Local firm chases $20-million carbon prize

Oil and gas veterans target CO2 conversion

Calgary-based innovators could see a big payday for going green.

Team CleanCarbon Energy is the Calgary-based company gunning for the $20-million Carbon X Prize, a contest challenging teams to develop breakthrough technologies that convert the most CO2 into products with the highest net value, making it a recycling Holy Grail.

Made up of engineers, designers and venture capitalists in Calgary’s oil and gas industry, Team CleanCarbon have developed carbon converting technologies with a laboratory team at the Olds College Centre for Innovation (OCCI).

“Our team has substantial experience in energy production, drilling and completions, petrochemicals and carbon conversion with two patents pending that can enable the large-scale conversion of greenhouse gas emissions to value-added products,” team project manager Jane Bouey said in a news release.

Using plant material and geothermal energy in the Earth’s subsurface, the company’s two technologies — the Downhole Flexfuel Gasifier and the DualCycle Geo-bioreactor — convert carbon dioxide into biomass and produces sustainable fuels, power and chemicals.

“The complete process occurs without the need for fresh water or a substantial surface footprint,” Bouey said.

Bouey said the biomass their project converts can be used to make many “value-added products” like plastics, fertilizers, gasoline, diesel and even electricity.

CleanCarbon Energy says its mission is to “provide carbon balanced renewable sources of energy” and to “improve the quality of life of all through the use of renewable energy without fear of global warming.”

Forty-seven teams from seven countries have entered the Carbon X Prize and the road to winning the top prize is a long one.

Judging is currently in the first round with semi-finalists announced Oct. 15.

The final demonstrations and testing round won’t begin until 2017, with the winners announced at an award ceremony in March, 2020.