Carbon-catching algae have been chosen as one of four "flagship" projects at the council, which has of budget of almost $1 billion and 4,000 staff across Canada.
"The idea behind a flagship," said McDougall, "is to do something really important that would be substantial in scale and make a real difference to Canada if you could pull it off."..And algae, he said, have the potential to take a sizeable bite out of this country's emissions and gobble up millions of tonnes of emissions a year.
"If it works, you're looking perhaps at as much as 15 to 20 per cent of carbon dioxide could be dealt with," said McDougall. He also sees international opportunities, noting Canadian algae-growing technology and know-how could be exported.
McDougall said there are challenges with mass-producing "super slime," as the fast-growing algae are described in one NRC report.
But the benefits are potentially "so enormous that it is worth spending a little money to find out," McDougall said in a recent interview, suggesting it could take $50 to $100 million to find out if using algae is a viable way to capture carbon.
McDougall said there could be all kinds of possible applications...
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