Breathe fresh air to save the Earth

“Impressive, right? All the mountains behind are artificial mountains. »

Perched on a belvedere, Olivier Dufresne, president of the start-up company Exterra, points to the former playground of the Jeffrey mine, in Val-des-Sources.

Before him lies a hole the size of a city, partly filled with blue-green water. Around, as far as the eye can see, mountains of crushed rock devoid of any vegetation.

I see desolation there, the sad vestiges of an industry which still kills more than 100,000 people per year, according to the World Health Organization.

Val-des-Sources was previously called Asbestos, a name that has become toxic because it is associated with mesothelioma, asbestosis and other lung diseases caused by asbestos fibers that have been extracted here for more than a century.

Olivier Dufresne, for his part, sees in these immense piles of rock both a business opportunity and a solution to the greatest threat weighing on humanity: the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

His plan: use the magnesium contained in mine tailings to remove carbon from the atmosphere.

The idea comes from a very simple chemical equation, which I take the liberty of writing here:

MgO + CO₂ = MgCO₃

In short: magnesium oxide contained in mining residues combined with CO₂ produces a magnesium carbonate. A white, chemically inert powder, which remains on the ground rather than floating in the air creating a greenhouse effect.

Stroke of luck: the company can count on a laboratory where it is already testing its process. It belongs to the Materials Innovation Hub of the MRC des Sources, a non-profit organization particularly dedicated to the valorization of mining residues.

A pilot plant is planned within a few years.

Exterra does not lack ambition.

“By 2030, if our development plan works, we expect to have stored 2 million tonnes of CO₂ in total. Then, from 2030, we are targeting 3.5 million tonnes per year,” says Olivier Dufresne, who, in addition to the asbestos residues from Val-des-Sources, also covets those from Thetford Mines.

These are enormous quantities of carbon considering that in 2020, all of Quebec emitted the equivalent of 74 million tonnes of CO₂. One million tonnes corresponds roughly to the emissions of 200,000 gasoline cars.

Exterra is part of a nascent, extremely ambitious and controversial industry: that of CO capture and sequestration.₂.

An industry that is starting to seriously boom in Quebec.

The one who stirs up the most air – figuratively and, perhaps soon, literally – is Frédéric Lalonde.

The character is colorful.

Mr. Lalonde is co-founder and president of Hopper, creator of the travel application of the same name, whose turnover today is close to $7 billion – the equivalent of Bombardier.

It took me weeks to arrange a meeting with this hyperactive man, who, when the day came, changed our meeting place several times because the cafes he suggested were too crowded for his taste. We ended our interview on the sidewalk, lashed by a cold November rain and sheltered as best we could by a (bare) tree.

Hopper is a home run for Quebec technological entrepreneurship. But Frédéric Lalonde is aware of working in a very polluting industry.

Frédéric Lalonde has read the IPCC reports. Then the scientific articles that underlie them. He bombards me with climate facts and statistics at warp speed.

It was a trip to the San Joaquin Valley, an agricultural region of California heavily affected by drought, that finally convinced him of the extent of the problems.

“I read about agriculture. And I came to the conclusion that we were going to lose agriculture in our lifetime or in the lifetime of our children,” he says, referring to droughts and other climatic hazards.

He decided to act. Then picked up the phone to convince others to follow him.

The result of his efforts is Deep Sky – the new company of Frédéric Lalonde and his collaborators.

The goal: to remove carbon directly from the air and oceans. Deep Sky does not develop any technology itself. It evaluates those that are developing all over the world and signs partnerships in order to deploy them on a large scale.

Et quand on dit grande échelle… J’avoue que la première fois que j’ai consulté le site web de Deep Sky, j’ai figé.

Des animations montrent des installations grosses comme des villes qui aspirent du carbone de l’atmosphère ou des cours d’eau. Les structures sont blanches, léchées, futuristes. On se croirait en plein film de science-fiction.

Frédéric Lalonde est-il parti sur une « balloune » ? Certains le croient (voir autre texte). Mais il faut reconnaître que l’homme est en train d’embarquer bien du monde dans son bateau.

Son équipe compte des financiers établis comme Laurence Tosi, un ancien de la banque Merrill Lynch et du fonds d’investissement Blackstone, ainsi que des scientifiques comme Phil De Luna, recruté chez McKinsey.

Deep Sky fait aussi pleuvoir les dollars. À la mi-novembre, l’entreprise a récolté 75 millions auprès d’investisseurs publics et privés. Du lot, 25 millions proviennent de la poche des contribuables québécois par l’entremise d’Investissement Québec.

« C’est sûr qu’il y a des risques qui sont élevés là-dedans. […] We want to partner with a player who will evaluate the different technologies whose cost is still very high,” explains Bicha Ngo, first executive vice-president, Private Investments, at Investissement Québec.

Note that Investissement Québec also invested in Exterra through the Impulsion PME program. The state corporation reiterates the importance of achieving our climate targets.

In addition to recruiting employees and raising capital, Deep Sky signs partnerships. A memorandum of understanding has just been announced with Swiss company Climeworks, which has deployed the first large-scale air carbon capture plant in Iceland.

Partnerships have also been established with Captura (United States), Mission Zero (England) and Isometric (England and United States).

DeepSky also has an agreement with… Exterra, from Val-des-Sources. The plan: Deep Sky will capture the carbon and Exterra will sequester it in its mine tailings. Without yet having a single factory built, Frédéric Lalonde and his collaborators have already pre-sold tons of carbon removed from the atmosphere to voluntary market buyers who want to green their environmental footprint. And he transferred hard dollars to Exterra.

To his detractors, Frédéric Lalonde has a message to send.

“Our level of ambition is simply commensurate with the problem,” he says.