Carbon capture technology, like what is being developed at Squamish's Carbon Engineering, is critical in the fight against the forces of climate change, according to a Simon Fraser University professor.
"It's essential because we are in such uncharted territory when it comes to climate change, with all of the effects that we're seeing with these severe weather events, it is incontrovertible that this is happening because of these high [carbon dioxide] levels in our atmosphere," said Sami Khan, assistant professor at the School of Sustainable Energy Engineering, at SFU, who has toured his students around the Carbon Engineering (CE) Innovation Centre.
(Squamish is the home of CE’s Direct Air Capture research and development and demonstration plant.)
Khan teaches both undergraduate and graduate carbon capture engineering courses.
Carbon capture basics
While carbon capture has been around for a while—according to the Environmental Law Institute, carbon dioxide capture technology has been used since the 1920s to separate marketable gases from the rest—why it is useful may still be unfamiliar to many.
Khan asks his students to think about the processes at play when cooking at home.
"Cooking indoors is the process that releases toxic gasses. So we have a kitchen vent that can safely capture all of it and reduce the amount of those toxic gasses in the household," he said, adding that while household plants also help clean the air, they aren't enough.
"Let's say this vent stops working, ... then toxic smoke is going to build up in the household. The carbon monoxide alarm is going to start running. So then we have to open the doors and hope that all of this escapes out. So all of this is an analogy for carbon capture."
Human behaviour has been contributing to significant emissions and carbon dioxide, which is toxic, clogging our "house" with toxins.
"So now cleaning that up is an important technological challenge of our generation," he said.
Carbon capture is one way to do that.
"We also have to clean up where it is persisting, and that's where direct air capture comes so removing CO2 both from the atmosphere, but also directly from the sources where CO2 is being released, is a nutshell of carbon capture."
Carbon Engineering spokesperson Cameron Lust notes that major scientific assessments—including those from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – conclude that billions of tonnes of carbon removal will be needed to limit warming and mitigate the impacts of climate change.
Direct Air Capture
“Direct Air Capture is a technology that captures carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas contributing to climate change, directly from the air. When paired with safe, secure storage (DAC+S), it enables a highly scalable, measurable, and verifiable form of carbon removal,” Lust said.
[See how Direct Air Capture works in the video below.]
“DAC is a different but complementary solution to point-source carbon capture that can help hard-to-abate industries—like aviation—address their residual emissions from any place by decoupling the point of capture from the source of emission. For industries like aviation, we believe DAC+S offers a practical and cost-effective solution today for organizations advancing decarbonization goals with measurable, verifiable solutions.”
In other words, Direct Air Capture extracts CO2 from the atmosphere at any location, while carbon capture is generally done at the point where emissions are made, like at an industrial plant.
“The CO2 can be permanently stored in deep geological formations or used for a variety of applications,” reads the International Energy Agency website on carbon capture technologies.
Why not just go cleaner?
With carbon capture associated with scrubbing carbon from the atmosphere created by power plants, natural gas processing facilities and other industrial processes, wouldn't it be better to just switch to cleaner processes?
Khan says even that wouldn't be enough at this point.
"If today, everything was running on clean energy, we still have the problem that the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are too high. There are pre-industrial emission levels, which are commonly said to have been 280 parts per million (ppm). Currently, we're way over that at [419.3 ppm as of 2023], and we know that that's causing these effects of climate change. So that's CO2 that is now in the atmosphere. It has to be removed, and it has to go somewhere where it's all going to re-emerge and cause the same effects again. And that is why I say [carbon capture] is critical."
But oil and gas are funding it
The fact that big oil and gas companies are investing heavily in this technology doesn't mean that investment isn't useful, Khan suggests.
"The interest from different groups, including oil and gas, the momentum that it's providing is essentially advancement of carbon capture, where it can become cost-effective, it can be safer, and then [we can] really target the big problem," he said.
"What I tell students is all momentum, all awareness, all interest in carbon capture is good interest. It's taking it in the right direction," he said.
And while some may argue investing in carbon capture is a way for Big Oil to continue to expand, Khan points to government policy as the solution to that concern.
"This is where policy comes in, right? Good policy frameworks. You can control the development of new oil and gas while ensuring that carbon capture is really meeting the intended needs that it has set out to do."
The cost of Direct Air Capture is still something that needs to be overcome.
"It's a fair concern because there's energy that's needed to run at a space that's needed, but you know, engineers have come to the rescue many times for our generations. And this is also what we teach here at SFU Sustainable Energy Engineering," he said.
"There is an optimization problem here, which can be solved in the next 10 years ... or even faster, where costs start to go down. These systems are powered by renewable energy systems. And by these systems, I mean carbon capture systems, so that sweet middle ground where it's operating without causing more environmental issues, while being effective in terms of costs—it's there on the horizon."
Khan stresses that carbon capture technologies aren’t working in competition with other clean tech options.
"It's complementary to clean energy systems but working in parallel.
What about CO2 storage?
Khan said there is a misunderstanding about the storage of carbon dioxide in terms of the safety of pumping it to be stored underground.
"There are studies that if the facilities are designed in areas where geological risks are considered and the safe, long-term storage possible," he said.
Future advancements
Khan sees two areas of advancement that are next for carbon capture technology.
The first area is research and development.
There are new materials and ways to make the process faster and reduce the energy needed.
Though already fairly evolved, another advancement he sees coming is in capturing the CO2 at the source.
"There's room there for innovation [there]," he said, noting that recently, in his graduate carbon capture class, students looked at how they could capture CO2 from a bioenergy plant using some of the wood that was damaged by the wood beetle.
"It's a great source of energy, but also, you don't want to put the CO2 in the atmosphere, so this is where you can deploy some of the existing technologies to make it more efficient."
Asked what ideally he would like to see in 10 years, Khan said widespread use of carbon capture technology deployed at the sources—factories or plants— of products we currently don't have great replacements for.
"The fossil fuel-driven energy systems to power these sectors," he explained. "Our society still needs steel. We need concrete. These basic needs are going to be necessary for decades ahead. So that's where targeted deployed carbon capture, right at these facilities, right at the point where the CO2 is being emitted, and capturing it and converting it or storing it is going to be very important, and it's already growing."
He noted that the carbon dioxide that is captured in the process, doesn't have to go to waste.
It can be used and converted into products that could be polymers or fuels, but that is not all.
There are also carbon-neutral processes for its use.
One of his students recently designed a way to convert captured CO2 into urea, a fertilizer that works well for corn, grasses, or soil that is deficient in nitrogen.
Political impact?
Asked if technologies like carbon capture may be less focused on given the global swing toward more right-wing governments, who may not prioritize environmental protection, Khan said the science is clear to all.
"Irrespective of the political spectrum and viewpoints, the science is clear. Climate change is being caused by greenhouse gasses, and reducing those levels is key to preserving a sustainable future."
Khan's next carbon capture courses will be offered in the summer of 2025.
The latest on Carbon Engineering
Carbon Engineering, which currently employs 185 people, about 70% of whom live in Squamish, has purchased another local property in the Business Park.
Lust said as soon as that deal was done, the company began progressing through the design work for the planned facility.
“We continue to work closely with the District of Squamish on the project and will be able to share more information as we progress through engineering,’ he said.
Meanwhile, in regards to the company’s planned direct air capture facility in the Permian Basin, in Texas, construction for that first facility to use the company’s technology—named STRATOS—is nearing completion, with commercial operations slated to begin in mid-2025, according to Lust.
