AFP / Gavin Kennedy 
 
 Jane Ritchie explains the carbon capture system at the opening of a Canadian Carbon Engineering pilot plant in Squamish, British Columbia on October 9, 2015 
 
 A company with global plans to pull carbon from thin air to make fuel, while tackling climate change, opened a pilot plant in this remote western Canadian community. 
 
 Carbon Engineering, backed by Bill Gates and other investors, unveiled a test facility able to extract carbon dioxide from the atmosphere using giant fans. 
 
 That carbon goes through a series of chemical processes and emerges as pellets, which can be used to make fuel -- or simply be stored underground. 
 
 The company was founded in Calgary in 2009 by David Keith, a Harvard University climate scientist, with funding from private investors. 
 
 Unlike existing machines that capture carbon from smokestacks like those of coal-fired power plants, the direct air capture plant deals "with emissions from sources you just can't otherwise capture," said company chief executive Adrian Corless. 
 
 "It's now possible to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, and use it as a feed stock, with hydrogen, to produce net zero emission fuels." 
 
 The benefit of those synthesized fuels, Corless told AFP, is they can be tailor-made for use in existing systems, from petrol pumps to automobiles and airplanes. 
 
 "You don't have to re-tool the $30 trillion in (global) infrastructure now used to deliver fossil fuels," Corless said. 
 
 While alternative energies, from wind to solar, are being developed, "there's not a lot of options to power airplanes and vehicles," said Corless. "For me, this is most exciting." 
 
 "The economics are attractive," said scientist Hadi Dowlatabadi, of the University of British Columbia. 
 
 This small town north of Vancouver welcomed the company moving into an unused industrial site, and the opening was blessed by members of the aboriginal Squamish Nation as a working example of traditional teachings to take care of the world. 
 
 - 'Have to adapt' - 
 
 "We have to adapt to the modern world," said councilor Chris Lewis. 
 
 Mark Jaccard, professor of sustainable energy at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, said the technology holds promise to reduce greenhouse gases and climate change. 
 
 "What humans really should be doing is really either not using fossil fuels -- or using fossil fuels and capturing the carbon so it doesn't go into the atmosphere," Jaccard said. 
 
 Other companies around the world are experimenting with air capture, but Corless said Carbon Engineering's design is unique because it can be quickly and affordably scaled up to industrial size. 
 
 Corless said the pilot plant began operations in June and has already captured 10 tonnes of C02. 
 
 The company says it plans to use the data from the pilot plant in Squamish to design its first commercial plant by 2017, which it says will cost no more than $200 million. 
 
 "We should be in a position to be selling synthetic fuels in 2018," said Corless. 
 
 He said synthetic fuels, like fossil fuels, provide an energy source concentrated enough to power airplanes and long-haul ground transportation. ||||| The mountain air in Squamish, B.C., could soon be even fresher with the launch of a groundbreaking carbon capture operation. 
 
 The pilot project will suck carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, not from an industrial plant like other such operations, with the goal of turning the gas into fuel. 
 
 Built and operated by Calgary-based Carbon Engineering, the $9-million plant will capture about one tonne of CO2 per day, which is the equivalent of taking about 100 cars off the road annually. 
 
 Founded by Harvard climate scientist David Keith and backed by big-name investors including Bill Gates, Carbon Engineering has spent several years turning academic research into technology that could be commercialized. 
 
 The company will unveil its pilot plant in Squamish on Friday. 
 
 Potential for larger impact 
 
 The operation has been capturing CO2 since May, but its primary purpose is to prove that the technology can work on a much larger scale, taking in up to one-million tonnes per day. 
 
 Calgary-based Carbon Engineering's first direct air capture plant in Squamish, B.C., extracts carbon dioxide directly from atmospheric air. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press) 
 
 "It's still a pilot-scale plant," explained Adrian Corless, Carbon Engineering's CEO. "But it's very important, because it's the first time that anyone's demonstrated a technology that captures CO2 that has the potential to be scaled up to be large enough to be relevant from an environmental or climate point of view." 
 
 The plant works by moving large volumes of air through a piece of equipment where CO2 is absorbed by a liquid solution, and then transformed into pellets of calcium carbonate. The pellets are then heated to 800 or 900 degrees Celsius and break down, releasing pure carbon. 
 
 "There's no real magic to it," Corless said. "The pieces of equipment already exist today in very large scale. And we've really adapted them from other industries." 
 
 It may not be magic, but it is innovative — Carbon Engineering is a world leader in direct-air carbon capture, Corless said. 
 
