Take on a podcast episode from The Carbon Curve, originally published Thu, 10 Se. Listen: https://carboncurve.substack.com/p/canadas-next-industrial-play-a-new

TL;DR

  • Mercer’s Peace River pulp mill is developing a BECCS project with Svante that could store ~500,000 tonnes CO2/year — FID still ~a year out.
  • Alberta’s stack (15 km to sequestration, CCUS ITC + provincial top-up, permitting precedent) is doing real work here — worth noting for site selection debates.
  • Mercer wants BECCS bumped to the 60% ITC tier that DAC gets, plus a CDR price floor. Legitimate ask, but “we need a backstop” tells you unit economics don’t yet close on voluntary demand alone.
  • Meadow Lake’s Northstar (majority Indigenous-owned, 90 kt/yr, 15-year 626 kt Microsoft offtake) is the most structurally interesting BECCS deal in Canada right now.
  • Sheila Harrison’s point lands: without a viable primary forest sector, there’s no host infrastructure for pulp-mill BECCS. Fibre security is a CDR risk factor, not just a forestry one.

Na’im Merchant’s second episode in the Canada’s Next Industrial Play miniseries goes into the forest products sector with three guests: Bill Adams (CSO, Mercer International), Sheila Harrison (VP Policy, Alberta Forest Products Association), and Tina Rasmussen (CBO, MLTC Industrial Investments). The episode is essentially a pulp-mill BECCS deep dive with a policy and Indigenous-ownership wrapper. Episode link.

The Mercer Peace River segment is the one to listen to if you’re tracking pulp-mill BECCS economics. Adams is candid that the project only pencils because Alberta stacks four things: sequestration ~15 km from the mill (avoiding “a couple hundred million dollars” in compression and transport capex), the federal CCUS investment tax credit with an Alberta top-up, established Class VI-equivalent permitting, and existing steam/cogen expertise at the host site. He’s also candid about what’s missing: “if we only have 20 or 30% of our CDR credits under contract and that’s our only guaranteed revenue source, there’s no future.” Translation — voluntary offtake at current volumes and prices doesn’t clear FID, and he’s openly lobbying for BECCS to get the 60% ITC rate DAC receives, plus a provincial or federal price floor. Post-recording, Emissions Reduction Alberta approved a $7M grant to Svante for the FEED study, which is a real derisking step but still upstream of a capital decision.

The Northstar segment is more concrete because the offtake exists. MLTC’s stack — Mistik Management (forestry, 50% owned), NorSask (sawmill, 100%), MLTC Bioenergy Centre (8.3 MW, 100%), and Northstar BECCS (51%) — gives full chain of custody from stump to injection well, which is why Microsoft’s 15-year, 626,000-tonne deal (up to 90 kt/yr) reads as a serious durability play rather than a story credit. Rasmussen is direct about what unlocked it: insisting on majority ownership rather than just selling feedstock or raw CO2 to a developer. That structural point matters for other First Nations and tribal councils weighing similar deals.

For adjacent context on the buyer side, Microsoft’s Northstar deal sits alongside its Stockholm Exergi and Ørsted BECCS commitments — pulp-mill BECCS as a category is now clearly on hyperscaler radar. Svante’s rotary adsorbent capture tech is the common thread on the Peace River side. Worth reading against Frontier’s recent pulp-and-paper BECCS prepurchases if you want a cost curve benchmark.

Useful for: buyers evaluating pulp-mill BECCS pipeline, developers thinking about site selection in Alberta or Saskatchewan, and anyone modeling how ITC design and price floors change the go/no-go on biogenic CDR. Skip if you’re already deep on Northstar and don’t need the Mercer update