Ottawa to fund CCUS research and development
The Canadian government said July 7 it would support research and development (R&D) into emerging carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) technologies with a C$81.5mn (US$63mn) call for expressions of interest into CCUS R&D.
The call will be conducted across three focus areas and over the next several months. The call for capture technologies is open now and will close October 3; a call for storage technologies is expected to be launched this fall, while a call for utilisation technologies is expected to open in the winter of 2023.
Funded through the federal government’s Energy Innovation Program, carbon capture R&D projects selected through this call will help emission-intensive industries identify and develop technologies to capture their CO2 emissions.
“There are a number of CCUS technologies out there; some of them have been shown to work in terms of carbon capture but still require further elaboration and ultimately cost reduction to get to the point where you have commercially viable projects,” Jonathan Wilkinson, federal natural resources minister, told reporters July 8. “We’re looking to help with some of that R&D work.”
Early CCUS and carbon capture and storage (CCS) deployment in Canada has focused on the oil and gas sector, but this call, Wilkinson said, is aimed at other hard-to-decarbonise sectors like fertiliser and cement production.
“It’s a range of industrial applications where CCUS may well be the most cost-effective way to eliminate carbon emissions, at least for the foreseeable future,” he said.
As part of its 2021 budget, the Canadian government plans to invest C$319mn in research, development and demonstrations that can advance the commercialisation of CCUS technologies.
The R&D call is the second in support of CCUS innovation and follows a 2021 call which earlier this year awarded up to C$50mn to 11 large-scale projects in support of front-end engineering and design studies.