Ottawa announces funding for 5 Alberta carbon capture projects

Natural Resources Minister Tim Hodgson has announced $21.5 million in federal funding for five Alberta projects that aim to lower the cost of capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions.

The projects are being funded under the Energy Innovation Program, which put out a call for carbon capture, utilization and storage technology proposals.

Bow Valley Carbon Cochrane Ltd., a partnership between Inter Pipeline Ltd. and Entropy Inc., is to receive $10 million to add equipment to a gas extraction plant northwest of Calgary that aims to capture emissions equivalent to taking more than 12,000 cars off the road a year.

Enbridge Inc. is to get $4 million and Enhance Energy Inc. is to receive $5 million for separate storage hubs in Central Alberta.

The remainder of the funds are going toward a project looking to improve analysis technologies and another to test small-scale carbon capture from diesel engines.

The announcement comes as uncertainty continues to cloud a $16.5-billion carbon capture project proposed by the Pathways Alliance, a consortium that includes six major oilsands producers.

The companies have not made a final investment decision on the project, which would be one of the largest in the world if built, and federal and provincial support remains a question mark.

Pathways would capture carbon dioxide emissions from more than 20 oilsands facilities in northern Alberta and transport them 400 kilometres away by pipeline to a terminal in the Cold Lake area in eastern Alberta, where they would be stored in an underground hub to prevent them from entering the atmosphere.

Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has pitched a "grand bargain" where that emissions-cutting project would go ahead in tandem with a new crude oil pipeline to the West Coast, which no company has thus far proposed to build.

Ottawa is weighing which projects deemed in the national interest will be subject to a sped-up regulatory review under newly passed federal legislation.