The premier has announced $3.75 million in funding to Carbon Engineering Ltd. in Squamish.
At the 2016 Globe Conference on Sustainability and Innovation in Vancouver on Wednesday, Premier Christy Clark made the announcement of funding totalling $11.9 million from the province’s Innovative Clean Energy Fund for programs aimed at promoting clean-energy vehicles, clean air and clean water, according to a post on Clark’s website.
Another $5 million, including the Carbon Engineering amount, is from the ICE Fund, which is from a levy on the sale of specified energy products such as natural gas, fuel oil and grid-delivered propane. Saltworks Technologies of Vancouver received $1.25 million for wastewater treatment pilot projects.
The $3.75 million for Carbon Engineering, which is located on the Squamish Oceanfront and originally started as a pilot project to scrub carbon from the air, will “support the design and construction of a synthetic fuels demonstration plant in Squamish that will use carbon dioxide captured from thin air to synthesize diesel or gasoline fuel,” according to Clark.
The project is expected to deliver the world’s first “air-to-fuels” plant and demonstrate that it’s “viable to produce low-carbon fuel using carbon captured directly from the atmosphere.”
“Synthetic fuels – diesel or gasoline – would be manufactured from carbon dioxide captured from the air, water and renewable electricity, so that once burned in a vehicle they would simply return the carbon to the air – meaning the fuels can be nearly carbon-neutral,” said the post.
Carbon Engineering CEO Adrian Corless said the company has received "an amazing level of encouragement" from the local community, Squamish Nation and the provincial government over the year it has been operating in Squamish. The new funding will accelerate the synthetic fuels project the company currently has underway.
"We're hoping that this project and follow-on work will make B.C. a global leader in carbon-neutral fuels," Corless said.
