If you’ve ever been to an event at Rogers Place in Edmonton, you probably noticed the massive exposed concrete walls and columns that give the arena its unmistakable sense of strength. 

That strength is real — because like many buildings, bridges, roads, industrial projects and even sidewalks in Western Canada, Rogers Place is built from limestone quarried in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains.

Located about 350 kilometers west of Edmonton, the hamlet of Cadomin, Alta. has just 54 permanent residents, many of whom have mining in their blood. 

At the community’s edge is Heidelberg Materials Canada’s Cadomin Limestone Quarry. 

Connected by rail to the company’s Edmonton cement plant, each year the quarry delivers enough limestone to build 100 25-storey buildings or pave a 1,600-kilometre highway. 

“Our daily life in the western provinces – Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and northeast British Columbia – is built by concrete that is made from limestone supplied by the quarry,” said Joerg Nixdorf, Heidelberg Materials’ vice-president of cement operations. 

Heidelberg Materials is changing the way it mines limestone at the quarry, resulting in a reduced environmental footprint and continued safe access to decades of limestone reserves.

From the quarry to your door

Second only to water, concrete is the most widely used building material on Earth. Versions of it have shaped construction for thousands of years.

A familiar material all around us, concrete is made by mixing water with materials like sand and gravel and adding cement.

Cement, the “glue” that holds the concrete together, is a fine powder made from limestone – like that from the Heidelberg Materials Cadomin Quarry – along with other materials that contain silica, alumina and iron. 

Worldwide cement demand continues to rise. The International Energy Agency projects global cement demand will rise to 4.36 billion tonnes by 2050, about 10 per cent above 2024 levels. 

“It’s exciting to be a part of an industry that provides a material that literally builds everything,” said David Perkins, Heidelberg Materials’ senior vice-president of sustainability and public affairs. 

“You can create almost any kind of shape that you want, and then once you place that shape, it’s extremely resilient. It’s 100 per cent recyclable, it’s fire resistant and it’s extremely long-lasting.” 

Decades of operations

Originally known for coal mining, limestone mining is now Cadomin’s main industry.

Inland Cement Company (a predecessor to Heidelberg Materials) began quarrying limestone at this site in 1954.

For decades, this has been done by blasting, slowly moving equipment down the surface of the quarry.

The quarried limestone is conveyed through an inclined chute underground, where it is crushed and stored before being transferred to rail cars to be shipped to the Edmonton cement plant.

The quarry reached a point where operators faced a choice: relocate all the equipment and continue working on the surface — an expensive and highly impactful undertaking — or move the entire operation underground.

Moving underground

They chose the latter, and the limestone quarry is now in the process of being converted from a surface mine to the first fully underground limestone mine in Alberta. 

“The transition will help lower our environmental footprint by minimizing surface impacts, reducing the potential for dust and noise, and eliminating the need for large amounts of caprock removal, all while ensuring continued access to high-quality limestone,” said Brent Korobanik, permitting and community liaison for Heidelberg Materials in Edmonton.   

“From an economic perspective, it helps us out, but the big reason is sustainability.”

High-tech underground fleet

Moving underground allows Heidelberg Materials to retain existing infrastructure such as crushing equipment. It will also require a new mining fleet, supplied in part by Stockholm, Sweden–based Sandvik Group.

Sandvik says the fleet uses next-generation automation, and the project “could redefine expectations for how underground mining is executed in Canada.”

Heidelberg Materials expects the underground mine to be fully operational by spring 2027, when surface mining will be discontinued.

Sustainable Cement 

As Heidelberg Materials works to reduce its footprint at Cadomin, its Edmonton cement plant is advancing new sustainability strategies.

In 2025, the plant hit a major milestone, with 50 per cent of its fuel now coming from low-carbon alternative sources including processed municipal waste, demolition wood chips and tire fibre.

The project received provincial support, including a $2.4 million investment from Emissions Reduction Alberta.

The Edmonton cement plant also repurposes byproduct streams from other industries to replace traditional clay, ash, sand and iron in cement production.

This diverts waste from landfills and helps preserve Alberta’s natural resources.

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As the world moves to secure lithium for electric vehicles and other power-hungry products, Alberta is advancing an approach that could offer both environmental and strategic advantages.

A new assessment of Alberta’s lithium resources confirms the enormous scale of the province’s potential.

