The roughly two-hectare facility, still under construction, is hosting what could be called a carbon removal Olympics. It will pilot eight different versions of a similar technology using various machines that will suck in air, remove the carbon dioxide and send it to a central plant where it will be compressed and liquified for storage deep underground.
The winner of this initiative wouldn’t get a medal on a podium. Instead, Deep Sky, the Montreal-based project developer behind it, plans to take the best versions of the direct air capture technology that prove most effective in Canada’s climate and deploy them on a commercial scale all over the country.
It all depends on the province you are from. NL, BC, MB, QC have long had massive excesses in energy and nearly zero fossil fuel generation, as still the case today. Canadian provinces keep selling to neighbouring US states for a healthy profit since we have too much here. ON got rid of coal for LNG and are developing wind and solar, so they don’t have to rely on their gas peak time plants as hard going forward.
The capacity to deliver energy is one thing but the other is the time and rate at which you do. Fossil fuel is good at ramping up on demand while renewables are beholden to weather changes, and on the other side the power demand rate is relatively predictable in terms of the time of day (I’ve worked in this industry). Renewable tech including batteries and hydro storage will displace the need to use those LNG plants further.
This is a surplus of electricity while we are still using fossil fuels.
Cut out fossil fuels and power EVERYTHING with electricity and we’ll see how much “surplus” we have.
Displacing doesn’t necessarily mean cut everything out at once, it can include a gradual reduction/ramp down as the other increases by similar amounts at a time.
It can, but it doesn’t.