James Millar, President and CEO of the International CCS Knowledge Centre, issued the following statement in response.
“We are very pleased the Government of Canada has followed through on its commitment to implement the investment tax credit for CCUS and other legislation supporting the development of large-scale CCS/CCUS projects in a timely fashion."
"Providing opportunity for public input is an important step towards putting important policy tools in place before the end of this year, which will provide much-needed clarity for heavy industries across Canada to move forward with multi-billion-dollar projects that will be critical to achieving Canada’s ambitious goals for cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reaching net-zero emissions by 2050."
"We look forward to reviewing the draft legislation on the CCUS ITC to determine what costs will be eligible, labour requirements, the obligation of companies to share knowledge about their CCS projects and report on climate risks, and other technical issues that will impact the value of the tax credit for project developers. The Knowledge Centre will release a detailed analysis of the draft policies in the near future.”
Earlier this year, the Knowledge Centre delivered a comprehensive primer on the federal budget released March 28, 2023, providing a detailed break-down of the proposed CCUS ITC and an aggregation of government policies related since the ITC was first proposed in April 2021. That was followed by the release of a consultation document regarding the proposed requirements for public knowledge sharing to be included in the CCUS ITC legislation, which were released for stakeholder feedback before May 31 this year.
The investment tax credit for CCUS projects is the government’s centrepiece for incentivizing heavy industries to build CCS infrastructure and will cover 50 per cent of the capital cost of CO2 capture projects between 2022 and 2030. The tax credit is higher (60 per cent) for projects that capture CO2 directly from the atmosphere (direct air capture) and it also covers 37.5 per cent of the cost for facilities required to transport, utilization and permanent storage of CO2.
Canada has been a leader in the first generation of global CCS development, with five of the 30 commercial CCS projects in the world today, including the Quest CCS project operated by Shell at the Scotford oil sands upgrader near Edmonton, the largest CO2 pipeline on the planet - the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, and SaskPower’s Boundary Dam Unit 3 CCS Facility — the world’s first fully integrated CCS facility on a coal-fired power plant.
The International CCS Knowledge Centre is a non-profit organization founded in 2016 by BHP and SaskPower to advance large-scale CCS projects as a critical means of managing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving the world’s ambitious climate goals.