Canada: Biofuels Digest’s Spring 2014 5-Minute Guide – CCEMC Grand Challenge hands $500K seed grants to 24
Alberta’s Grand Challenge on carbon — Liquid Light, Enerkem among 24 winners picking up $500,000 seed grants in first round.
Next round will result in up to five $3M grants in 2018, and $10M to the Grand Challenge winner in 2018.
In Alberta, Climate Change and Emissions Management Corporation’s the CA$35M Grand Challenge announced 24 first round winners who will each receive CA$500,000 and access to a support team to help them to develop their technology.
The CCEMC Grand Challenge projects are diverse and include, as examples, a fuel cell, fertilizers, concrete, a product to treat wastewater, and one project that will create graphene (stronger than diamond and conducting electricity 1000X better than copper). The group was selected from 344 submissions from 37 countries on six continents. The announcement was made at Zero 2014: A Conference for a Low Carbon Future.
Round two of the Grand Challenge launches in March 2015 and after a second international intake, up to five winners will each receive $3 million. From that group, a final winner of the competition will be awarded a $10 million grant in 2018 to establish a business that annually reduces greenhouse gas by one net megaton in Alberta. The CCEMC launched the multi-year competition last year with a goal to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by fostering the development of technologies that create new carbon-based, value-added products and markets.
The background to the Challenge
The CCEMC reports: “CCEMC and the province of Alberta, Canada are committed to achieving an absolute reduction in GHG emissions of 200 megatonnes by the year 2050. One method to achieve this is through carbon capture and storage. Today, there are very limited uses for captured carbon, such as for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Other smaller, niche applications include mineralization and greenhouse applications. But these utilize only a fraction of the carbon produced and captured annually. The goal of this challenge is to identify processes, products, and materials that can make significant inroads towards the creation of new products and markets.”
The funding
Funding for the CCEMC is sourced from Alberta’s large industrial emitters. In Alberta, large emitters have a mandatory legislated requirement to achieve specified reductions of greenhouse gases. If they’re unable to reach their target one option is to pay a levy of $15 per tonne into the Climate Change and Emissions Management Fund. The fund is administered by the Government of Alberta and the CCEMC receives grants from the fund to support its work.
Since 2010, the CCEMC has committed to fund more than 80 projects that have a combined value of $1.6 billion. They are estimated to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 10 megatonnes by 2020, with additional emissions reductions as technology is commercialized and deployed. A reduction of 10 megatonnes in greenhouse gas emissions is enough to take about 2 million cars off the road.
The criteria
1. GHG Benefits: Respondent’s proposal must clearly demonstrate the potential for (or how it will ultimately result in) GHG emissions reductions or GHG emissions benefits, on a life-cycle basis.
2. Impact: Proposed technologies must be economically viable and scalable/replicable, yielding products that result in a net reduction of GHGs. Technologies that can potentially result in significant consumption of GHGs are most interesting.
3. Timeframe: CCEMC seeks proposals whose technology can be demonstrated within 2 years; however, proposals with longer timelines but potential for high impact will be considered as long as proof of concept can be shown within 2 years.
4. Appropriate Technology: Technology must be suitable for use in Alberta, Canada, meaning that it must be adaptable for use in Alberta’s economy, climate and geography. To learn more about Alberta, Canada, click here.
5. Business model or plan: The proposal should outline the business potential the proposed technology could offer once fully developed.
Ultimate success in this challenge will result in technologies that can provide a net reduction in GHG emissions of 1 megatonne.
The winners
The projects selected are from Canada (7), the United States (14) and the UK (3). The winners of the first round of the CCEMC Grand Challenge are,
For biofixation: The University of Maryland (USA); OakBio (USA); Industrial Microbes (USA)
For solid products: New Sky Energy (USA); Skyonic Corporation (USA); Solidia Technologies (USA); Blue Planet Ltd. (USA); McGill University, for Use of Carbon Dioxide in Making Carbonate-Bond Precast Concrete Products (Canada); CCm Research (UK); Carbon Cycle United (UK); Archtech Inc. (USA); and JRE Petroleum Services (Canada).
For chemical synthesis: RTI International (USA); Liquid Light (USA); E3Tec Service (USA); Institute of Gas Technology (USA) and University of British Columbia (Canada).
For fuels: Pioneer Energy (USA); University of California Riverside (USA); Quantiam Technologies (Canada); McGill University, for Chemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide via Solar-Powered Artificial Photosynthesis (Canada); Robert Gordon University (UK); University of Alberta (Canada); and Enerkem Inc. (Canada).
More on Enerkem and Liquid Light
Though Enerkem was given an award for “fuels”, the award went to support its R&D project to convert carbon from industrial waste CO2 and natural gas into chemicals, such as propanol, propionic acid and acrylic acid.
Liquid Light was chosen for its proposal to design and build a pilot plant to convert carbon dioxide (CO2) into chemicals and polymer precursors using clean sources of energy, in conjunction with a major chemical industry partner. The pilot plant located in Canada would produce a ton of products per day and further validate the technical and economic feasibility of Liquid Light’s approach. Through the deployment of Liquid Light’s electro-catalytic carbon conversion technology, CO2 can be used as a low-cost feedstock for the creation of widely-used chemicals with significant market value. CCEMC’s investment recognizes the commercial potential for Liquid Light’s process as an economically viable, scalable and replicable CO2 utilization platform.
Next steps
The second round of the CCEMC Grand Challenge: Innovative Carbon Uses will open for submissions in March 2015. It will be open to both new entrants and all applicants from the first round. Up to five projects will receive grants of up to $3 million each to develop their technologies. The final winning solution will be announced in 2018, with the winner receiving a $10 million grant to help commercialize their technology in Alberta.
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