A new approach to lithium production

Rather than relying on sprawling solar evaporation ponds or energy-intensive hard-rock mining operations, Alberta is pursuing lithium production centred on direct lithium extraction (DLE) from deep underground deposits. 

Using technology adapted from decades of oil and gas experience, DLE uses solvents to selectively remove lithium from salty formation water before reinjecting the spent brine back underground, significantly reducing land disturbance and water loss.

Work underway in the province is showing the feasibility of lithium production from DLE.

“We have a great resource base, and our oil and gas industry has set us up to pursue a more environmentally friendly way of producing lithium,” said Kim Mohler, vice-president of project development for energy consulting firm GLJ Ltd. 

Much of Mohler’s time is spent supporting clients’ lithium and geothermal projects across Canada and the U.S., including key DLE developments underway in Alberta.

“Alberta has an advantage because a lot of the knowledge and infrastructure for drilling wells and producing deep subsurface brines is already in place,” she said. 

The province is also a step ahead because the exploration work that has to be done in other parts of the world has already been done here, Mohler added.

One of the world’s largest lithium resources

According to a new report by the Alberta Geological Survey and Alberta Energy Regulator, the province’s subsurface contains an estimated 82.5 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent, one of the largest known accumulations in the world. 

Most of the resource is concentrated in the Devonian-age Leduc formation, the same geologic formation that launched the province’s modern oil industry in 1947. 

Significant additional resources are also found in the Swan Hills and Nisku formations.

Source: Alberta Geological Survey/Alberta Energy Regulator

The new report outlines the enormous scale of the lithium industry’s opportunity. 

Alberta’s lithium resources could supply material for more than 10 billion electric vehicle battery packs and could theoretically generate more than US$1 trillion in revenue over time, the analysis found. 

Rising demand, limited North American supply

North American lithium demand is projected to grow sharply over the next several years. 

According to S&P Global, U.S. consumption is forecast to increase by roughly 74 per cent annually while Canadian demand grows by about 40 per cent by the end of the decade. 

Right now the vast majority of the world’s lithium supply comes from outside of North America, which produced just 40,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate out of a global supply of 1.28 million tonnes in 2024. 

Canada accounted for approximately 2.5 per cent of that, at 5,983 tonnes, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.

Alberta emerging as a new lithium player

As global demand for lithium accelerates, driven by rapid growth in electric vehicles and battery storage, Alberta is emerging as a new player in a market long dominated by countries such as Chile, Argentina and Australia. 

Approximately two million hectares have already been leased for lithium exploration in Alberta, and the province is a hot spot in the nascent DLE industry.

The E3 Lithium pilot plant near Olds, Alta., September 2023. CP Images photo

E3 Lithium is the province’s most advanced lithium developer. 

The Calgary-based company produced Alberta’s first battery-grade lithium carbonate at its demonstration facility near Olds in 2025. 

The milestone marked a major step toward commercial production and validated the technical feasibility of extracting lithium from Alberta brines. 

Path to commercialization

E3’s project leverages Alberta-based DLE technology and existing oilfield infrastructure, and the company is working toward commercial-scale production later this decade.

“Nobody has proven they can do DLE production at commercial scale yet,” Mohler said. 

“The potential for Alberta to be among the first is very good if they can make the economics work, and I think following the oil and gas industry’s value chain of having companies specialize in upstream production, transportation, processing and refining will likely be a good business strategy.”

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In the heart of Alberta’s oil sands region, a lake sits next to Suncor Energy’s Mildred Lake operation. 

On the surface, it looks like one of the countless natural lakes dotting the boreal forest north of Fort McMurray. But several metres below, it tells a different story. 

Base Mine Lake is not a natural lake—it’s a demonstration pit lake at one of the industry’s oldest mines. 

Once a tailings pond, Base Mine Lake was capped with water in 2012 and is now undergoing reclamation, drawing on decades of innovation to restore the land and water affected by development. 

Base Mine Lake. Photo courtesy Suncor Energy

“Tailings ponds aren’t meant to be a permanent part of our closure landscapes,” said Rodney Guest, Suncor’s senior development advisor, mine water closure. 

“We’re investing significant resources to advance tailings treatment technologies in support of land and aquatic reclamation to meet our commitments.”

