Shell Canada Products, a subsidiary of Shell plc, has taken final investment decision (FID) to develop Polaris, a carbon capture project at the Shell Energy and Chemicals Park, Scotford in Alberta, Canada.
Polaris is designed to capture 650,000 tonnes/year of CO2 from the 100% Shell-owned Scotford refinery and chemicals complex. Polaris could potentially reduce Scope 1 CO2 emissions at Shell’s Scotford refinery by capturing and storing up to 40% and by up to 22% at the chemicals complex.
In addition to the Polaris FID, Shell has made FID to proceed with the Atlas Carbon Storage Hub in partnership with ATCO EnPower (50%). The first phase will provide permanent underground storage for CO2 captured by the Polaris project. A future phase, subject to a future final investment decision, could potentially store carbon for the partners and third parties, Shell said.
Carbon emissions captured by Polaris will be sent to the Atlas Hub via a 22-km pipeline to two storage wells and stored about 2 km underground in the Basal Cambrian Sands, the same formation used to store CO2 from the Quest carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at Scotford (Shell, 10%), which has captured and stored more than 9 million tonnes of CO2 since 2015, the company said.
Polaris and the Atlas Carbon Storage Hub are both expected to begin operations toward end-2028.
