Workers at the Deep Sky carbon capture facility under construction in Innisfail, Alberta on December 12, 2024.Todd Korol/The Globe and Mail
The leader of an ambitious Canadian climate-technology startup launched by the founder of online travel giant Hopper has decided to step down as it prepares to open its first carbon-removal operation in Alberta.
Deep Sky Corp. chief executive officer Damien Steel cited unspecified personal reasons for his departure in a LinkedIn post Friday.
“This has been the most rewarding and challenging chapter of my career, and I’m deeply proud of what we’ve built together,” he wrote. “Leading Deep Sky requires unwavering focus and energy, and I’ve come to realize I’m no longer in a position to give it everything it deserves.”
Mr. Steel, who previously led pension giant OMERS’ venture-capital group, will be replaced by chief operating officer Alex Petre. She joined last September after serving as COO of e-scooter company Bird Canada. Ms. Petre was previously a consultant with Accenture and vice-president of financial-markets advisory with BlackRock in Britain.
Two Deep Sky directors told The Globe and Mail that the board wanted Mr. Steel to stay and reiterated that the decision to leave was his.
“Damien has done a great job to get this up and running and deal with permitting,” said director Sam Duboc. “Damien went from being a fund manager to being a CEO and it’s two very different gigs. We were pushing him to do many things at once − there was so much to do. The reality is he did exactly what we needed him to do.”
Mr. Duboc added that Deep Sky’s first direct-air carbon-capture operation, in Innisfail, Alta., is on track for its planned opening this summer.
Fellow Deep Sky director Sophie Forest said, “Everyone at the board was amazed with Damien, everything he’s done. Nobody wanted him to leave.” She added, “It will be a natural, smooth transition” as he stays on to help for a few months.
Mr. Steel acknowledged that he wasn’t an obvious choice to lead a climate-tech startup when he was appointed CEO in August, 2023, given his lack of technical and operational expertise.
But after some convincing by Hopper CEO Fred Lalonde, who launched Deep Sky a year earlier with the travel company’s former chief technology officer, Joost Ouwerkerk, Mr. Steel concluded that he had a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, he said at the time.
Deep Sky’s mission is to capture carbon from the sky and oceans using technology developed by other companies, store it underground and power the enterprise with renewable power. Its revenue and financing is planned to come from selling carbon credits in a market where demand outpaces supply.
The company faces considerable risks. The carbon-removal sector is in its infancy and just a few small-scale plants are in operation. Deep Sky relies on third-party tech vendors, many of which are also startups.
Other, larger projects are being built or are planned around the world. In Texas, Occidental Petroleum is nearing completion of a US$1.3-billion plant called Stratos, featuring technology developed by Canada’s Carbon Engineering. That development was planned based on expected green subsidies, but U.S. President Donald Trump has placed such incentives under review.
Carbon removal also has its detractors. To make a dent in the huge amount of carbon in the atmosphere, direct air capture will have to expand on a massive scale, which will depend on an active market for carbon credits.
Under Mr. Steel’s leadership, Deep Sky last year year won a US$40-million grant from Breakthrough Energy Catalyst, a carbon-tech fund founded by Bill Gates to advance emerging decarbonization technologies.
It also pre-sold the first carbon credits from its Alberta facility to Royal Bank of Canada and Microsoft, a deal that covers the removal of 10,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over the next decade.