Those commitments include fully reclaiming mine sites, including tailings facilities, and returning the land to Albertans and local communities, he said. 

Pit lakes: widely used around the world

Pit lakes are a common mine reclamation and closure practice used worldwide. 

According to the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), a pit lake is basically any lake formed within a former mine pit. 

Over time, as the site stabilizes, these lakes generally come to look and function much like natural lakes. 

Thousands of examples exist globally, particularly in coal and hard-rock mining operations such as gold and copper, CAPP says.

Helping address oil sands tailings

Even as the oil sands sector has reduced its freshwater use per barrel by nearly one-third since 2013, the total volume of fluid tailings has reached about 1.4 billion cubic metres, reflecting continued production growth. 

Aquatic reclamation techniques like pit lakes are helping address the tailings challenge. 

This is evident in the reduction of “legacy tailings,” or tailings placed in storage before 2015. 

Since 2015, the volume of legacy tailings across Alberta’s oil sands has fallen by 40 per cent, according to Alberta Energy Regulator data. 

Base Mine Lake has contributed to this reduction, which overall is helped by water-capped tailings and permanent aquatic storage structure (PASS) technology.

How water-capped tailings technology works

Oil sands tailings are a mixture of fine clay, water, sand, and residual bitumen left over from the bitumen extraction process. 

Traditionally stored in large ponds, these liquid tailings settle very slowly—a process that can take decades. Water-capped tailings technology provides a more controlled solution.

In this approach, a layer of water is placed over tailings within a mined-out pit, forming a pit lake. 

The water cap isolates the tailings from the surface environment while promoting the development of a natural aquatic ecosystem.

Supported by long-term research

Numerous pit lakes, with and without tailings, are proposed or planned for the oil sands region. 

Each is designed to integrate into the final reclaimed landscape, supporting sustainable water management and creating new habitats for aquatic and terrestrial life.

Long-term research and monitoring at several sites—some dating back to the 1980s—has shown that water-capped tailings can be effective. 

Bacteria quickly break down many compounds within the tailings, while the solids settle naturally within weeks. The water layer above largely prevents tailings sediments from migrating back to the surface.

Base Mine Lake. Photo courtesy Pathways Alliance

Base Mine Lake performance

At Base Mine Lake, for example, a water cap currently between 10 and 13 metres covers the tailings. Ongoing research and monitoring show it’s performing as expected, Guest said.

“The tailings remain contained at the bottom and don’t mix with the water,” he said. 

“Water quality continues to improve, diverse habitats are forming, and typical boreal lake life including insects, invertebrates, plants and mammals are present in and around the demonstration watershed.”

While the lake doesn’t currently discharge to the environment, the long-term plan is for its water to eventually integrate into the regional watershed. 

Prior to release, water will be monitored and tested to ensure it meets regulated water quality guidelines, Guest said. 

In the meantime, Suncor adds fresh water and withdraws water for use in its mine operations. 

PASS technology demonstration

Suncor is implementing permanent aquatic storage structure (PASS) technology at a demonstration site that includes Lake Miwasin, a 10-metre-deep lake with a five-metre water cap. 

PASS uses common treatment agents to help tailings settle and release water more quickly. The process speeds up consolidation and helps improve overall water quality.

The company says early results are promising, showing expected improvements in water quality and the re-establishment of vegetation.

Insights from local Indigenous communities have helped refine techniques, including influencing landform design and identifying culturally important plants and trees.  

Confidence in pit lakes

“Results from Base Mine Lake and Lake Miwasin give us the confidence that pit lakes are a safe and integral component of our planned closure landscape,” Guest said.

The transition to a fully reclaimed boreal landscape in Alberta’s oil sands will take time. 

Most of the reclaimed area will consist of forests and wetlands, with pit lakes expected to account for less than 10 per cent. 

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*References to land that is reclaimed, permanently reclaimed and surface reclaimed meet the definition of “permanently reclaimed” as defined in the Alberta Energy Regulator Direction for Conservation and Reclamation Submissions (December 2018).

Forget the old image of a straight vertical oil and gas well.

In Western Canada, engineers now steer wells for kilometres underground with remarkable precision, tapping vast energy resources from a single spot on the surface.

The sector is continually evolving as operators pursue next-generation drilling technologies that lower costs while opening new opportunities and reducing environmental impacts.

