Big Blue Ocean Cleanup
A strategic partnership for the establishment and conservation of Marine Nature Reserves that store carbon in coastal and marine ecosystems.
Partner Overview
Big Blue is a non-profit organisation on a mission to keep coastlines clean and protect marine wildlife, running thousands of ocean clean-ups in over 100 countries every year. They provide a variety of services dedicated to ocean conservation including:
- Supporting ocean plastic clean-up teams with equipment, logistics and on-the-ground support
- Educating and raising awareness about the importance of clean and healthy oceans for sustaining life on earth, including free open-source materials
- Conducting scientific research and technological development dedicated to resolving ocean clean-ups effectively
Highlights
Big Blue is creating new Marine Nature Reserves (MNRs) around the world including the British Isles. The first rewilding MNR will be in Scotland, enabling nature, marine mammals, and seabirds to thrive.
Key Carbon will work with Big Blue to assess the establishment and conservation of the MNR and co-develop new carbon sequestration projects in these coastal and marine ecosystems.
Key Carbon will also be given the Right of First Refusal to finance all blue carbon projects identified and managed by Big Blue, in the United Kingdom initially.
Sturgeon
Key Carbon owns a share of a royalty applied to CO2 captured from the Sturgeon Refinery until 2100. The royalty provides Key Carbon with a long-term and steady cash flow generated by high quality compliance credits.
Partner Overview
The Sturgeon Refinery is the first refinery built in Canada in over 35 years and is unique in being designed with a carbon capture solution from the outset.
Production commenced in 2017, with phase one designed to process ~79,000 barrels of diluted bitumen per day. End products include low-carbon ultra-low sulphur diesel, vacuum gas oil, diluent, and natural gas liquids.
The refinery uses gasification to convert the heavy bottoms (a substantial waste product of bitumen) into both the hydrogen required for refinery operations and a pure, dry CO2 stream, thereby eliminating ~70% of the refinery’s total CO2 footprint.
Highlights
The CO2 captured from the refinery is then sold to third parties for enhanced oil recovery and permanent storage. It also serves as an anchor supply to the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, the largest carbon capture, transportation, utilization, and storage system in the world, exclusively using captured industrial CO2.
Key Carbon owns 2.68% of the royalty for the CO2 captured from the Sturgeon refinery.
