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Good afternoon, and welcome to Globe Climate, a newsletter about climate change, environment and resources in Canada.
A full-blown trade war with the United States is on hold for now, but the newly sparked “Buy Canada” sentiment endures. And while buying local, or at least closer to home, benefits the Canadian economy, it also tends to be better for the environment.
To help guide your purchasing power, we’ve created a consumer’s guide to patriotic shopping. To help untangle the lingo, we’ve also got a guide for how to read labels on products in stores.
Happy shopping!
Now, let’s catch you up on other news.
Toby Stedham, vice-president of operations at Carbon Engineering, at its facility in Squamish, B.C. The company focuses on direct air capture technology.Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
Jeff Jones is the ESG and Sustainable Finance Reporter for The Globe. For this week’s deeper dive, he talks about carbon capture and politics after a visit to Squamish, B.C.
These are precarious times for climate tech.
Scientists, engineers, financial experts and bureaucrats have spent years devising ways to make a dent in the carbon emissions contributing to wilder and more destructive weather around the globe. Now, shifting political winds are threatening to slow down development and deployment of this technology.
Direct air capture, or DAC for short, is just one of the innovations whose prospects are murky.
Lab supervisor Kathleen Cruz adjusts the microscope at the Carbon Engineering facility in Squamish, B.C.Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
DAC involves mechanical and chemical processes for extracting and purifying CO2 from the atmosphere so it can be injected into geological formations or used to make synthetic fuels. Technology developed in Canada is now being installed in a US$1.3-billion plant being constructed in West Texas. When completed it will be the world’s largest such facility.
In January, I toured the research and development centre in Squamish, B.C., where the company that devised that technology, Carbon Engineering, is honing its methods. A lot has happened since I first visited the facility in the picturesque coastal town two years ago.
Carbon Engineering was acquired by Houston-based Occidental Petroleum Corp. in the summer of 2023, and since then it has intensified and expanded its efforts. That work is continuing as the Texas plant gets closer to starting up around the middle of this year.
But the return of U.S. President Donald Trump to the White House is raising questions about technology in the fight against climate change as he prepares to unravel many of the green investment programs his predecessor, Joe Biden, implemented.
Occidental, under its subsidiary called 1PointFive, is making use of some of those incentives in its current plant, and is counting on them for a far larger one it is planning in southern Texas, so it is watching and waiting. In November, Oxy’s chief executive officer Vicki Hollub trumpeted Carbon Engineering’s technological improvements, and how they will contribute to a more efficient DAC plant than she had previously bargained for.
Next week, the oil company is slated to host a conference call to discuss its 2024 financial results, and investors and climate-tech buffs alike will be laser-focused on Hollub’s assessment of what rising policy uncertainty means for future deployment of the Canadian technology in the United States.
– Jeff
Calcium carbonate viewed through a microscope at the Carbon Engineering facility.Tijana Martin/The Globe and Mail
Editorial board: Note to Mark Carney? There is no such thing as a free lunch for carbon costs
B.C. set to fast-track array of resource projects in bid to diversify economy amid U.S. tariff threats
British Columbia’s goal is to spur development by speeding up approvals for permits and cutting red tape in general. The B.C. Premier’s office said the initial list includes Cedar LNG, a project that is under construction in Kitimat, with the goal to export liquefied natural gas to Asia. Cedar, which would have an annual export capacity of 3.3 million tonnes of LNG, is aiming to start shipping to Asia in late 2028.
Industry observers caution that gaining approvals from provincial and federal regulators does not guarantee that companies will forge ahead with major investments. For example, there has been a flurry of energy facilities approved over the past dozen years in B.C., but only one LNG project is near completion – LNG Canada’s export terminal in Kitimat. Ksi Lisims LNG, backed by the Nisga’a Nation, is undergoing an environmental review, including on climate impact.
We’ve launched the next chapter of The Climate Exchange, an interactive, digital hub where The Globe answers your most pressing questions about climate change. More than 300 questions were submitted as of September. The first batch of answers tackles 30 of them. They can be found with the help of a search tool developed by The Globe that makes use of artificial intelligence to match readers’ questions with the closest answer drafted. We plan to answer a total of 75 questions.
A worker at agritech start-up Niqo Robotics rides a tractor equipped with an AI-powered spot sprayer at a testing facility on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India. Much of country’s vast agricultural economy (employing more than 45 per cent of the workforce) remains deeply traditional, and is beset by problems made worse by extreme weather driven by climate change. But while AI tech is blossoming, take-up among farmers is slow because many can’t afford it.-/AFP/Getty Images
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