Accelerating high-quality carbon removal with direct air capture

Mission Zero Technologies is helping Deep Sky to accelerate the path to low-cost, high-integrity CDR in Canada.

INDUSTRY

Carbon dioxide removal

LOCATION

Alberta, Canada

PROCESS

Liquified injection

USE CASE

Underground sequestration

Deep Sky is the world's first tech-agnostic carbon dioxide removal (CDR) project developer working to quickly remove carbon from the atmosphere and permanently store it underground. On a mission to remove billions of tons of atmospheric CO₂ as quickly as possible, they are using our direct air capture technology to accelerate the path to low-cost, high-integrity, scalable CDR.

Building the market for high-quality DAC carbon removals

Alongside emissions reductions, governments and companies need CDR to urgently scale in order to meet their climate goals — increasing current annual CO₂ removal fourfold by mid-century. To mean anything, carbon removal credit quality also needs to rapidly improve. Today, only 4% of credits available on the voluntary carbon market come from CDR projects and only 2% of these represent high-permanence engineered pathways.

Deep Sky is working to change that. Leveraging Canada’s abundant renewable energy and geological storage potential, they are scaling one of the world’s most promising engineered pathways for high-quality CDR: direct air capture coupled with permanent underground sequestration. This method offers one of the most verifiable, scalable, and durable routes to locking carbon out of the atmosphere for thousands of years.

Through its flagship innovation centre, Deep Sky Alpha, in Alberta, Canada, they have brought together the most promising direct air capture (DAC) companies to validate their technologies ahead of scaling commercial facilities aiming to remove up to one million tonnes of CO₂ per year.

“As one of the world’s pioneering DAC technologies, Mission Zero is helping Deep Sky make history. Together, both teams are delivering innovative carbon dioxide removal with precision, speed, and efficiency.”

Alex Petre, CEO of Deep Sky

Selecting the world’s best DAC solutions

Since DAC only makes sense when powered by renewable energy, Deep Sky exclusively selected electric-only solutions for their Alpha project. Priority criteria focused on low energy intensity, scalability, simplicity, and a strong team. Mission Zero fulfilled all requirements, offering a solution which could credibly reduce both energy consumption and cost.

Pathway to low energy intensity

MZT’s DAC system leverages proven, off-the-shelf industrial components backed by global supply chains. This produces a scalable DAC product that can reach technological and manufacturing readiness faster than bespoke DAC approaches. Based on a platform approach, the system is also designed for modular future upgrades to reduce redundancy risk. As a result, MZT were able to deliver their system to TERC seven months after signing the contract and have built early financial confidence around their core technology.

Clear route to scale

Simplicity and focus

Strong team

Free of energy intensive heat-based processes, our electrochemical technology offers one of the highest thermodynamic efficiencies of any known DAC method. We have purposely designed our capture and release cycles to run continuously and independently of one another to further increase energy efficiency, and the entire system can run entirely on intermittent renewable energy. This enables our system’s output to flexibly adjust to the shifts in energy demand and availability from the solar source powering Deep Sky’s facility.

Instead of pursuing novel components, we work with mature ones that are backed by global supply chains. Our resource- and land-efficient modular approach to design also means we’ve decoupled our core processes for easy installation and upgradeability. This has enabled us to quickly achieve high manufacturing and technology readiness levels, and build a rich database of real-world performance data to unlock quick learning rates. As a result, we have already deployed three commercial DAC systems internationally in the space of two years, increasing overall capacity fivefold while reducing costs by 60%.

We are able to integrate our technology efficiently, without any complex requirements and with minimal site disruption. Straightforward installation is underpinned by our focus on simple utilities — electricity and water being the only input requirements, which can be found anywhere in the world. Our modular, compact design — finessed over three deployments — also enables our system to occupy a minimal land footprint on Deep Sky’s Alberta site.

With a longer-term goal of opening multiple commercial sites, Deep Sky was looking for a dependable partner they could trust. Having deployed DAC multiple times across different industries and geographies, our expert team offered a seasoned pair of hands. We pride ourselves on technical excellence, proactive collaboration, and dedication. Seeking to work as an extension of Deep Sky’s engineering team, we were able to efficiently deploy our system as part of Alpha’s first DAC cohort.

“Our most important criteria, time and again, remain low energy intensity and scalability. We selected Mission Zero because it hits all of the required criteria. Its entirely electrically powered modularised DAC technology is projected to reduce both energy consumption and cost.”

Alex Petre

What DAC offers building materials innovators

Delivering quality carbon removal at speed

Mission Zero’s experience enabled them to efficiently deliver one of the first systems on Deep Sky’s Alpha site, passing factory acceptance tests with ease. Despite being the team’s first international deployment, installation and commissioning were completed in record time, with the entire system deployed in the space of 10 months from first delivery to switch on. This rapid speed to market has enabled Deep Sky to meet its ambitious carbon removal credit delivery targets for buyers.

Scaling best-in-class DAC with confidence

Once all DAC systems begin operations on site, Deep Sky will measure success based on its DAC partners’ ability to demonstrate low energy consumption, carbon capture capabilities, and scalability. DAC systems enabling the highest amount of carbon removal with the lowest amount of energy consumption stand out to carbon removal credit buyers — and will, therefore, be prioritised by Deep Sky for consideration at its future commercial facilities.

Following successful end-to-end demonstration of DAC + storage, Deep Sky seeks to build approximately one hundred commercial carbon removal sites across Canada — with an ultimate vision to remove sufficient atmospheric carbon to not only slow climate change, but reverse it.

“The MZT team has been smooth, constructive, and efficient to work with. Thanks to their commitment to speed, MZT was part of Alpha’s first DAC cohort to deliver.”

Alex Petre

Empower your carbon removal journey

Get in touch to see how our DAC can deliver the cost- and energy-efficient atmospheric carbon supply for your carbon removal project to scale.

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