 Soon the company will take the technology even farther, building another system that will turn the captured carbon into useable transportation fuel by adding hydrogen from renewable sources, such as solar, wind or hydro. 
 
 "It's not something that we were the first to think about it," Corless said. "I think we're just the first to be in position with that key piece of technology — which is the scalable source of atmospheric CO2 — that allows you to think about making a larger scale fuel synthesis plant." 
 
 Turning CO2 into fuel 
 
 Once that plant is running in 2016 or 2017, it will produce 200 to 400 litres of gasoline or diesel per day, and there are already groups interested in buying the product, Corless said. 
 
 Senior process engineer Jane Ritchie explains how the pellet reactor system controls work at Calgary-based Carbon Engineering's first direct air capture plant in Squamish, B.C. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press) 
 
 Eventually, the fuel could be used for ships or planes. 
 
 "The nice thing about the technology is that there are no real limitations for it to ultimately, in theory, displace all of the existing fossil-based transportation fuels," Corless said. 
 
 Built on the site of a former Nexen chemical facility in Squamish, Carbon Engineering's pilot plant is bringing new technology to an area undergoing long-term development. 
 
 The pilot plant could be game changing in terms of reducing the global carbon footprint and it could make the mountain town a hub for green technology in the process, said Mayor Patricia Heintzman. 
 
 "When you start to bring in people who are problem solvers and entrepreneurs who see opportunity when it's there and aren't blind to it, that's an exciting place for a community to be. You can really grow on that," she said. 
 
 "I think it's great when smart innovators are coming into a community. That's where your future is." ||||| Residents of Squamish, B.C., will witness history this week when a small company from Alberta flicks the switch on an industrial facility that chemically grabs carbon dioxide out of thin air. The facility, designed and built with support from billionaires Bill Gates and oilsands financier Murray Edwards, isn’t just a first for Canada. It may be the largest demonstration of its kind in the world, and takes us closer to a day when humans can suck more CO2 from the atmosphere than they dump in. 
 
 A rendering of a commercial-scale CO2 air capture system being designed by Calgary-based Carbon Engineering. The company hopes to one day make it economical to pull CO2 from the air. ( Carbon Engineering ) 
 
 Carbon Engineering, the Calgary-based company behind the innovation, also plans to use that CO2 to make renewable synthetic fuels, a potential path forward for oil and gas companies as society tries to kick its fossil fuel habit. “I knew if we could pull this off it would be immense and important, and I wanted to be part of it,” said chief executive officer Adrian Corless. Rivals include Menlo Park, Calif.-based Global Thermostat, which counts Edgar Bronfman Jr. as its executive chairman, and Zurich-based Climeworks, which counts carmaker Audi as a partner. All three companies are convinced that direct air capture of CO2 is inevitable. 
 
 Article Continued Below 
 
 Carbon Engineering’s work is based on research conducted at the University of Calgary and led by David Keith, now a professor of public policy and applied physics at Harvard University. Keith, who founded Carbon Engineering in 2009, admitted at the time that the idea of capturing CO2 out of the air seemed “absurd,” given that the greenhouse gas only represents 0.04 per cent of what we inhale. By comparison, the concentration of CO2 emitted from a power plant fuelled by coal is about 10 per cent. Logically, it makes more sense to focus on capturing CO2 directly from industrial flue gases — the focus, for example, of a $20-million XPrize competition launched on Sept. 29. But that approach ignores CO2 produced by transportation, agriculture and buildings, which together represent a third of global emissions. Keith knew free-air capture wouldn’t just work; it might one day be a necessary weapon in the fight against dangerous climate change. Wind, solar, nuclear power and energy efficiency all reduce emissions from going into the atmosphere, but they are incapable of extracting what’s already up there in the increasingly likely event that safe limits are exceeded. Plant more trees, you say? Research suggests that plants are comparatively inefficient when it comes to extracting CO2 from the air. It’s vital, Keith said in 2009, “to start thinking about radical new ideas and approaches to solving this problem.” Six years later, the idea of snatching CO2 from anywhere doesn’t seem so radical. For one, Keith’s team has taken what was just a theory and turned it into a working machine that people can see and touch — and which can be easily replicated. “As the project has progressed, we’ve been able to get a lot more people engaged in believing what we’re doing,” said Corless. 
 
 Second, a growing body of evidence over the years suggests that climate change is happening faster than originally thought, and that dramatic measures may be needed to avert its worst effects. This has created wider acceptance within government and business of putting a price on carbon, with the G7 setting a long-term goal of completely phasing out fossil fuel use by 2100. China, meanwhile, recently confirmed plans to launch a national emission trading system in 2017. According to the World Bank, about 40 national and more than 20 sub-national jurisdictions have put a price on carbon or plan to do so, twice as many as were in that position in 2012. Together, they represent more than a quarter of global greenhouse-gas emissions. 
 
