The City of Estevan and 8 Rivers Capital have been awarded a grant to undertake a feasibility study for commercial-scale NET Power facility deployment.
The grant was awarded through Western Economic Diversification Canada and the Coal Community Transition Initiative.
As a world pioneer in power sector carbon capture and storage, Estevan is an ideal location for one of the initial Canadian NET Power deployments.
NET Power’s Allam-Fetvedt cycle technology combusts natural gas with oxygen, as opposed to air, and uses supercritical carbon dioxide (CO2) as a working fluid to drive the turbine and produce zero-emission electricity.
This cycle can hit the same efficiency of a traditional power plant while capturing all of its carbon dioxide (CO2) and eliminating all air pollutants. As the inventor of the Allam-Fetvedt cycle, 8 Rivers is ideally situated to partner with the city to hit their energy and economic goals.
Bill Brown, CEO at 8 Rivers Capital and NET Power, said: “We look forward to working with Estevan to drive power production where clean is cheaper than dirty. A November 2020 MIT study characterized the underlying technology as ‘a real game changer.’ 8 Rivers is proud to deploy the NET Power technology in partnership with Estevan.
“Working with Estevan and leaders in Ottawa, Regina and other provincial and local governments — as well as with private entities like Canada Clean Energy Corporation — we can create jobs and deploy zero emission NET Power plants in a way that allows the entire country to achieve its net-zero emissions goal at the lowest possible costs.”
Leading the feasibility student will be 8 Rivers, performing engineering and economic analysis tailored to an Estevan deployment of the NET Power technology, work which will be overseen by the City of Estevan and funded by Western Economic Diversification Canada.
“We have been working hard to identify economic development opportunities like this for our city and we are excited to see more projects and studies moving ahead in Estevan,” said city manager Jeff Ward. “Working with 8 Rivers, we hope to be able to develop a strong plan that we can present to the provincial and federal governments during discussions around the future of power generation in Estevan.”
A Durham, N.C.-based firm, 8 Rivers Capital is leading the innovation of sustainable, infrastructure-scale technologies. As the inventor of the Allam-Fetvedt Cycle, 8 Rivers is also focusing on developing direct air capture, retrofit carbon capture, clean hydrogen well below $1 per kilogram, and uses for the CO2 captured by the cycle, including production of ethylene and other valuable products and the removal of sulfur impurities from gas streams.
