Environment minister shouts out Alberta for global impact of environmental innovation

By George Lee, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

New awards from an industry-funded pot will help Alberta keep showering gifts of innovation on Planet Earth, the province’s environment minister said in a Thursday interview.

Technologies proven and developed with support from Emissions Reduction Alberta typically “go out to the world and make it a better place,” said Grant Hunter.

His comments came shortly after a news conference in Coaldale at the Kasko Cattle feedlot announcing $28 million in ERA money for six projects with a total value of more than $172 million.

Through investments ranging from $625,000 to $12 million, the government estimates the funding through ERA’s Industrial Transformation Challenge will help create more than 1,000 jobs and add almost $167 million to the Alberta economy by 2027.

Established in 2009, the agency allocates monies that large emitters of greenhouse gases pay the provincial government at a current rate of $95 per tonne. So far the agency has committed almost $1 billion towards 316 projects valued at over $10 billion.

Hunter, the new minister of environment and protected areas and the UCP member for Taber-Warner, pointed to reductions in methane emissions as an Alberta success story. The government claims reductions have gone beyond a target of 45 per cent to 51 per cent. 

“That technology has been exported to jurisdictions throughout the world,” Hunter said. “I don’t think you can quantify how valuable that is.”

The projects announced Thursday are the first this year under a challenge inaugurated in 2022.

At the low end of project values is the $1.25-million advancement of a technology to reduce pipeline fractures. At work in Suffield near Medicine Hat, the system is touted as a future supporter of carbon capture, utilization and storage, or CCUS.

The highest valued project comes in at an estimated $87 million. Based in Yellowhead County, about 250 km west of Edmonton, the grant recipient is testing carbon capture technologies on compressor engines. The goal is to develop units that evaluate scalability and future sequestration.

In Coaldale in southern Alberta, where the news conference took place, a grant-winning project is developing a first-of-its-kind facility that converts agricultural byproducts into renewable natural gas and soil additives.

The project with an estimated value of $70.5 million gets $10 million to integrate carbon-negative anaerobic digestion with carbon capture and storage.

The Coaldale disbursement looks like money well spent to Hunter, he said after his first news conference as environment minister.

“Biogases and biodiesels have been around for a long time, but (Ryan Kasko of Kasko Cattle, a partner in the project) is now talking about them as a (carbon capture, use and storage) play,” Hunter said.

“We need carbon to create a better product in the fields, so he’s using that as carbon sequestration. So this is something we’re very interested in.”

Innovation like that is typical in a province that consistently “punches above its weight,” said Hunter.

“We’ve proven in Alberta for decades that you can be champions of the environment and still be the economic engine of Canada,” he said.

The province estimates that the projects in the Thursday announcement will cut 260,000 tonnes of emissions by 2030.

In a news release, Justin Riemer, the CEO of Emissions Reduction Alberta, said the grants “reflect the momentum of clean technology innovation across Alberta, from renewable natural gas and methane reduction in agriculture to carbon capture, safer pipeline infrastructure and more efficient resource recovery.”

The projects demonstrate that “Alberta-made innovation is delivering real environmental results and economic opportunity across the province,” Riemer said.