Two new large-scale CCUS facilities now in operation

THE Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL) in Canada is now fully operational as carbon capture begins at the North West Redwater Partnership (NWR) Sturgeon Refinery and Nutrien’s Redwater Fertilizer Facility.

ACTL is a carbon capture, utilisation, and storage project that consists of a 240 km pipeline to transport CO₂ to aging oil fields in Central Alberta for enhanced oil recovery, before the CO₂ is permanently stored underground. It is capable of transporting up to 14.6m t/y of CO₂. The pipeline is owned by Wolf Midstream and the storage reservoir is owned by Enhance Energy.

The refinery and the fertiliser facility will capture and store 1.6m t/y of CO₂ between them, which means that there is potential for other facilities to capture CO₂ and use the ACTL network.  

Jeff Pearson, President of Wolf Midstream’s Carbon Business Unit, said: “This is just the beginning. This critical piece of infrastructure supports significant future emissions solutions, new utilisation pathways and innovation in the carbon capture space. The future of energy and a lower carbon economy relies on key infrastructure like the ACTL.”

Brad Page, CEO of the Global CCS Institute, said: “We welcome this significant milestone of CCS deployment. It is also exciting to see the next wave of CCS projects commencing as we are moving to decarbonising industrial areas through CCS hubs and clusters. There are 51 large-scale facilities globally – now 21 in operation, two under construction, and 28 in various stages of development with an estimated combined capture capacity of just over 100m t of CO₂ per annum.”

According to the International Energy Agency, around 2,000 CCS facilities are needed by 2050 to meet climate goals.