But many promising innovations never reach the market because of high development costs and limited opportunities for real-world testing, according to Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA).

That’s why ERA is launching the Drilling Technology Challenge, which will invest up to $35 million to advance new drilling and subsurface technologies.

“The focus isn’t just on drilling, it’s about building our future economy, helping reduce emissions, creating new industries and making sure we remain a responsible leader in energy development for decades to come,” said ERA CEO Justin Riemer.

And it’s not just about oil and gas. ERA says emerging technologies can unlock new resource opportunities such as geothermal energy, deep geological CO₂ storage and critical minerals extraction.

“Alberta’s wealth comes from our natural resources, most of which are extracted through drilling and other subsurface technologies,” said Gurpreet Lail, CEO of Enserva, which represents energy service companies.

ERA funding for the challenge will range from $250,000 to $8 million per project.

Eligible technologies include advanced drilling systems, downhole tools and sensors; AI-enabled automation and optimization; low-impact rigs and fluids; geothermal and critical mineral drilling applications; and supporting infrastructure like mobile labs and simulation platforms.

“All transformative ideas are really eligible for this call,” Riemer said, noting that AI-based technologies are likely to play a growing role.

“I think what we’re seeing is that the wells of the future are going to be guided by smart sensors and real-time data. You’re going to have a lot of AI-driven controls that help operators make instant decisions and avoid problems.”

Applications for the Drilling Technology Challenge close January 29, 2026.

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A “weird and wonderful” drilling innovation in Alberta is helping producers tap more oil and gas at lower cost and with less environmental impact.

With names like fishbone, fan, comb-over and stingray, “multilateral” wells turn a single wellbore from the surface into multiple horizontal legs underground.

“They do look spectacular, and they are making quite a bit of money for small companies, so there’s a lot of interest from investors,” said Calin Dragoie, vice-president of geoscience with Calgary-based Chinook Consulting Services. 

Dragoie, who has extensively studied the use of multilateral wells, said the technology takes horizontal drilling — which itself revolutionized oil and gas production — to the next level.

“It’s something that was not invented in Canada, but was perfected here. And it’s something that I think in the next few years will be exported as a technology to other parts of the world,” he said. 

Dragoie’s research found that in 2015 less than 10 per cent of metres drilled in Western Canada came from multilateral wells. By last year, that share had climbed to nearly 60 per cent.  

Royalty incentives in Alberta have accelerated the trend, and Saskatchewan has introduced similar policy.

Multilaterals first emerged alongside horizontal drilling in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Dragoie said. But today’s multilaterals are longer, more complex and more productive.

The main play is in Alberta’s Marten Hills region, where producers are using multilaterals to produce shallow heavy oil. 

Today’s average multilateral has about 7.5 horizontal legs from a single surface location, up from four or six just a few years ago, Dragoie said. 

One record-setting well in Alberta drilled by Tamarack Valley Energy in 2023 features 11 legs stretching two miles each, for a total subsurface reach of 33 kilometres — the longest well in Canada.

By accessing large volumes of oil and gas from a single surface pad, multilaterals reduce land impact by a factor of five to ten compared to conventional wells, he said.

The designs save money by skipping casing strings and cement in each leg, and production is amplified as a result of increased reservoir contact.

Here are examples of multilateral well design. Images courtesy Chinook Consulting Services.

Parallel

Fishbone

Fan

Waffle

Stingray

Frankenwells

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In Alberta’s oil patch, some companies are going beyond their obligations to clean up inactive wells. 

Aspenleaf Energy operates in the historic Leduc oil field, where drilling and production peaked in the 1950s. 

In the last seven years, the privately-held company has spent more than $40 million on abandonment and reclamation, which it reports is significantly more than the minimum required by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). 

CEO Bryan Gould sees reclaiming the legacy assets as like paying down a debt. 

“To me, it’s not a giant bill for us to pay to accelerate the closure and it builds our reputation with the community, which then paves the way for investment and community support for the things we need to do,” he said. 

“It just makes business sense to us.”

Aspenleaf, which says it has decommissioned two-thirds of its inactive wells in the Leduc area, isn’t alone in going beyond the requirements.

Producers in Alberta exceeded the AER’s minimum closure spend in both years of available data since the program was introduced in 2022.

That year, the industry-wide closure spend requirement was set at $422 million, but producers spent more than $696 million, according to the AER.