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 “The growing acceptance that there’s going to be a requirement to pay for carbon emissions, that’s really changed only in the last 18 months,” said Corless. That’s important, he explained, because as carbon pricing emerges and as the cost of air-capture technology falls, the business case for Carbon Engineering and its rivals will only get stronger. They have a long way to go. At the moment, carbon is priced at less than $10 a tonne in most jurisdictions, with B.C. at $30 and Sweden on the high end at $130. Where the price goes from here is anyone’s guess, but the number of companies using what’s called “shadow carbon pricing” to estimate the long-term viability of their operations has tripled in just the past year. These shadow prices can range from $20 to $200 a tonne, giving an indication of where carbon prices are and where companies believe they could go. Asked if $100 a tonne would be enough for Carbon Engineering to support itself commercially, Keith replied: “That’s getting pretty damn close.” This article is part of a series produced in partnership by the Toronto Star and Tides Canada to address a range of pressing climate issues in Canada leading up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, December 2015. Tides Canada is supporting this partnership to increase public awareness and dialogue around the impacts of climate change on Canada’s economy and communities. The Toronto Star has full editorial control and responsibility to ensure stories are rigorously edited in order to meet its editorial standards. ||||| An “air capturing” plant is taking in air through giant fans, filtering out the carbon dioxide, absorbing the gas in liquid, and converting it into pellets in a bid to combat climate change. 
 
 A Canadian start up, backed by Bill Gates, built its first such plant in Squamish, Vancouver, where members of the aboriginal Squamish Nation blessed the opening on Friday, Oct. 9. The $9m plant has captured 10 tonnes of CO2 since operations began in June, according to AFP. 
 
 There are plans to use the carbon pellets alongside hydrogen to make environmentally friendly fuel, as described in this diagram: 
 
 www.carbonengineering.com 
 
 “It’s not something that we were the first to think about it,” chief executive Adrian Corless told Canadian Press. “I think we’re just the first to be in position with that key piece of technology — which is the scalable source of atmospheric CO2 — that allows you to think about making a larger scale fuel synthesis plant.” 
 
 Harvard University climate scientist David Keith founded the company, Carbon Engineering, in 2009, and plans to sharply increase the scale of the work. Carbon Engineering is aiming to build a $200 million commercial plant by 2017 and start selling synthetic fuels by 2018. The larger plant should produce 200 to 400 litres of gasoline or diesel per day, according to the Canadian Press. 
 
 Corless said that the current plant is just a pilot-scale version, but will shape their future work. 
 
 “It’s very important, because it’s the first time that anyone’s demonstrated a technology that captures CO2 that has the potential to be scaled up to be large enough to be relevant from an environmental or climate point of view,” he explained. 
 
 And he told AFP that the fuels produced could be used in existing cars and planes. 
 
 “You don’t have to re-tool the $30 trillion in (global) infrastructure now used to deliver fossil fuels,” he said.
– Visit a town north of Vancouver and you may notice a long, blue building that appears ordinary—but it just may be leading the way in climate-change technology. Run by the Canadian company Carbon Engineering, the plant is busy capturing carbon dioxide from the Earth's atmosphere. It's also designed to process the greenhouse gas into carbon pellets that can help make fuel or just be buried underground, AFP reports. "It's now possible to take CO2 out of the atmosphere, and use it ... to produce net zero emission fuels," says company CEO Adrian Corless. "You don't have to re-tool the $30 trillion in (global) infrastructure now used to deliver fossil fuels." And he's not alone: Billionaires including Bill Gates and oil sands financier Murray Edwards are already investing, the Toronto Star reports. Running since May, the pilot plant should grab about a ton of CO2 daily—about the same as removing 100 cars from the road, the CBC reports. It works by running air through equipment that absorbs CO2 in a liquid solution and turns it into calcium-carbonate pellets (see a diagram at Quartz). The pellets are then heated in order to free pure carbon. "There's no real magic to it," says Corless. "The pieces of equipment already exist today in very large scale." Indeed, companies in California and Switzerland are also aiming to capture airborne CO2. Carbon Engineering isn't commercially viable just yet, but carbon pricing varies and could eventually hit $100 per ton. Would that be enough? "That’s getting pretty damn close," says company founder David Keith. (One study found that "global cooling" isn't such a far-fetched theory.)