INNISFAIL – Deep Sky’s construction of the world’s first carbon removal innovation and commercialization centre in Innisfail is now complete.
The successful rapid build of the new $50 million, 217,000-square foot facility - called Deep Sky Alpha - on six acres of land in the town’s Southwest Industrial Park has left company and Town of Innisfail officials in awe.
“Since the beginning when Deep Sky announced they were going to locate its lab in Innisfail it's brought a lot of positive attention to the community and it does not surprise me they have finished construction in this time frame,” said Innisfail mayor Jean Barclay. “I think from the moment we met them, we knew they certainly had the expertise and the ability to get this finished in a timely manner.”
It was just a little over one year ago when the Montreal-based company signed a lease with the Town of Innisfail to fulfill its ambitious plan to build its cutting-edge test facility that will deploy up to 10 different direct air capture (DAC) technologies simultaneously.
“This unprecedented collaboration allows for real-world testing and optimization of multiple technologies under identical conditions, accelerating the industry's path to cost-effective, scalable carbon removal,” said Deep Sky in a media release.
As for the rapid construction completion of Deep Sky Alpha, Alex Petre, Deep Sky’s chief executive officer, told the Albertan that less than 25 per cent of industrial projects achieve “mechanical completion” in under one year.
“It’s quite an achievement that we are very excited to celebrate,” said Petre, whose company generated more than 110 construction jobs, including those from the Penhold shop of Bunch Projects and Red Deer’s Northside Construction and Timcon Construction.
"Completing construction of Deep Sky Alpha in under a year proves we can build critical climate infrastructure at the pace and scale required by the climate crisis,” she said. “The process was incredibly fast tracked. Deep Sky worked hard to expedite all the standard parts of the process. But we were very lucky to have great partners.
“Permitting, for example, is something that usually takes quite a long time, and we were very lucky to work with the town, and they were a great partner to ensure that permitting was smooth.”
With the construction phase completed the commissioning process of multiple DAC units onsite has begun, a much faster process that will be finalized in a few weeks.
Petre said the commissioning of individual DAC technologies is being managed by many of the best engineering teams in the world.
They include teams from the United States, United Kingdom, Singapore, as well as others from the Netherlands, Germany, and the Middle East.
“There's actually quite a lot of activity still at the site, but we went from having a lot of construction workers to a lot of commissioning engineers for each of the packages or pieces of equipment at site,” said Petre. “It's probably still upwards of 30 people that are at site each day. It’s still very,very busy.”
When their work is done Deep Sky will be able take CO2 from ambient air and produce liquid CO2 for transport by 20-ton trucks to an underground storage facility north of Edmonton.
“In August, we're probably going to send our first truck up to this storage (facility),” said Petre.
It’s expected Deep Sky Alpha will generate its first verified carbon removal credits by year-end.
By then the fully operational Deep Sky Alpha facility will employ about 15 full-time operators, working at the site 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
They will have their two-storey, 3,000 sq.-ft. office building ready for work and rest by August.
As for a grand opening of their facility, Petre said Deep Sky is “very close” to picking an official date, probably one in late September after the installation of the office building and when landscaping is completed.
“We're very excited and very grateful to be in the community that we are in, and as we get into operations we're very excited to have an education centre as well at the facility to welcome folks and start educating everyone about direct air capture,” said Petre.
“Obviously that's a big goal as well with the facility, to help educate folks about why this is important.”