In 2023, companies spent nearly $770 million against a requirement of $700 million.

Alberta’s number of inactive wells is trending downward. The AER’s most recent report shows about 76,000 inactive wells in the province, down from roughly 92,000 in 2021.

In the Leduc field, new development techniques will make future cleanup easier and less costly, Gould said.

That’s because horizontal drilling allows several wells, each up to seven kilometres long, to originate from the same surface site.

“Historically, Leduc would have been developed with many, many sites with single vertical wells,” Gould said.  

“This is why the remediation going back is so cumbersome. If you looked at it today, all that would have been centralized in one pad. 

“Going forward, the environmental footprint is dramatically reduced compared to what it was.”

During and immediately after a well abandonment for Aspenleaf Energy near Edmonton. Photos for the Canadian Energy Centre

Gould said horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing give the field better economics, extending the life of a mature asset.  

“We can drill more wells, we can recover more oil and we can pay higher royalties and higher taxes to the province,” he said. 

Aspenleaf has also drilled about 3,700 test holes to assess how much soil needs cleanup. The company plans a pilot project to demonstrate a method that would reduce the amount of digging and landfilling of old underground materials while ensuring the land is productive and viable for use.

Crew at work on a well abandonment for Aspenleaf Energy near Edmonton. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre

“We did a lot of sampling, and for the most part what we can show is what was buried in the ground by previous operators historically has not moved anywhere over 70 years and has had no impact to waterways and topography with lush forestry and productive agriculture thriving directly above and adjacent to those sampled areas,” he said. 

At current rates of about 15,000 barrels per day, Aspenleaf sees a long runway of future production for the next decade or longer.  

Revitalizing the historic field while cleaning up legacy assets is key to the company’s strategy. 

“We believe we can extract more of the resource, which belongs to the people of Alberta,” Gould said. 

“We make money for our investors, and the people of the province are much further ahead.”

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To the naked eye, it looks about as exciting as baking soda or table salt. 

But to the scientists in the University of Calgary chemistry lab who have spent more than a decade working on it, this white powder is nothing short of amazing. 

That’s because the material they invented is garnering global attention as a new solution to help address climate change.

Known as Calgary Framework-20 (CALF-20 for short), it has “an exceptional capacity to absorb carbon dioxide” and was recognized in connection with the 2025 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

A jar of CALF-20, a metal-organic framework (MOF) used in carbon capture. Photo courtesy UCalgary

“It’s basically a molecular sponge that can adsorb CO2 very efficiently,” said Dr. George Shimizu, a UCalgary chemistry professor who leads the research group that first developed CALF-20 in 2013.

The team has been refining its effectiveness ever since.

“CALF-20 is a very exciting compound to work on because it has been a great example of translating basic science into something that works to solve a problem in the real world,” Shimizu said.

Advancing CCS

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is not a new science in Alberta. Since 2015, operating projects in the province have removed 15 million tonnes of CO2 that would have otherwise been emitted to the atmosphere. 

Alberta has nearly 60 proposed facilities for new CCS networks including the Pathways oil sands project, according to the Regina-based International CCS Knowledge Centre. 

This year’s Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to three of Shimizu’s colleagues in Japan, Australia and the United States, for developing the earliest versions of materials like CALF-20 between 1989 and 2003.

Custom-built molecules

CALF-20 is in a class called metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) — custom-built molecules that are particularly good at capturing and storing specific substances. 

MOFs are leading to new technologies for harvesting water from air in the desert, storing toxic gases, and capturing CO2 from industrial exhaust or directly from the atmosphere. 

CALF-20 is one of the few MOF compounds that has advanced to commercial use.

“There has been so much discussion about all the possible uses of MOFs, but there has been a lot of hype versus reality, and CALF-20 is the first to be proven stable and effective enough to be used at an industrial scale,” Shimizu said.

It has been licensed to companies capturing carbon across a range of industries, with the raw material now being produced by the tonne by chemical giant BASF.

CO2 pipeline at the Quest CCS project near Edmonton, Alta. Photo courtesy Shell Canada

Carbon capture filter gigafactory

Svante Inc. has demonstrated its CALF-20-based carbon capture system at a cement plant in British Columbia.

