Company sparks backlash with plans to construct massive, controversial facility: 'A waste of time'

Canadian air pollution-scrubbing company Deep Sky is adding to its projects list with a direct air capture site in Manitoba. Officials said it will be among the largest in the world.

Construction on the facility is set to start next year in a series of phases. The first part will be able to pull more than 33,000 tons of heat-trapping air pollution from the atmosphere a year. When completed, the site will capture and safely store 551,000 tons of carbon dioxide deep underground, according to a news release. 

"Manitoba is proud to be advancing a new frontier in industrial innovation — one that strengthens our position as a global leader in climate action," Jamie Moses, minister of business, mining, trade, and job creation, said.

Deep Sky's direct air capture, or DAC, process works by using large fans that push air over adsorbent substances, capturing CO2. Once heated or electrocuted, the pollution is released from the materials and stored underground as part of a repeatable process, according to a Deep Sky description. The company said that Canada's abundant renewable energy supply will provide the power needed to operate the works without generating even more air pollution. 

The Manitoba location is "the foundation of an industry that will reshape our economy and our planet. Canada has the opportunity to become the carbon removal capital of the world, and capture the jobs and economic opportunity that will come with it," Deep Sky CEO Alex Petre said. 

DAC has the potential to mitigate loads of unhealthy fumes from the atmosphere, often using chemicals or filters to entrap CO2. But the technology isn't without its critics. 

"Direct air capture is not only not just a waste of time, it's very counterproductive. It's creating a narrative that the fossil fuel industries really love … Fossil fuel companies will continue to operate, spewing billions of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere while pretending to absorb a few thousand tons," Project Drawdown Executive Director Jonathan Foley told Mongabay. Drawdown, a nonprofit, supports scalable efforts that address planetary warming. 

Foley is seemingly alluding to companies that capture CO2 from plant flues, or that fund other capture projects as an offset. It's disingenuous if they are doing so as the watchdog describes it. 

Nestlé has had success filtering pollution from its South African plant with a special system. The CO2 is being converted into harmless and reusable baking soda. And there's plenty of dirty air to go around, as the American Lung Association reported that almost half of Americans breathe "dangerous" levels of pollution, contributing to asthma and even low birth weights. 

That's why experts at Purdue University are also developing filters to remove foul air. Boilermaker researcher Antonio Esquivel-Puentes told The Cool Down that the shift to clean energy won't be fast enough to overcome pollution being made now. 

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"The effects of pollution we have today will have inertia … consequences through time," he said.

In Manitoba, the DAC effort is privately funded, with more than $200 million needed for the first phase, according to the release. It's billed as an effort that cleans the air, creates economic opportunity, and provides jobs. 

"Southwestern Manitoba perfectly embodies what the carbon removal industry needs to succeed: ideal geology, clean energy, a skilled workforce, and forward thinking leadership," Petre said. 

It's hard to argue with technology that can remove harmful substances from the air by the millions of tons, but experts interviewed by Mongabay warn that burning dirty fuels must be reduced to limit our planet's overheating, as well. Regardless, there's already a pollution overload in the atmosphere that needs to be dealt with now, the story added. 

Sergey Paltsev, an expert from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is open to a mix of efforts.

"In terms of innovations, we need all of them — even those that may seem quite exotic at this point: fusion, direct air capture, and others," Paltsev said in an MIT report. 

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