The carbon removal Olympics are set to kick off in this Alberta industrial park

Just off the highway near Innisfail, Alta., a town about 120 kilometres north of Calgary, is a construction site immediately identified by a large tent boasting the words "Deep Sky" in a groovy, arcade-style font. 

The roughly two-hectare facility, still under construction, is hosting what could be called a carbon removal Olympics. It will pilot eight different versions of a similar technology using various machines that will suck in air, remove the carbon dioxide and send it to a central plant where it will be compressed and liquified for storage deep underground.

The winner of this initiative wouldn't get a medal on a podium. Instead, Deep Sky, the Montreal-based project developer behind it, plans to take the best versions of the direct air capture technology that prove most effective in Canada's climate and deploy them on a commercial scale all over the country. 

"There are some preliminary data points about this for sure, but has anyone run this system in -30 C yet?" asked Alex Petre, the new CEO of Deep Sky, indicating one of the recently installed direct air capture machines. "No, we haven't."

The company is so confident this will be successful that it's already begun initial work on two commercial projects, one in Quebec and the other in Manitoba. That's despite not yet knowing how they will be fully financed or which technology will be put to use. 

The finances, in particular, could be challenging given that removing carbon from the atmosphere is a pricey endeavour, in part because it's still new. But with global temperatures increasing each year, businesses like Deep Sky see a growing market for technologies that will not only reduce carbon emissions, but remove carbon dioxide from the air altogether.

This appetite may be changing as the Trump administration moves away from climate change initiatives more broadly and carbon removal specifically — though some say changing fortunes south of the border could also present an opportunity for Canada to pick up where the U.S. left off as a world leader in carbon removal. 

"Had you talked to me a year ago, I would have told you that Canada was a distant second to the United States in terms of the carbon removal industry," said Damien Steel, Deep Sky's outgoing CEO and current advisor, who believes that carbon removal technology is essential to dealing with a warming climate.

"Today, I believe that there's an opportunity for Canada to take a global leadership position."

Deep Sky is one of the country's more high-profile carbon removal startups — boosted by a major investment from Bill Gates' climate venture firm — but it isn't the only one. 

Right next door in Squamish, B.C., for example, the company Carbon Engineering has been working for years on removing carbon from the atmosphere. It was purchased in 2023 by Occidental Petroleum, and is currently working on what's believed to be the world's largest direct air capture facility in western Texas. 

Jeremy Barretto, a regulatory lawyer and partner with the Calgary-based law firm Cassels, said about a year ago his phone started "ringing off the hook" with companies interested in launching carbon removal projects in Alberta who were seeking his help in negotiating contracts.

"We're at the early stages, but I think we are off to a great start," he said.

At a national level, Prime Minister Mark Carney pledged in his campaign platform to make Canada a "world leader" in carbon removal and sequestration. And while the U.S. has previously been a world heavyweight in support for carbon removal, under the Trump administration, funding appears to be in limbo and several companies with operations south of the border are cutting staff.