The Squamish oceanfront has its first tenant.
On Monday, Sept. 29, Carbon Engineering announced it is signing a temporary lease to use the “Blue Barn” at the former Nexen site. The global company is developing technology to filter carbon dioxide directly out of the atmosphere.
The Calgary-based company plans to use the property as its first test site for the company’s potentially groundbreaking technology. Harvard University David Keith professor founded Carbon Engineering five years ago. Its investors include some heavy hitters, such as Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
The pilot project marks a major step in transforming the oceanfront lands, a move that could spark the development of an entire new industry in Squamish, said Michael Hutchison, the president of Newport Beach Partnership Ltd. – a joint venture between developers Matthews Southwest and Bethel Lands Corporation to purchase the oceanfront lands. While business incubation is a key element of the 52-acre oceanfront’s sub-area plan – which includes equal parts park, residential and commercial/industrial – the types of businesses slated for the site were not determined, Hutchison noted.
“Squamish has been intimately connected to the environment, for good and ill for a century,” he said. “It seems fitting that this former industry site, overlooking one of the world’s most beautiful environments, will be the world’s first place to test this groundbreaking technology designed to mitigate the effects of climate change.”
Carbon Engineering is Canada’s only finalist in Sir Richard Branson’s $25-million Virgin Earth Challenge – a competition to develop the best technology to remove greenhouse gases from the environment. The Squamish pilot plant is the next step toward demonstrating the commercial viability of the technology, Carbon Engineering’s business development manager Geoff Holmes stated in a press release.
“We’re excited about coming to Squamish,” he said. “There’s great support and expertise here and in the Lower Mainland, and this location puts us in close proximity to many of our key project partners.”
BC Research, a Vancouver firm that specializes in the incubation and commercialization of leading edge technology, is the lead contractor on the pilot program. The pilot plant installation will be a scale model of the processes and components used in direct air capture (DAC) of carbon dioxide capture. It will be built to demonstrate how commercially viable technology could be used on a larger scale, Holmes said.
Mitigating the effects of climate change requires industries to tackle emission sources, but more than 60 per cent of greenhouse gases come for sources such as cars, planes and other means of transport, he noted. The company’s technology draws air into a chamber filled with plastic materials. There water laced with sodium hydroxide reacts with carbon dioxide to pull it out of the air. After several steps a pure stream of carbon is produced. It can then be used for a variety of commercial purposes.
“A lot of people are holding their breath to see how the demonstration plays out,” he said.
