO2 from oil sands upgrading and transporting it 65 km north for permanent storage approximately 2 km below the earth’s surface. Since commercial operations began in 2015, the Quest Project has captured and stored over 8 million tonnes of CO2.”
The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line is a 240-km pipeline that carries CO2 captured from the Sturgeon Refinery and the Nutrien Redwater fertilizer plant to enhanced oil recovery projects in central Alberta. Since commercial operations began in 2020, the ACTL Project has captured and sequestered over 3.5 million tonnes of CO2.
Shell and partner ATCO EnPower now plan a new CCS project at Scotford. And, on a smaller scale, Entropy Inc. will add a second phase of CCS at its Glacier gas plant near Grande Prairie.
And those are just two of Alberta’s coming CCS projects. That province is working on at least 11 more that could lead to over $20 billion in capital expenditures and reduce about 24 million tonnes of emissions annually — the equivalent of reducing Alberta’s annual industrial emissions by almost 10 per cent.
And then there’s the giant CCS project proposed by the Pathways Alliance, a partnership representing about 95% of Canada’s oil sands production.
“The project would see CO2 captured from more than 20 oil sands facilities and transported 400 kilometers by pipeline to a terminal in the Cold Lake area, where it will be stored underground in a joint carbon-storage hub. . . . A final investment decision is expected in 2025.”
Alberta alone has more CO2 storage capacity than Norway, Korea, India, and double the entire Middle East, according to the Global CCS Institute.
When Wilkinson spoke in favor of CCS, Capital Power had just backed away from building a carbon-capture facility at its Genesee power plant in Alberta. But Enbridge, which would have built the associated storage hub, is still “strongly interested.”
In Saskatchewan, which also offers government support for CCS, more than 5 million tonnes of CO2 have been captured at SaskPower’s Boundary Dam 3 power plant. “Someone would have to plant more than 69 million trees and let them grow for 10 years to match that.”
In B.C., natural gas company FortisBC offers small-scale carbon-capture technology to help businesses that use natural gas to save energy and decrease greenhouse gas emissions.
And the B.C. government says that, potentially, two to six large-scale CCS projects could be developed in northeast B.C. over the next decade.
“Small-scale operations currently exist in B.C. that inject a mixture of CO2 and H2S (hydrogen sulfide) deep into underground formations. This process, which is referred to as acid-gas disposal, already occurs at 12 sites.”
Elsewhere, CCS projects are operating or being developed around the world, including in Australia, Denmark, and the U.S. A CCS project in Norway has been in operation for 28 years.
It took a while to get the ball rolling in Canada, but CCS/CCUS is here to stay, reducing emissions and keeping industries alive to contribute to the economy.
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