Canada invests in Vancouver CCUS innovator

The government of Canada said July 7 it would invest C$25mn (US$20.6mn) in Svante, a Vancouver-based carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) developer.

The funding, through the Strategic Innovation Fund’s Net Zero Accelerator initiative, will support Svante’s C$97.2mn project to develop and commercialise its solid sorbent capture technology, which targets CO₂ emissions from hard-to-abate point sources like cement plants and blue hydrogen facilities.

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“We are keen to partner with Canadian companies like Svante that are creating clean technologies that will help key industries around the world, including in Canada, significantly cut down their greenhouse gas emissions,” said Francois-Philippe Champagne, Canada’s minister of innovation, science and industry.

Svante has plans to scale up the production of its proprietary rapid adsorption machine (RAM), capable of capturing as much as 2,000 mt/day of CO₂. The technology is already being piloted in Richmond, BC and Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, with a third pilot under design and construction in California.

Svante will also establish a new Centre of Excellence for Carbon Capture, Use and Storage in Vancouver that will support the commercialisation of its structured absorbent filters and test its RAM technology.

“Vancouver is the Silicon-Valley of carbon capture technology development and we are very proud to anchor our world headquarter, R&D and engineering test centre, and first commercial filter manufacturing plant in Canada,’’ Svante CEO Claude Letourneau said. “Lowering the capital cost of the capture of the CO₂ emitted in industrial production is critical to the world’s net-zero carbon goals required to stabilise the climate.” 

At commercial scale, the filter manufacturing plant will have the annual capacity to deliver filter modules capable of removing up to 3mn mt/yr of CO₂, Svante said.