Earlier this year, a consultant for Huron Clean Energy registered to lobby the federal government. Craig Robinson filed the registration to "assist client in seeking financial support from relevant federal programs and agencies for clean growth and clean technologies," it reads.
Huron Clean Energy is a licensed partner of Carbon Engineering Ltd, and the Squamish Huron Clean Energy Corp. was founded in 2018.
Steve Oldham, the CEO of Carbon Engineering, said Huron plans to build and operate plants in Canada with First Nations partnerships.
Huron Clean Energy declined to provide someone to be interviewed for this story.
"From Carbon Engineering's perspective, this is a good opportunity for us, consistent with the way that we want to drive our business," Oldham told the Chief. "We have a working pilot plant. We've raised the financing required to develop that further, but we need to implement large-scale plants. Those large-scale plants, the financing, the business attractiveness of those plants works for later plants, but the first couple of plants, whenever you build a first of anything, it's always harder. So we're approaching the federal government in Canada and also the U.S. government to assist us in getting our first plants done."
In May, the first commercial plant using Carbon Engineering tech opened in Texas. The test plant is in Squamish.
"We would love to build our second plant in Canada," Oldham said. On a potential location, he added, "We're pretty flexible. We think there's a number of good locations. There's some in British Columbia that we've identified, some attractive locations in Alberta, Saskatchewan — basically across the country."
On May 21, the president of Huron Clean Energy, Michael Hutchison, wrote to the Squamish Lillooet Regional District seeking support for an application to Canada's Infrastructure Bank to finance its first facility in B.C. For a successful application to the bank, Huron Clean Energy needs to demonstrate the support of all levels of government, including the SLRD.
At the May 22 SLRD meeting, the board decided to send a letter for support to the Canada Infrastructure Bank for Huron Clean Energy.