The company recently opened a “gigafactory” in Burnaby equipped to manufacture enough carbon capture and removal filters for up to 10 million tonnes of CO2 annually, equivalent to the emissions of more than 2.3 million cars.

The filters are designed to trap CO2 directly from industrial emissions and the atmosphere, the company says. 

Svante chief operating officer Richard Laliberté called the Nobel committee’s recognition “a profound validation” for the entire field of carbon capture and removal. 

CALF-20 expansion

Meanwhile, one of Shimizu’s former PhD students helped launch a spinoff company, Existent Sorbents, to further expand the applications of CALF-20.

Existent is working with oil sands producers, a major steel factory and a U.S.-based firm capturing emissions from other point sources, said CEO Adrien Côté.

“The first users of CALF-20 are leaders who took the risk of introducing new technology to industries that are shrewd about their top and bottom lines,” Côté said.

“It has been a long journey, but we are at the point where CALF-20 has proven to be resilient and able to survive in harsh real-world conditions, and we are excited to bring this made-in-Canada innovation to the world.”

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A new southern Alberta facility has produced its first battery-grade lithium carbonate, showcasing a technology that could unlock Canada’s largest resources of a critical mineral powering the evolving energy landscape.

In an unassuming quonset hut in a field near Olds, Calgary-based E3 Lithium’s demonstration plant uses technology to extract lithium from an ocean of “brine water” that has sat under Alberta’s landscape along with oil and gas for millions of years. 

Lithium is one of six critical minerals the Government of Canada has prioritized for their potential to spur economic growth and their necessity as inputs for important products. 

“The use for lithium is now mainly in batteries,” said E3 Lithium CEO Chris Doornbos. 

“Everything we use in our daily lives that has a battery is now lithium ion: computers, phones, scooters, cars, battery storage, power walls in your house.”

A vial of lithium at the E3 Lithium demonstration plant near Olds, Alta. CP Images photo

Doornbos sees E3 as a new frontier in energy and mineral exploration in Alberta, using a resource that has long been there, sharing the geologic space with oil and gas.

“[Historically], oil and water came out together, and they separated the oil from the water,” he said.

“We don’t have oil. We take the lithium out of the water and put the water back.”

Lithium adds to Canada’s natural resource strength — the country’s reserves rank sixth in the world, according to Natural Resources Canada.

About 40 per cent of these reserves are in Alberta’s Bashaw District, home to the historic Leduc oilfield, where E3 built its new demonstration facility. 

“It’s all in our Devonian rocks,” Doonbos said. “The Devonian Stack is a carbonate reef complex that would have looked like the Great Barrier Reef 400 million years ago. That’s where the lithium is.”

Funded in part by the Government of Canada and the Government of Alberta via Alberta Innovates and Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA), the project aims to demonstrate that the Alberta reserve of lithium can be extracted and commercialized for battery production around the world. 

E3 announced it had produced battery-grade lithium carbonate just over two weeks after commissioning began in early September.

Inside E3 Lithium’s demonstration facility near Olds, Alta. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre

In a statement, ERA celebrated the milestone of the opening of the facility as Alberta and Canada seek to find their place in the global race for more lithium as demand for the mineral increases.

“By supporting the first extraction facility in Olds, we’re helping reduce innovation risk, generate critical data, and pave the way for a commercial-scale lithium production right here in Alberta,” ERA said. 

“The success from this significant project helps position Alberta as a global player in the critical minerals supply chain, driving the global electrification revolution with locally sourced lithium.”

With the first phase of the demonstration facility up and running, E3 has received regulatory permits to proceed with a second phase that involves drilling a production and injection well to confirm brine flow rates and reservoir characteristics. This will support designs for a full-scale commercial facility. 

Lithium has been highlighted by the Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) as an emerging resource in the province.

The AER projects Alberta’s lithium output will grow from zero in 2024 to 12,300 tonnes by 2030 and nearly 15,000 tonnes by 2034. E3 believes it will beat these timeframes with the right access to project financing.

E3 has been able to leverage Alberta’s regulatory framework around the drilling of wells to expand into extraction of lithium brine.

“The regulator understands intimately what we are doing,” Doornbos said. 

“They permit these types of wells and this type of operation every day. That’s a huge advantage to Alberta.”

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The negative economic impact of Canada’s proposed oil and gas emissions cap will be much larger than previously projected, warns a study by the Center for North American Prosperity and Security (CNAPS).

