(TAN): Air Canada has announced an equity investment/loan of CAD 6.75 million (USD 5.04 million) into Canadian climate solutions company Carbon Engineering (CE). The investment supports the advancement of CE’s Direct Air Capture (DAC) technology that pulls carbon dioxide (CO2) directly out of the air at large, industrial scale, the airline said in a news release.
Under its Climate Action Plan, Air Canada has committed to achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050. To help achieve this goal, the company created a CAD 50 million investment fund to support new technologies. The CAD 6.75 million being invested in CE comes from this fund and follows on an earlier announcement by Air Canada that it is investing USD 5 million in Heart Aerospace, a Swedish company developing electric hybrid aircraft.
“We remain focused on seeking innovative, long-term, sustainable GHG emissions reduction solutions for aviation, and carbon capture is one we have outlined in our strategy to achieving net-zero GHG emissions by 2050,” said Michael Rousseau, president and CEO at Air Canada.
According to CE, their DAC process uses large fans to pull in air and then, through a series of processes, extracts the CO2 while returning the other air components to the environment. The captured atmospheric CO2 can be used to reduce aviation emissions by producing sustainable aviation fuels (SAF) that can be drop-in compatible with today’s aircraft. The captured CO2 can also be safely and durably stored in geologic reservoirs to provide carbon dioxide removals that can used to offset GHG emissions.
