Montréal’s cleantech company Deep Sky announced this week an agreement with TD Bank Group that will see the financial institution purchase more than 18,000 carbon credits to offset its environmental impact.
The news: Announced on June 4 at Toronto Climate Week, the agreement will see TD Bank purchase verified, direct-air capture carbon credits from Deep Sky over a 10-year period. Neither Deep Sky nor TD Bank disclosed the financial terms of the agreement, but the agreement to invest in carbon capture technology aligns with TD’s climate action plan and will help reduce residual emissions, which are the emissions that remain after a company has already made all feasible efforts to reduce its carbon footprint.
From the source: “This agreement serves as a case study for enterprise carbon removal procurement,” said Charlie Renzoni, the vice-president of carbon markets at Deep Sky. “It shows that carbon removal infrastructure can be built at scale, right here in Canada.”
Following the thread: Deep Sky is a direct-air, carbon-capture (DAC) project developer. The company uses fans to pull in air, where it then separates out the CO2 and sequesters it underground. Though it’s based in Montréal, the company’s flagship facility, Deep Sky Alpha, sits near Innisfail, Alta. It also has another major facility in development in Manitoba. The company has banked $130 million USD in funding thus far from investors, including the BDC Climate Fund, Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, Whitecap Venture Partners, and others.
Final thought: Direct-air capture is still a relatively novel technology. The first commercial direct-air carbon capture facility was built by Climeworks in Switzerland in 2017, and today there are only around two dozen in the world. The tech has been criticized for the high costs and energy it demands compared to the actual amount of carbon it removes. Deep Sky already had a client in another major Canadian bank: RBC. Now, France’s ENGIE and Germany’s Lufthansa are also interested—all of which may be a signal that Deep Sky’s approach to carbon capture is gaining traction.
BetaKit’s Prairies reporting is funded in part by YEGAF, a not-for-profit dedicated to amplifying business stories in Alberta.
Feature image courtesy Deep Sky.