The report concluded that the cost of the emissions cap far exceeds any benefit from emissions reduction within Canada, and it could push global emissions higher instead of lower.

Based on findings this March by the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer (PBO), CNAPS pegs the cost of the cap to be up to $289,000 per tonne of reduced emissions. 

That’s more than 3,600 times the cost of the $80-per-tonne federal carbon tax eliminated this spring.

The proposed cap has already chilled investment as Canada’s policymakers look to “nation-building” projects to strengthen the economy, said lead author Heather Exner-Pirot.

“Why would any proponent invest in Canada with this hanging over it? That’s why no other country is talking about an emissions cap on its energy sector,” said Exner-Pirot, director of energy, natural resources and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

Federal policy has also stifled discussion of these issues, she said. Two of the CNAPS study’s co-authors withdrew their names based on legal advice related to the government’s controversial “anti-greenwashing” legislation.

“Legitimate debate should not be stifled in Canada on this or any government policy,” said Exner-Pirot. 

“Canadians deserve open public dialogue, especially on policies of this economic magnitude.” 

Carbon leakage

To better understand the impact of the cap, CNAPS researchers expanded the PBO’s estimates to reflect impacts beyond Canada’s borders.

“The problem is something called carbon leakage. We know that while some regions have reduced their emissions, other jurisdictions have increased their emissions,” said Exner-Pirot.

“Western Europe, for example, has de-industrialized but emissions in China are [going up like] a hockey stick, so all it’s done is move factories and plants from Europe to China along with the emissions.”

Similarly, the Canadian oil and gas production cut by the cap will be replaced in global markets by other producers, she said. There is no reason to assume capping oil and gas emissions in Canada will affect global demand.

The federal budget office assumed the legislation would reduce emissions by 7.1 million tonnes. CNAPS researchers applied that exclusively to Canada’s oil sands. 

Here’s the catch: on average, oil sands crude is only about 1 to 3 percent more carbon-intensive than the average crude oil used globally (with some facilities emitting less than the global average). 

So, instead of the cap reducing world emissions by 7.1 million tonnes, the real cut would be only 1 to 3 percent of that total, or about 71,000 to 213,000 tonnes worldwide.

In that case, using the PBO’s estimate of a $20.5 billion cost for the cap in 2032, the price of carbon is equivalent to $96,000 to $289,000 per tonne.

Economic pain with no environmental gain

Exner-Pirot said doing the same math with Canada’s “conventional” or non-oil sands production makes the situation “absurd.” 

That’s because Canadian conventional oil and natural gas have lower emissions intensity than global averages. So reducing that production would actually increase global emissions, resulting in an infinite price per tonne of carbon.

“This proposal creates economic pain with no environmental gain,” said Samantha Dagres, spokesperson for the Montreal Economic Institute. 

“By capping emissions here, you are signalling to investors that Canada isn’t interested in investment. Production will move to jurisdictions with poorer environmental standards as well as bad records on human rights.”

There’s growing awareness about the importance of the energy sector to Canada’s prosperity, she said. 

“The public has shown a real appetite for Canada to become an energy superpower. That’s why a June poll found 73 per cent of Canadians, including 59 per cent in Quebec, support pipelines.”

Industries need Canadian energy

Dennis Darby, CEO of Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters (CME), warns the cap threatens Canada’s broader economic interests due to its outsized impact beyond the energy sector.

“Our industries run on Canadian energy. Canada should not unnecessarily hamstring itself relative to our competitors in the rest of the world,” said Darby.

CME represents firms responsible for over 80 per cent of Canada’s manufacturing output and 90 per cent of its exports.

Rather than the cap legislation, the Ottawa-based organization wants the federal government to offer incentives for sectors to reduce their emissions.

“We strongly believe in the carrot approach and see the market pushing our members to get cleaner,” said Darby. 

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Carlos Soares has sold enough flooring to furnish all the residences, businesses and public facilities in a medium-sized city since starting Divine Flooring in 1999. 

But now the Calgary entrepreneur will expand into manufacturing luxury flooring using a key Alberta hydrocarbon that will create a more sustainable product and reduce reliance on imports. 

“People walk on luxury vinyl floors every day in their homes, malls, stores, hotels— it is the fastest growing category in our industry over the past decade,” says Soares, whose business employs 165 people and 250 contractors in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Chicago.  

