If approved by the company, Shell’s Polaris facility will be located at the Scotford complex in northwest Edmonton and will collect emissions from its refineries and chemical facilities.

Shell Canada President Susanna Pierce said in an interview: “This is a consistent and very exciting implementation of our global strategy in Alberta.”

Polaris will become Shell’s second CCS project after construction in the province Exploration at the end of 2015.

The construction cost of Quest is 1.3 billion US dollars, and it can sequester about 1 million tons of emissions every year-equivalent to the annual emissions of about 250,000 cars. The project received US$745 million from the Alberta government and US$120 million from the federal government.

Polaris’s price tag was not disclosed. However, officials said that the cost of building a new project similar to Quest would be reduced by about 30%.

Pierce said that based on the current and projected price of the carbon tax and Clean Fuel Standard.

“This is the right incentive and regulatory measures,” she said.

The Polaris facility is designed to capture the emissions and transport the carbon dioxide through a 12-kilometer pipeline to a storage well near Fort Joseph in Alta Province. The gas will then be stored more than two kilometers underground and used to store carbon dioxide from the Quest facility.

Watch | resistanceCarbon tax encourages companies to build CCS projects:

There are different views on technologies that capture carbon emissions and use carbon dioxide to produce more oil from aging reservoirs. 2:50

Climate target

The federal government officially submits Canada’s new greenhouse gas emission targets Go to the united nations on monday, Pledged that the country will reduce its emissions by 40% to 45% by 2030 from 2005 levels.

To achieve climate goals, Canada’s total emissions must fall between 401 and 438 megatons by 2030. In 2018, the last year for which information is available, Canada’s emissions were 729 metric tons.

“This project is actually reducing existing emissions. It brings us closer to the level of emission reduction we need to see from oil and gas. But we need to see more projects of this type to truly achieve this emission reduction. Has committed to internationalization,” said Chris Severson-Baker, Alberta Regional Director of the Pembina Institute, an environmental think tank.

Severson-Baker said that reducing emissions and relying on renewable energy rather than fossil fuels is essential to combat climate change, adding that carbon capture can play a significant role in decarbonizing existing materials and energy.

He said: “We have a very small start here, and we need to see a massive expansion of this kind of thing in order to get the real big cuts we need from Canada’s oil and gas industry.”

Some environmental organizations recommend investment in carbon capture facilities Spend better elsewhere, Such as the construction of renewable energy projects.

The CCS industry is booming

According to a recent report by the international energy research company Wood Mackenzie, the carbon capture industry is still considered an emerging industry, but the country is surpassing its own weight.

The report lists several global milestones that Canada has reached, including:

• The largest commercial CO2 enhanced oil recovery and storage project.
• The largest operating CO2 pipeline by capacity.
• The world’s first carbon capture facility for coal-fired power generation.
• The world’s first oil refinery built with carbon capture technology.

“This report is a bit unlike our Canadians. We don’t usually like to brag, it’s a bragging report,” said Scott Norlin, a senior analyst at Wood Mackenzie in Calgary. That report.

Norlin said that Canada emits about 2% of the world’s greenhouse gases, but it has about 14% of the world’s CCS operating capacity.

Shell is the latest company to announce plans for a new facility, after previously proposing to build hydrogen and CCS facilities. Suncor and Atco And a carbon transportation and storage project TC Energy and Pembina pipeline.

“In the past few months, we have received millions of tons of project announcements. So there is no shortage of skills and motivation to do this,” Norin said.

Many smaller companies are also developing CCS projects, such as Entropy, a private company that develops technology in cooperation with the University of Regina, which expects the technology to be profitable at a carbon price of less than US$50 per ton.

The federal carbon tax is currently US$40 per ton and will rise to US$50 in 2022, and then increase by US$15 per year until it reaches US$170 in 2030.

There are already several CCS projects in operation in western Canada, including the US$1.2 billion Alberta Carbon Trunk System, which collects emissions from the Redwater Fertilizer plant and Sturgeon refinery near Edmonton, and Gas injection Access to aging oil reservoirs in central and southern Alberta.

Some companies use the carbon materials they capture to make various products, such as Fountain pen and soap.

Shell said that dozens of employees are working on detailed designs for the Polaris project, and the final investment decision is expected to be made in 2023. The facility may be put into operation in the middle of 10 years.

The first phase of the project will isolate approximately 750,000 tons of emissions each year. The focus of the second phase is to isolate up to 10 million tons of emissions from other industrial companies in the province each year.

During the entire project life cycle, Polaris will have a storage capacity of approximately 300 million tons of carbon dioxide.

Shell has sold most of its oil sands assets in Alberta, but still owns 10% of the Albian Sands mining facility.

According to 2018 data from the federal government, oil sands accounted for about 11% of the country’s total emissions, and other oil and gas production accounted for another 11%.

Watch | Is carbon capture the solution to the oil industry and climate change?