Justin Trudeau’s climate plans are stuck in Alberta’s tar sands

PEDRO PEREIRA ALMAO is performing industrial magic in his lab at the University of Calgary. Lines from a row of tanks feed two greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide and methane, into a chamber the size and shape of a wasp’s nest. Less than a minute later, the other end spits out carbon fibre, a more valuable material that is used in cars, planes, golf clubs and other useful things. Mr Pereira says the process, developed with a doctoral student, Mina Zarabian, could turn power plants, steel mills, or anything that burns fossil fuels into clean, green money-makers. Using waste gases to produce cheap fibre could give rise to new uses, such as ultra-strong plywood.

Mr Pereira and Ms Zarabian are not the only ones imagining a different future for Alberta, the Canadian province of which Calgary is the largest city. In another building on campus, Ian Gates and his team are turning sticky bitumen from the tar sands into pellets that can be transported in unheated railcars. “Bitumen balls”, which look like liquorice sweets, could be refined into oil, acknowledges Mr Gates, but there could be a much bigger market for their use in other carbon-based products. Bitumen Beyond Combustion, a government-funded programme, is exploring what Alberta could do with the 165bn barrels of oil in the tar sands other than burning it. Promising contenders include using bitumen to make carbon fibres for high-tech composites, vanadium for batteries and steel, and high-grade asphalt for roads.