“Billions of square feet of new floor coverings are manufactured and installed every year around the world.” 

While luxury vinyl products mimic the look of natural woods, they generally contain polyvinyl chlorides or PVCs, a synthetic plastic polymer used to create flexibility and durability.  

PVCs are difficult to recycle and take a lot of energy to produce. Most PVC production is in Asia, with roughly half of the world’s capacity in China. 

Soares has discovered a more environmentally friendly alternative to PVCs produced at the Heartland Polymers plant near Edmonton. 

Opened by Inter Pipeline Ltd. in July 2022, the facility produces polypropylene plastic pellets directly from locally sourced propane, a first of its kind in North America. Polypropylene is one of the world’s most widely used recyclable plastics.  

By converting about 22,000 barrels per day of propane into polypropylene instead of using it as fuel, Heartland says it cuts up to one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually — the equivalent of about 217,000 cars. 

“Polypropylene is our secret sauce. It can do all the things PVCs do,” says Soares.  

“But it is made in Alberta and it is a low-emission product free of chemicals that make it tough to recycle.” 

Soares and his partners in a venture called PolyCo have started construction on a $45 million facility in Balzac, about 25 kilometres north of downtown Calgary, to manufacture luxury flooring using Heartland polypropylene.  

A second-generation Canadian and entrepreneur, he wants to give back to the place where he grew up in a meaningful way. 

“My grandparents moved to Canada from Portugal in 1967 and this country has given our family so much. My father started his own welding shop in 1974 and ran it for years with old-school values. He always taught me to do the right thing and don’t compromise on quality,” he says.  

“That’s what we want to do with this proposal. We are putting more Canadians to work to make a more sustainable product and strengthen our local economy.” 

Carlos Soares, president of Divine Flooring. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre

Production at the plant is scheduled to start in the third quarter of 2027. It will employ 100 people when it reaches full capacity, initially producing 28 million square feet of flooring every year. A second phase will eventually bring the plant’s total capacity to 50 million square feet annually. 

The plant will be a “zero waste” facility, where all the dust and trimmings from the process will be swept up and put back into future production. 

In July, Emissions Reduction Alberta awarded the project $5 million through its Advanced Materials Challenge, a competition funding innovative low-emission products in the province. 

The funding is part of $49 million in ERA grants to 18 projects, determined after independent review by a team of experts in science, engineering, business development, commercialization, financing and greenhouse gas quantification.

Together, the projects have a total estimated value of $198 million.  

ERA’s goal is to accelerate projects that can improve the economy and the environment, says Justin Riemer, the agency’s CEO.  

“In the case of the PolyCo project, it highlights how to better utilize the supply chain we have here in Alberta. Everything this plant will need to source is literally within a three-hour drive,” he says.   

ERA has provided more than $1 billion in grants to more than 300 projects valued at $7 billion in 16 years across the province. 

“Of all the completed projects who’ve received funding, 50 per cent have been commercialized, which is a much better success rate than venture capital gets,” says Riemer, who has led ERA for three years.  

“It’s important to have this funding available because a lot of financial infrastructure in this country is risk-adverse to trialing and commercializing innovation technology.” 

The agency’s grants are financed through Alberta’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) fund, which collects contributions from the oil and gas sector under the province’s carbon pricing and trading system. 

“ERA receives about 10 per cent of the TIER contributions,” Riemer says.   

“Through these competitions, we have managed to see successful commercialization of technologies across a broad array of sectors beyond oil and gas including forestry, agriculture, power generation, critical minerals and even nuclear.”  

For Soares, the vote of confidence given by the agency in the proposal was crucial. 

“This ERA grant is huge for this project to go ahead but so was the decision. It gives us the confidence the government is behind the project and wants to see it materialize,” he says.  

“They are serious about real ideas that can produce sustainable and affordable products right here.” 

Soares is unapologetic in having his project funded by carbon levies collected from oil and gas. 

“We produce oil and gas more responsibly than anywhere in the world in Alberta and I’m proud of that even though I don’t work directly in the industry,” he says.  

“The fact that oil and gas contribute to grants that help create more sustainable products and technologies demonstrates the province’s commitment to doing things better.” 

The unaltered reproduction of this content is free of charge with attribution to the Canadian Energy Centre.