Tim Hodgson listens at the Assembly of First Nations general assembly in Ottawa in July. The Energy Minister says projects such as Origins will help Canada reach its potential as an energy superpower.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
The tiny central Alberta village of Clive is set to become home to Canada’s largest carbon-capture project after Enhance Energy Inc. broke ground Wednesday on its Origins project.
With operations slated to begin in January, the Origins carbon capture and storage (CCS) hub will initially have capacity to permanently store up to 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. That’s roughly the equivalent of taking more than 500,000 cars off the road annually, and the hub will be able to expand over time.
Enhance Energy is no stranger to carbon capture, a technology that traps the carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels before it is released into the atmosphere.
The company already operates a massive CCS site, also in Clive, which it says has permanently stored more than 9 million tonnes of CO2 since 2020.
And it was a founding partner of the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, a $1.2-billion integrated CCS system that includes a 240-kilometre pipeline running from the Edmonton region to Clive. It gathers, compresses and stores more than 1 million tonnes of CO2 each year.
The $100-million Origins hub will connect to the trunk line and Enhance Energy’s existing CCS facility in Clive.
While the project will initially serve facilities – largely in the oil, gas and petrochemical spaces – in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, the company said Origins would also be able to support CCS for cement and power generation.
Enhance Energy proposed the project as part of the Alberta government’s competitive carbon hub selection process, which was developed to strategically deploy CCS around the province. The Origins hub was granted regulatory approvals mid-2025 and has received $10-million in funding from Ottawa.
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Standing by the eventual site of the hub in Clive on Wednesday, federal Energy Minister Tim Hodgson said projects such as the hub will help Canada reach its potential as an energy superpower in the midst of an increasingly ugly trade war with the U.S.
“Canada didn’t ask for a world where energy security equals economic security equals national security, but that’s the world we’re in today,” he said.
“We may not be able to control decisions made in Washington, but we can control how we respond,” he said. That means building big projects such as the Origins hub, which he said would also help Canada lower its greenhouse-gas emissions to net zero by 2050.
“That is the kind of project Canada needs more of: projects that attract investment, projects that create jobs, projects that strengthen our energy security, projects that make our industries more competitive,” he said.
Mr. Hodgson said in an interview that the project will help all Canadians in a unique way.
Enhance Energy uses the captured carbon to increase production in its oil fields, by injecting CO2, which increases the pressure of a reservoir and forces more crude to its wells. For each unit of C02 it uses, Enhance Energy pays a toll to Wolf Midstream, which owns the trunk line and is backed by the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.
Carbon capture is a technology that both the federal and Alberta governments support and, in something of a rare moment for the two jurisdictions, provincial Energy Minister Brian Jean said Wednesday, “I can honestly get up here and say I agree with everything” that Mr. Hodgson said.
For Alberta, the Origins project represents the province’s all-in attitude on CCS as a means of reducing industrial emissions, particularly from facilities that process fossil fuels.
The Alberta Carbon Trunk Line “has been a trailblazer,” Mr. Jean said.
“They have demonstrated to the world that carbon capture and storage is viable on a large scale in our province, and that means it can work in other places as well.”
Mr. Jean said the U.S. has a similar strategy to Alberta’s when it comes to developing CCS, “and we need to win that race.”