The British Columbia Centre for Innovation and Clean Energy (CICE) has collaborated with Innovative Breakthrough Energy Technologies to produce a first-of-its-kind report dedicated to investigating technologies with the capacity to scale Carbon Dioxide Removal to a one gigatonne milestone.
The report comprises a series of “techno-economic analyses” of various approaches to carbon removal.
The paper’s goal is to arm B.C. innovators, investors, and policy makers with data that answers carbon-related questions regarding technology gaps and challenges, opportunities, scaling, and more.
The report, “Catalyzing Carbon Dioxide Removal,” emphasizes the role carbon removal can play in meeting aggressive emissions targets while acknowledging that CDR is not a replacement for decarbonization.
Positing that climate impacts will be “devastating, irreversible, and self-perpetuating” should net-zero goals fail to be achieved, CICE’s paper pushes an “urgent need to scale CDR capacity as quickly as possible.”
The good news is that Canada is in a “unique position” to accelerate the development and deployment of CDR technologies, according to the report.
This position hails from a “unique combination of abundant natural resources, large existing and potential carbon sinks, strong academic research, and extensive industrial and engineering capacity.”
Canada is also home to organizations supporting innovative development and environmental research, with many Canadian companies “at the forefront of advancing CDR technology and broader decarbonizing innovations,” according to the analysis. “Canada has significant potential to demonstrate and scale their contributions, playing a pivotal role in the global effort.”
British Columbia specifically boasts a “wealth of diverse academic institutions, research centres, government programs, and organizations supporting innovation in the field of CDR,” and is home to global leaders in nature-based and engineered CDR technology development and deployment, according to the report.
Techcouver has reported on some of these firms, including the storied Svante.
“These entities have the potential to greatly enable the development and deployment of CDR at [gigatonne] scale worldwide,” the report suggests.
In conclusion, it recommends that the province takes advantage of a “presence of leading entrepreneurs and academics in B.C. who are developing world-leading carbon management technologies” by fostering “collaboration between academia, industry, and government to create a vibrant innovation ecosystem.”
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