REFORMAT AND REUSE

How five startups are transforming carbon capture

Asemi-trailer is idling just outside Enmax Corp.’s Shepard gas-fired power plant on Calgary’s eastern outskirts, and it is loaded with a grey granular substance that’s become Apoorv Sinha’s life’s work.

Mr. Sinha’s startup, Carbon Upcycling Technologies, has invited business partners and government officials to have a look at the reaction vessel that yielded the powder from the plant’s waste carbon dioxide, and then watch the 40-tonne load trundle away to a concrete batch plant in Edmonton.

His team manufactured the additive from the greenhouse gas that otherwise would have been emitted into the sky. Lafarge Canada will add the powder to its concrete mix in place of some of the portland cement it normally uses, and lower emissions from making its own products.

“There’s no doubt we’ve come a long way, but to really make the impact that we’re striving for we’ve got to change behaviour. The aspiration here is that we start with this Western Canadian business unit, then Lafarge all across the world starts to change how they do business,” said Mr. Sinha, a 31-year-old entrepreneur who has been Calgary-based Carbon Upcycling’s chief executive officer since the technology was first proven in a reactor the size of a cookie tin six years ago.

Carbon Upcycling is in a fastgrowing segment of the Canadian cleantech sector focused on manufacturing useful products and providing innovative services by tapping into the massive volumes of CO2 captured from all kinds of energy and industrial processes to reduce the impact on climate.

A spate of technological developments in the fields of chemicals, manufacturing and agriculture has caught the attention of environmentalists, scientists and venture capitalists alike, as companies tout new uses for the heat-trapping gas that would otherwise be spewed into the atmosphere, injected underground or used to boost oil production.

Of course, there is also a phalanx of environmentalists who are wary of carbon capture, saying the practice will prolong the use of fossil fuels, which they contend must end for the world to get to net-zero emissions.

Even so, the business opportunity looks huge.

The U.S.-based Global CO2 Initiative has estimated the market will be worth as much as US$800-billion a year by 2030, and Canadian entrepreneurs and scientists are already making their mark.

In April, another company focused on lowering concrete’s carbon intensity, Halifax’s CarbonCure Technologies Inc., won part of the US$20-million Carbon XPRIZE, a nearly five-year competition sponsored by Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance and U.S. power company NRG Energy Inc.

The next phase of the technological race has a US$100-million purse, and is sponsored by Tesla Inc. founder Elon Musk and his foundation.

Other major tech players, including Canadian e-commerce giant Shopify Inc., have dedicated funds to find solutions to the carbon conundrum.

The trick for developers will be proving they can scale up and commercialize their innovations – sell them in industrial and consumer markets at a profit – so they will attract investors and make a real difference in the fight to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Here are five emerging Canadian companies with carbon utilization technologies that could be on the verge of major market breakthroughs.