Photo Credit; Deep Sky Corporation
October 9, 2025 – On Thursday morning, Deep Sky—a Montreal-based direct air capture (DAC) start-up founded by executives of the travel app Hopper and the former CFO of Airbnb—announced that it will build a major DAC facility in southwestern Manitoba. The announcement of this unproven and risky technology which serves to delay the transition off of fossil fuels is highly concerning, particularly as it comes just three days after the provincial Path to Net Zero which contained some promising pledges for proven solutions to cut emissions.
This project has the full support of the provincial government, with Minister of Business, Mining, Trade, and Job Creation Jamie Moses claiming that “this project not only reinforces Manitoba’s leadership in reducing global CO₂ emissions, but also contributes to building a modern, advanced economy.”
But there is no evidence that this project will do so. Instead, it brings a highly risky, expensive, and unproven technology to Manitoba that does not guarantee any benefits and significantly undermines the province’s emissions reduction capacities due to its extremely high electricity consumption that should be used for other purposes.
As Climate Action Team Manitoba (CAT) recently detailed in a report, there are many major issues with DAC as a technology:
- No large-scale proof of concept exists, with current projects small and plagued by technical issues.
- The technology has extremely high costs, relative to many other “safe-bet” climate mitigation options.
- DAC consumes an enormous amount of energy, water and materials that will likely come at the expense of other uses and goals.
- The technology’s economic feasibility relies on carbon offsets and commercial uses of CO2, undermining its contributions to rapid emissions reductions.
- Public investment in DAC delays rapid and achievable decarbonization, consuming limited public resources and time to experiment with an unproven technology.
It is further ironic that this project has been advanced by the minister responsible for job creation, given that very few permanent, full-time jobs will be created at the site once construction is completed.
DAC projects will require a large and steady supply of electricity on a 24/7, 365-day-per-year basis, consuming energy that should otherwise be used to electrify transportation, buildings, and existing industry. Manitoba Hydro has made clear that the province is facing constraints of wintertime peak electricity requirements and that supply will likely be required before 2030. If this additional supply is provided by fossil gas-fired generation, it will wipe out any of the minor emissions reductions from DAC.
Records obtained by CAT through freedom of information processes also revealed that Deep Sky has been lobbying the provincial government to further deregulate the sector, including transferring liability to the Crown after the closure of a project, limiting consultation requirements, and preventing subsurface protections within environmentally protected areas. Despite these demands, the provincial government has adopted a highly supportive orientation towards the project, including helping to connect Deep Sky officials with local First Nations.
CAT is deeply disappointed that the provincial government has chosen to endorse and legitimize this unproven, costly, and energy-intensive technology at the expense of many other urgently necessary emissions reducing policies. We will be opposing this project every step of the way and working to ensure that no provincial tax credits or subsidies go towards it.
We will also continue our work advocating for proven solutions to emissions reductions that actually create jobs and improve affordability such as large-scale funding of public transit and active transportation, deep energy retrofits and district heating using ground-source heat pumps, and protecting and restoring ecosystems.