David Hills, P.Geo.

David Hills was part of the team for one of the province’s largest carbon capture, utilization, and storage (CCUS) systems. Essentially a pipeline for carbon-dioxide. It involves collecting the emissions from two sites (the Redwater Sturgeon Refinery and the Nutrien fertilizer plant near Fort Saskatchewan), and sending that CO2 underground through to the Clive oil field in Central Alberta. The carbon dioxide is then pushed down, deep underground, displacing oil remnants that were previously inaccessible, while at the same time keeping the waste CO2 deep underground — and out of the planet’s atmosphere.

As a geoscientist, Hills’s role in the project involved him creating a 3D printed rendering of the soil and sediment underneath the Clive oil field. The model Hills printed was then the basis for all planning and testing with the CCUS project, which removes upwards of 4,000 tonnes of carbon emissions from the air every day: the equivalent of removing 2.6 million cars from the road.