It’s a subject that’s on everyone’s lips at the moment: how can we reduce the amount of CO² in our atmosphere? We have already mentioned on this site Europe’s ambitions to ‘reinject’ this gas directly under the sea to store it there, but Canada is banking on a different approach with the mass production of filters to be applied directly to industries that emit CO2.
In the heart of British Columbia, in Burnaby to be precise, a new 13,100 m² factory has just been built, and it could breathe new life into the world’s ecology. It’s called the Redwood Manufacturing Facility. Its ambition is to mass-produce filters capable of capturing up to 10 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year – the equivalent of the annual emissions from 27 million cars!
A plant designed to absorb carbon, not produce it
Vancouver-based Svante Technologies is behind this project, which lives up to its epithet of ‘colossal’: the world’s first 113,000 m² gigafactory dedicated exclusively to the industrial production of CO₂ filters.
The filters produced by Redwood use an exclusive technology: porous structures called MOFs (Metal-Organic Frameworks). These materials offer an extremely high CO₂ trapping surface, and above all, they can be regenerated and reused.
Mounted in the form of standard ‘cartridges’, these filters are designed to fit directly into industrial chimneys in the highest-emission sectors: cement works, steelworks, incinerators, paper mills or gas-fired power stations.
High-throughput manufacturing for economies of scale
The challenge is not just to invent a good filter, but to produce thousands of them. Redwood is based on complete automation of filter assembly and coating. This standardisation considerably reduces capture costs, long seen as the main obstacle to mass adoption.
Claude Letourneau, CEO of Svante, sums up the ambition: “This production site shows what is possible when technology meets the climate emergency.”
With a capacity of 10 million tonnes of CO₂ per year, Redwood is the first industrial facility capable of operating on a global scale.
134 million to get the ball rolling
The project has received major funding: 145 million US dollars (around 134 million euros), injected by a group of strategic partners who set the tone. They include Chevron New Energies, GE Vernova, Samsung, Temasek, United Airlines Ventures and the Canada Growth Fund.
The long-term aim is to roll out other similar plants over the next few years to meet growing global demand, particularly in North America and Asia.
Filters already in use
Svante filters have already been installed at other pilot sites. In California, they are equipping Chevron’s Kern River unit. In Canada, they are integrated into the Lafarge cement plant in Richmond as part of the CO₂MENT project. The same technology is also used by Climeworks, for direct air capture (DAC), in a new generation of installations that halve energy consumption.
This versatility: chimney or free atmosphere, makes these filters a Swiss army knife of carbon capture, adaptable to the most diverse sources.
A booming CO² capture market
The global CO₂ capture and storage market has been valued at around €8.1 billion in 2024 and is growing rapidly, with an estimated average annual rate of over 16% to 2034. According to various projections, it could exceed €23 billion by 2033, driven by increasingly stringent climate policies and the boom in large-scale industrial projects.
Other major CO² capture projects worldwide in 2025
Among the world’s largest CO₂ capture and storage projects are Northern Lights in Norway, developed by Equinor, Shell and TotalEnergies, which aims to store more than 5 million tonnes of CO₂ per year from 2028, and Greensand in Denmark, capable of reaching 8 million tonnes annually by 2030. At the same time, major initiatives are emerging in China and Australia, such as the Bonaparte CCS project, which plans to store 10 million tonnes of CO₂ per year on the high seas by 2030.
Industrial projects, such as the cross-border transport of CO₂ between the Netherlands and Norway, illustrate the rise of European cooperation around subsea storage. Lastly, pilot sites such as Mammoth in Iceland and future Chinese installations bear witness to the global acceleration in the field of carbon capture. While total installed capacity remains modest in relation to global climate needs, it is clear that the subject is being taken increasingly seriously by industries around the world, and that a glimmer of hope seems to have emerged to reverse the trend!
