The first-ever Canada Investment Summit, held Sept. 14–15 in Toronto, along with other recent funding initiatives and global partnerships, put the spotlight on Canada’s support for innovation and competitiveness in energy, manufacturing and critical materials. The Summit convened investors from around the globe, committing nearly CAD$500 billion to wide-ranging projects. The Summit also debuted the Productivity Mega Deduction, an investment incentive specifically benefiting work related to manufacturing and processing, clean-energy production, energy conservation and more.
Critical materials. Among the most significant announcements from the Summit was the commitment of around CAD$140 million via Canada Growth Fund, plus CAD$50 million from Canada Infrastructure Bank, to Generation Mining Ltd.’s Marathon Project located in Northwestern Ontario. The Marathon project’s annual production capacity is projected to comprise 42 million lb of copper, 168,000 oz. of palladium and 38,000 oz. of platinum. Construction is slated to begin in late 2026.
Earlier this year, Mangrove Lithium, also partially backed by Canada Growth Fund, started up North America’s first commercial-scale electrochemical lithium-refining facility in Delta, B.C. The plant has a nameplate capacity of 1,000 ton/yr of battery-grade lithium products. Mangrove has also announced preliminary plans for a new refining facility in Canada, with around CAD$22 million in conditional funding from Natural Resources Canada (NRCan).
NRCan is also providing funding for Nano One Materials’ work toward standardizing its plant design package, which will support the development of a robust Canadian supply chain for battery-cathode materials, as part of a strategy to promote lithium iron phosphate (LFP) cathode production in Canada.
Low-carbon LNG. Western LNG and Australian firm Santos Ltd. announced a 20-yr preliminary supply agreement that will see 1 million tons/yr of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the proposed Ksi Lisims LNG project in British Columbia exported to the Asia-Pacific region. Ksi Lisims LNG is designed to produce extremely low-emissions-intensity LNG using an electrified liquefaction process with a planned capacity of 12 million ton/yr of LNG. Uniper, Shell and TotalEnergies have also signed sales and purchase agreements for LNG from the project.
Decarbonization. The week before the Summit, the governments of Canada and Alberta, along with Enhance Energy, broke ground on the Origins Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) Hub near Clive, Alberta. Expected to begin operations in January 2027, Origins CCS will be Canada’s largest carbon-capture and storage project, with a storage capacity of 1.5 million tons of CO2. The project received around CAD$10 million in grants from NRCan’s Energy Innovation Program.
In conjunction with the Summit, NRCan also announced CAD$2 million in funding each for two startup firms working to decarbonize industry: Next Hydrogen and CERT Systems, both based in Ontario. Next Hydrogen is working to scale up its water electrolyzer module, which features a unique cell architecture that promotes higher current density when producing hydrogen using intermittent renewable-energy sources. CERT Systems is developing a process to electrochemically convert CO2 into ethylene for use as a feedstock in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF). For more on CERT Systems, see Single-step process for electrified ethylene production, Chem. Eng., Feb. 2025, p 8. ■
Mary Page Bailey, Senior Editor