Dutch carbon capture company Skytree will be planting roots in Toronto as a beachhead for North American expansion, with plans for manufacturing its technology and supporting large commercial projects on the continent.

The Amsterdam-headquartered company developed direct air capture (DAC) technology that takes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere and stores it for use in sectors such as carbon sequestration, greenhouses, the food and beverage industry and alternative fuels.

It is setting up its regional headquarters in Toronto and opening a U.S. office in Nashville.

Elena Nikonova, the vice-president of strategy for North America, will be directing Skytree’s expansion across its team, commercialization, and research and development. Nikonova, who previously held positions in electric vehicle charging companies Shell Recharge Solutions and EVBox, said Canada has favourable conditions that led to the offshoot.

“(We) want to establish ourselves as a local North American player, as a reliable technology provider, and we want to help Canadian, North American companies to decarbonize,” she said in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada.

From space to the sky

Spun out of research from the European Space Agency by founder Max Beaumont in 2014, Skytree’s carbon capture technology uses fans to blow air toward a material called a solid sorbent, which absorbs the CO2. The sorbent is heated to high temperatures using renewable energy or industrial waste heat, releasing the greenhouse gas in a pure form, so it can be captured and repurposed.

It could be sent to a company that sequesters carbon for millennia by mineralizing the greenhouse gas. Indoor farmers can spray CO2 around their fields to promote crop growth. Soda makers can impart a fizz to canned and bottled drinks.

Two models are for sale:

• Cumulus, a smaller unit that can capture up to 20 kilograms of CO2 per day (approximately 7,300 kilograms per year) is intended for smaller applications like vertical farms and Deep Sky’s pilot.
• Stratus, an industrial-sized system, is designed for greenhouses, large carbon sequestration infrastructure and sustainable aviation fuels. It is capable of capturing a tonne of CO2 per day.

Nikonova highlighted two unique characteristics of Skytree’s DAC. The first is its modularity, allowing units to be stacked to improve the carbon capture. The second is how the sorbent can be swapped out for higher-capacity versions, boosting the capture potential without an upgrade of the device.

The DAC units (that resemble outdoor air conditioning equipment) can be installed on site, as is already done with Canadian indoor farming company Fieldless. CO2 is absorbed from the atmosphere around the farm, then delivered straight to plants without needing to order tanks of the greenhouse gas, Nikonova said.

Another major partner is carbon removal startup Deep Sky, which is testing Skytree’s DAC unit at Deep Sky Labs in Alberta.

Skytree in Canada

Canada was chosen to host the North American headquarters because of the amenable government conditions, available clean energy and its geology, Nikonova said.

Investment tax credits that cover the costs of carbon capture projects are granted federally and provincially, which can be combined up to 72 per cent in Alberta. Renewable energy is abundant in Quebec and Ontario, which can power the energy-intensive DAC units and manufacturing with minimal climate-warming pollution.

Finally, the geology in parts of the country offers strong possibilities for long-duration storage of CO2.

The aim is to have 20 to 30 staff working in the Toronto office within a year, which is expected to rise to approximately 80 during the next three years.

Plans to manufacture DAC units will depend on the anticipated level of demand in Canada, which Nikonova believes will be significant. A location is still being considered, though she said the company has been approached by Invest Ontario, a provincial business agency.

Its DAC may be also deployed in batches of Stratus units called hubs to support carbon storage projects in North America.

“One of our missions is actually to engage with these CCS (carbon capture and storage) owners like your Cenovus or Shell, in order to connect our DAC hubs so they can start not only capturing their own emissions but creating negative emissions,” Nikonova said.

Another goal is to collaborate with firms such as Halifax-based CarbonCure which are producing carbon-negative concrete.

A tender with a multinational utility has been won for a large Texas carbon sequestration project, and Skytree also hopes to announce its involvement with an oil and gas firm in Alaska in the coming weeks.

Further development on a hybrid DAC unit that taps into industrial waste heat tailored to customers in polluting grids is a priority, Nikonova said.

As for the company’s ultimate ambition, she hopes to capture 10 million tonnes of CO2 by 2030.

“I know that’s an ambitious goal, but looking at the pipeline of projects, I’m very confident that we’re going to achieve this.”