In this episode of the Cory Morgan Show, I'm joined by Colin Craig from the Taxpayers Federation to talk about carbon capture and the potential benefits it can bring to the economy and the environment. We talk about the benefits of carbon capture, and how it can be used to make things out of it.
00:00:00.000Welcome to the Cory Morgan Show. I'm going to shift things, you know, I'm usually sour going on about things and grumbling about things. A lot of people on the left are sour about things grumbling and going on about things. But we got some, some positive content coming today with the guest I got coming on. His name's Colin Craig. He's with secondstreet.org. You might remember from the Taxpayers Federation. He's been busy with a lot of things and Second Street's putting out some, some great policy briefs and papers. And we've been trained, you know, to think that carbon, carbon is a pollutant, you know, carbon dioxide is a pollutant.
00:00:29.980I mean, like people like to point out, we exhale it. It's not uncommon. Trees breathe it in. Carbon dioxide isn't all bad, but there are concerns about the levels of carbon dioxide we're producing and how it might be impacting the environment. That's a whole separate discussion. But what we do have going on are some really innovative, creative companies and people with ideas on what you can do with the carbon. Then if we don't want it going off into the atmosphere, I mean, carbon capture is something we've talked a lot about in the West and in oil and gas production facilities and things such as that.
00:01:00.080Using it for even oil recovery by pumping it underground. But then that's the end of the product. It's gone, which still may be very good for the environment, but it's not making anything out of it. Well, what they've come up with is a list of 25 products that are made through captured carbon. Things we can make, you know, that have value from bicycles to even yoga mats as we'll go into.
00:01:22.980And a number of the things that they listed on that. There's even some pretty cool and neat things that can be made out of carbon. You know, the future doesn't have to be bleak. Carbon doesn't have to be tossed away as a waste product or hidden away as a pollutant. We can actually make something of it.
00:01:36.780And as we carry on with that, it will solve a lot of those problems without crushing our economy as some people seem to feel is the best way to manage to do that.
00:01:45.780And before we go to Colin, I just want to remind everybody, be sure to take out a membership with the Western Standard if you have it already. It's 10 bucks a month. It's well worth your time. Go to the westernstandardonline.com. Check out the membership button.
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00:02:58.780Yeah, yeah, no, for sure. It's been, it's one of the definitely one of the cooler policy briefs I've ever worked on my colleague, James Skinner. He was the one that was the lead writer and I helped with finding examples in that. But what we wanted to do was take a look at climate change and emissions from a different perspective.
00:03:17.540Because so often in public discourse in Canada about climate change, it's doom and gloom. You hear politicians routinely calling CO2 pollution and so forth. And I think what we've seen is a bit of a paradigm shift occur.
00:03:33.220Where entrepreneurs are saying, well, wait a second, CO2 is actually used to make lots of different products. So instead of letting carbon dioxide release up into the atmosphere, why don't we capture it and make cool things with it?
00:03:47.600So we thought, well, let's take a look. Let's try and find some of these cool examples that entrepreneurs are working on, but also examples of where companies are doing cool things to reduce emissions in the first place.
00:03:58.320So we came up with a list of 25. We wanted to put it out there and talk about this issue from a more positive and optimistic perspective, rather than the doom and gloom scenarios that so often dominate media coverage of the issue.
00:04:14.540Yeah, well, in carbon sequestration, I mean, people can understand that you're just taking it, you're stuffing it underground or somewhere to contain it.
00:04:21.780But then it is a lost resource in that sense. And now you're going to take something and perhaps make a tangible, valuable product out of it.
00:04:29.260So I'll start with one that really jumped out. And most people can relate with the benefits of it or perhaps the non-benefits, but is vodka.
00:04:37.200So how on earth does vodka come into a list of carbon products?
00:04:42.100Yeah, this is probably my favorite too. And I'm not a big vodka drinker, but I think it's just awesome that they've been able to make vodka using captured carbon dioxide.
00:04:51.340I've actually got a bottle of it. It's called, put it right there. Maybe your viewers can see it or not. It's called the Air Company.
00:04:58.700That's the name of the company. They're in New York. And what they did was found a way to make vodka using just two ingredients, carbon dioxide and water.
00:05:08.240And I think a lot of people are wondering, well, how on earth do you do this? And it's actually quite simple.
00:05:13.200When you write out the formula, the chemical formula for ethanol, which is the main ingredient in vodka, you'll see that it's got three elements in it.
00:05:22.340And that's it. It's got carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. And of course, we can find those three same elements in carbon dioxide and water.
00:05:30.640So what they've been able to do through the magic of the technology that they've developed is basically create ethanol.
00:05:38.860And then with ethanol, you add water to it to water it down. And that's how you get vodka.
00:05:43.220So they've been able to produce the vodka. It's very, very pure. I've tried a little bit.
00:05:48.800It's very, very smooth. Vodka is quite nice, actually.
00:05:52.380It doesn't give you that same burn that you might get from some of the cheaper stuff that I grew up on, at least in my...
00:05:57.640Yeah, the old high school bottle of Smirnoff, yeah.
00:06:00.860Yeah, so it's pretty amazing. They're actually trying to get into the LCBO in Ontario to start selling in Canada.
00:06:08.540But it's awesome. The company is also creating hand sanitizer using captured carbon dioxide.
00:06:14.120They have a perfume that they just released.
00:06:17.400But there's also a ton of really cool examples in Canada, including many right here in Calgary.
00:06:22.420So one example I love is a company, they started up, they're called Carbonova.
