Jouni Martiskainen, Project Development Manager with Svante — a Vancouver-based carbon capture technology company with approximately 270 employees and nearly 20 years of development history — presented on the commercial case for carbon capture at pulp mills, covering the financial mechanisms available to support it, the technology the company has developed, and the specific projects underway in the forest products sector. Svante works with emitters through three business units spanning equipment manufacturing, process engineering design, and project development — the latter allowing Svante to bring equity into projects for clients seeking a more integrated partnership. Early investors include Chevron, with minority ownership positions also held by Samsung, GE, 3M, and BASF, several of whom are also involved in active development collaboration.
Jouni Martiskainen
A central point in Martiskainen’s presentation was why pulp mills are particularly well positioned for carbon capture. The kraft pulping process produces black liquor, which is combusted in the recovery boiler — generating the white plume of steam visible at any kraft mill. That stack gas contains CO2 at a concentration of approximately 15%, compared to roughly 400 parts per million in ambient air. That concentration is a byproduct of the process rather than any deliberate design, but it makes pulp mills among the most efficient biogenic CO2 concentrators in the industrial landscape, significantly reducing the energy and capital required to capture and purify that CO2 to near 100% concentration for storage or utilization downstream.
The distinction between biogenic and fossil fuel-derived CO2 is central to the business case. In the normal course of operations, the carbon passing through a pulp mill’s recovery boiler has cycled through living biomass and simply returns to the atmosphere — making pulp production effectively carbon neutral on that basis. Capturing and permanently storing that CO2 breaks the cycle entirely, pushing the mill from carbon neutral to carbon negative. That carbon negative status is what opens access to the voluntary carbon dioxide removal, or CDR, market — a market Martiskainen described as growing at a rate that stands out even against commodity markets familiar to a pulp audience. In 2025, CDR volume transacted exceeded 25 million tonnes, with offtake agreements — primarily with large technology companies — representing billions of dollars in committed purchases.
The financial incentive landscape he outlined is substantial and varies by jurisdiction. In Canada, investment tax credits at the federal and provincial level can return up to 62% of project capital to the developer. In the United States, the 45Q tax credit — a specific provision of the US tax code tied to tonnes of CO2 permanently stored — provides approximately $85 per tonne, contracted over 12 years. The credit survived the transition to the current administration and the market does not expect it to be withdrawn. In Europe, the EU Innovation Fund has provided grants of 180 million euros and above to individual projects, and Sweden has conducted reverse auctions for carbon removal contracts, with the first round generating a $1.8 billion award to a district heating operator in Stockholm. A second Swedish auction of approximately $1.0 billion is scheduled for August 2026. He also referenced a multi-billion dollar award announced the previous week in Denmark to Aalborg Cement for CO2 capture and green cement production — the largest such award to date.
Svante’s capture technology uses a solid sorbent based on Metal Organic Framework, or MOF — a class of porous crystalline materials with exceptionally high surface area that allows CO2 molecules to adsorb onto the filter material rather than requiring liquid chemical absorption. MOF was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in December, though he noted that Svante uses the technology rather than having developed the prize-winning work itself. The process involves passing flue gas through manufactured filters that adsorb CO2, then releasing it through a temperature swing to produce a near-pure CO2 stream, before reconditioning the filter and repeating the cycle in approximately one minute. The system requires no liquid chemicals, can utilize waste heat from the pulp mill stack, and can also be run in a fully electrified mode for mills without surplus steam or biomass firing capacity.
A global map Martiskainen presented illustrated where the strongest carbon capture opportunities for pulp and paper are likely to cluster, overlaying recovery boiler CO2 emissions against geological storage potential — specifically the availability of saline aquifers, which are deep formations of non-potable salt water whose geology can permanently trap injected CO2, at depths of 800 metres or more. The southern US emerged as a particularly compelling region, combining a large concentration of pulp mill emitters with favourable onshore geology and existing oil and gas infrastructure capable of supporting pipeline development. The Nordics present a different profile — offshore storage rather than onshore, but with commercially operational CO2 shipping already underway off the Norwegian coast, meaning the offtake infrastructure exists today rather than needing to be built.
On specific projects, Martiskainen discussed three publicly disclosed forest products applications. The first is with Mercer International at its Peace River mill in Alberta, where Svante is targeting front end engineering and design — the detailed engineering phase preceding a final investment decision — in 2026, with a capture target of approximately 500,000 tonnes of CO2 per year from the recovery boiler, to be handed to a third party for underground storage. The second is an unnamed customer in the southern United States, currently at an earlier conceptual scoping stage, with a similar recovery boiler configuration and scale. The third is a biomass power plant in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, where Svante’s scope extends to building, owning, and operating both the capture system and the CO2 pipeline and subsurface storage — a full value chain approach. Svante is also running simultaneous mobile demonstration pilots at the Mercer Peace River mill and at Södra’s Värö mill in Sweden — recovery boiler pilots running on two continents concurrently.
Martiskainen closed his formal remarks with an observation about the downstream commercial value of carbon negative pulp for premium end products. Ultra-premium tissue, he noted, can carry a CO2 output of around 700 kilograms per tonne of product from natural gas use in the drying process alone — making the carbon intensity of the pulp source a potentially meaningful differentiator for producers competing in premium consumer markets.
In the Q&A, Mason asked about regional differences beyond geology in assessing carbon capture opportunity. Martiskainen noted that the southern US and coastal Sweden each represent approximately 22 million tonnes per year of potential from pulp mill emitters, but that Swedish mills tend to be larger and more energy self-sufficient, which can offset the higher cost of offshore storage relative to onshore options in the US South. On storage geology in Canadian provinces beyond Alberta, he said Ontario and Quebec present less favourable saline aquifer conditions, though mineralization techniques — an alternative storage approach in which CO2 is chemically converted to rock rather than injected as a gas — being piloted in Iceland at smaller scale may offer a pathway for those regions. On the utilization side, he described the emerging e-fuel model being developed at Södra’s Värö mill, where biogenic CO2 combined with green hydrogen could produce synthetic aviation fuel or synthetic natural gas, though he noted the capital requirements are significantly higher than for straight storage projects and typically require an oil and gas partner to be viable.
Drafted with the assistance of digital tools to streamline the process.