Montreal-based Deep Sky announced on Wednesday that it had secured funding from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a firm established by Gates, to support its Deep Sky Alpha project.
According to CEO Damien Steel, construction at the facility in Innisfail, just north of Calgary, is already in progress.
“This should be a proud moment for Canada. This facility in April of 2025 will be one of the first full-stack facilities in North America to actually remove CO2 from the atmosphere using renewable power, and store it underground in a deep saline aquifer,” Steel said
Founded in 2023 by Frederic Lalonde — co-founder of the online travel platform Hopper, Inc. — Deep Sky is on a mission to address climate change by establishing the world’s first direct air capture test hub and commercialization center.
This marks the first time a Canadian company has received investment from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, which finances cutting-edge climate technology projects to speed up their adoption and reduce costs.
“The world will ultimately need many approaches to carbon removal at prices far lower than is achievable today, but Deep Sky’s platform will enable and accelerate the kind of real-world innovation that could make affordable (direct air capture) achievable,” said Mario Fernandez, head of Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, in a statement.
Direct air capture involves extracting carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere, a method distinct from capturing emissions at industrial sources like smokestacks. This approach targets historical emissions already present in the air, potentially reversing the effects of climate change.
The technology typically uses large-scale systems with fans or vacuums to draw in air, passing it through filters to isolate CO2, which is then stored safely underground.
Similar projects have been undertaken by other companies, such as Canada’s Carbon Engineering Ltd., acquired by U.S. firm Occidental Petroleum for US$1.1 billion in 2023, and Switzerland’s Climeworks, which operates a facility in Iceland.
However, despite growing interest and an increasing number of pilot initiatives globally, direct air capture technology remains expensive and difficult to scale
“(Direct air capture) is much, much more difficult than (traditional carbon capture and storage) because the density of CO2 in the air is much lower than the density of CO2 in the chimney stack,” Steel explained.
“(The industry) also has an energy problem. You need renewable power to run these devices and we just don’t have enough renewable power on the planet.”
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