Pilot Energy partners with Global Cleantech 100 heavyweight Svante Technologies to create ‘one-stop-shop’ for CCS

Pilot Energy continues to attract significant partners to its Cliff Head Carbon Capture and Storage Project in Western Australia’s Mid West, with the most recent entrant being Svante Technologies — which counts Samsung, GE, and Chevron among its strategic backers.

Pilot Energy (ASX:PGY), which is advancing one of Australia’s first offshore carbon capture and storage projects, has inked a memorandum of understanding with Canada’s Svante Technologies to collaborate on offering a “one-stop-shop solution” for carbon capture, transportation, and storage to industrial businesses with hard-to-avoid CO2 emissions.

The first port of call for the pair will be helping the Kwinana Industrial Area in Western Australia cut its roughly 8 million tonnes of CO2 each year.

Svante will be bringing to the table its novel, environmentally friendly solid sorbent carbon capture and removal filter technology to capture the emissions that would be transported and stored at Pilot’s CCS project, which aims to inject up to 1 million tonnes per annum of CO2 starting from 2026.

The company has been listed on the Global Cleantech 100 list since 2019 and has executed several major collaborations, including with the likes of General Electric (GE) Gas Power and Samsung.

Svante also previously secured an investment from United Airlines as part of the company’s record-setting $US318m Series E fundraising round.

Under the MoU, Pilot and Svante will collaborate to evaluate and deploy full-service carbon management solutions from the point of CO2 capture, transportation, and permanent storage at Cliff Head.

Svante’s tech would be deployed to capture CO2 from industrial flue gas stacks on the emitters’ sites.

“Svante’s innovative solid sorbent carbon capture technology is an ideal solution to efficiently capture the Kwinana Industrial Area’s hard-to-avoid CO2 emissions, and we’re enthusiastic about this new collaboration,” Pilot Energy chairman Brad Lingo said.

Pilot’s CCS project has the potential to provide a carbon management solution for 15-25% of the Kwinana Industries Council members’ reported scope 1 emissions.

CCS on the fast track

The aim of the collaboration is to accelerate the commercial deployment of emissions reduction solutions targeting Australia’s top greenhouse gas emitters.

“An important feature of our business model is the ecosystem of partnerships we’re building globally across the value chain of carbon capture, utilisation, and storage (CCUS),” Matt Stevenson, Svante’s chief revenue officer & acting CFO, said.

“We’re excited about the opportunity to help Australia’s emitters decarbonise one of the country’s largest CO2 emitting regions.”

Pilot is leveraging its existing Cliff Head offshore oil production facility and onshore Arrowsmith separation plant to produce clean energy.

The Mid West Clean Energy project includes a fully integrated CCS operation through the conversion of the operating Cliff Head offshore oil field, which will enable the production of blue hydrogen, green hydrogen, and ammonia.

The Climate Change Authority has this week spruiked the increased need for CCS as well as a drastic cut to emissions, suggesting a range of initiatives to ramp up activity around carbon capture including expanded roles for the Australian government’s $10 billion green bank and Australian Renewable Energy Agency.

“The situation is so critical that we need to do more than dramatically reduce emissions from all sources as fast and far as possible. We also need to remove from the atmosphere a lot of what has already been emitted,” Climate Change Authority chairman Grant King wrote in The Australian.

Pilot and partner Triangle Energy (ASX:TEG) late last year becoming the first in Australia to lodge a submission seeking regulatory approvals for an offshore CCS project under Commonwealth legislation that has been in place since 2006.

Pilot this week also attracted sophisticated and institutional investors keen to inject up to $1.7m into the company to support the development of the project.

The placement, led by Whairo Capital, comprises the issue of 170 million new shares at 1c each to raise the full amount.

Directors and management will also take part in the placement, subject to shareholder approval.

Pilot’s Mid West Clean Energy Project continues to garner global attention, with the company invited to take part in the Australia-Korea Parliamentary Forum in Canberra last month.

The forum provided Pilot with an exclusive opportunity to meet with ministers, including Australian Minister for Resources Madeleine King’s senior staff responsible for CCS, to discuss key issues and opportunities with policy makers.

This article was developed in collaboration with Pilot Energy, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.