00:06:29.300And what they do is they're making carbon nanofibers.
00:06:34.120And if you've ever picked up a really lightweight badminton racket or maybe a bicycle that's got a lightweight frame,
00:06:40.040it's not uncommon to see that it's a carbon fiber material that helps make that.
00:06:44.260And so this company is basically creating that same material, but through a different process.
00:06:50.680And their process involves captured carbon dioxide.
00:07:40.240There's been lots of different examples that we came across that were just pretty amazing to see that entrepreneurs can do what they're doing.
00:07:47.360Another example from New York actually is a company called Aether Diamonds.
00:07:51.200They're making diamonds from captured carbon dioxide.
00:07:54.620So I think the sky is really the limit in terms of what entrepreneurs are able to do.
00:07:58.520Yeah, and this list really reflects just that principle like technology, innovation.
00:08:05.220We don't have to just shut things out, shut them down, throw them aside.
00:08:09.320Like we come up with new ways of doing things and we can mitigate problems that be created.
00:08:14.640And one that I liked in this list too that was kind of an irony was yoga mats.
00:08:18.720So they don't have to be, you know, sourced from hemp and other such things.
00:08:23.040We could have a captured carbon yoga mat out there.
00:08:27.420And in that case, I believe what they do is they take carbon dioxide, they fuse it together with some other materials.
00:08:32.900It's one of the ingredients, but it's great.
00:08:35.800I mean, it's, you know, to be able to get a yoga mat and it's partially made with captured CO2.
00:08:40.520That's certainly a, I think, a step in the right direction.
00:08:43.800And, you know, when I, when I think back about, you know, to my first comment about how discourse in this country is so negative, you know, you see these stories about kids dealing with ecological anxiety and they're concerned about climate change and that like to the point where they're worrying about it at night, they can't sleep.
00:09:00.040I mean, that's crazy that we're doing that to the next generation.
00:09:02.400And I think what we need are for leaders to say, hey, wait a second, let's inspire these kids so that they could be the next entrepreneurs that are finding a way to use CO2 to make cool stuff instead of letting them, you know, have sleepless nights and dealing with anxiety.
00:09:36.040Basically, from a smokestack, instead of letting the CO2 go up into the atmosphere, what they do is they capture the CO2, they pump it into a tank.
00:10:25.560I think if politicians talked about these examples more, you could get more exposure for these companies.
00:10:30.400And with more exposure, it might be easier for them to attract some venture capital.
00:10:36.300So if they can have more money, then they can expand their operations, maybe work on even more projects.
00:10:41.300That's, I think, the way that we're going to address emissions in this country rather than sort of this doom and gloom discourse that dominates so much of how we discuss it.
00:10:52.340So, I mean, at this point, a lot of this is still in its infancy.
00:10:55.020And we're not obviously going to be able to drink ourselves into a carbon-free world.
00:10:58.440But, I mean, a lot of people are willing to put in their best effort on it, I'm sure.
00:11:02.040But this is how a lot of technology gets discovered that can be scalable and actually start making a very real impact on our carbon emissions from a number of industries, I imagine.
00:11:13.240This is – many of these companies, I think, are still in the early stages.
00:11:17.320But they're getting better, just as most companies do.
00:11:19.980Most companies don't start off like, you know, the Ford manufacturing plant in Ontario where it's just absolutely enormous.
00:11:25.400Because you start off small, you develop your technology, you refine it, you continually make it better.
00:11:31.400And as you sell more products, you have more money coming in that you can invest in new technology and new ideas and just keep getting better and better and better.
00:11:38.600And like I said, I think one of the cool things about doing research for this report and seeing some of the examples my colleague found was that there's so many things happening right here in Canada.
00:11:52.040We need to think about how we can support this sector.
00:11:56.540You know, I'll give you another example.
00:11:58.260So often in – if you go on the federal government's website, you see how they give out research grants.
00:12:03.460And at the same time, Ottawa keeps telling us that we're in a climate crisis.
00:12:08.080Well, I know that in my own personal life when something is sort of at a crisis level, emergency level, that's what you focus on.
00:12:14.120So why are we using federal research dollars to fund half of the crazy stuff that they're spending money on when those dollars could be used towards helping out in post-secondary institutions with channeling more students into research related to carbon tech instead of, you know, looking into, I don't know, 8th century Japanese haikus or some of the crazy stuff that you see Ottawa spending money on.
00:12:38.900If it's an emergency and it's a crisis and it's an important issue, then start – it's time, I think, to start directing some of those research dollars towards this issue instead of some of the distractions.
00:12:49.440Yeah, and as you said, it's great just to see something positive.
00:12:52.900We're getting nothing but gloom and doom these days, whether it's the pandemic or the economy or you name it.
00:12:56.920So, I mean, we've got to retain some faith.
00:13:05.820So I really appreciate you guys taking the time to show that list.
00:13:08.620Like, there's a lot of things coming out of this, you know, positive things that can be made out of carbon.
00:13:13.420And people have been trained to think it's a negative.
00:13:16.160So you guys have some other stuff coming up.
00:13:18.820Where can we find more information about what Second Street's up to and what can we look forward to in the future?
00:13:25.240So if people go to our website, secondstreet.org, they can see all of our policy briefs, the one that we've been talking about.
00:13:31.580We've done lots of research on health care, natural resource development.
00:13:35.100We've got a lot of material coming out on that in the near future.
00:13:37.360And we've also got a couple short little videos on this very topic so they can share them with their friends and provide some optimism out there instead of, you know, as we keep talking about the doom and gloom.