Canada’s Enhance Energy joins CCS hub race

Enhance Energy, which already operates the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line (ACTL) in central Alberta, said January 19 it would participate in the province’s carbon capture and storage (CCS) hub competition.

The company, which already sequesters about 1.5mn metric tons/year of CO₂ as part of an enhanced oil recovery (EOR) project central Alberta, said its Origins Project is envisioned as an open access CO₂ sequestration hub connected to the ACTL, which moves CO₂ from Alberta’s Industrial Heartland (AIH) near Edmonton south to the EOR project.

Pending Origin’s selection in Alberta’s pore space competition – for sequestration rights and hub operator status – the project could capture and store as much as 20mn mt/yr of CO₂.

"This new venture has the potential to attract new low carbon industries to Alberta while providing a safe, secure, and certain solution for emissions mitigation for existing industries,” Enhance CEO Kevin Jabusch said. “At full scale this project is the equivalent of taking every vehicle in Alberta off the roads.”

Origins will be positioned to manage CO₂ from several hard-to-abate industries along central Alberta’s Highway 2 corridor between Calgary and Edmonton, including cement production, power generation and petrochemicals.

Last fall, the government of Alberta asked for expressions of interest for CCS hub development and received nearly 50 submissions. It’s now in the request for proposals stage, with the first supported hub – in the AIH region, which has a heavy concentration of major emitters – expected to be awarded by the end of March.

Rights to develop other hubs, first in the Cold Lake region northeast of Edmonton, then in other areas of the province, including central Alberta, would be awarded in subsequent RFPs.

Subject to the timing of that process – and to its receipt of pore space rights – Enhance Energy said Origins could be in service as early as 2024.