A helicopter is used to drop water on the Quilpituk Creek wildfire burning on the west side of Okanagan Lake near Fintry, B.C., on Monday.DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
Na’im Merchant is executive director of Carbon Removal Canada.
Grant Canary is chief executive of Mast Reforestation, which restores wildfire-damaged forests and stores their carbon.
There have been more than 800 wildfires across Canada so far this year and nearly four million hectares of land has been burned, which is above the 10-year average. It’s the latest run of record-setting fire years and it includes two of the worst seasons, which occurred in the last five years.
And Canada isn’t alone. This past week, wildfires have forced more than 300,000 people from their homes across France and Spain, and they’re threatening the outskirts of Madrid and creeping toward Bordeaux’s wine country. Fires closing in on capital cities and world-famous vineyards are a sign this problem is no longer staying confined to remote forests, while the 10-year averages show the blazes are getting increasingly more intense.
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In addition to the fires’ immediate damage to our natural landscapes and well-being, there’s another way to think about their climate implications: a healthy forest spends decades pulling carbon out of the air and locking it away in tree trunks, branches and roots. A wildfire undoes that long-term work almost overnight, and releases all of that carbon. And it doesn’t stop there: the blackened, dead trees keep leaking carbon for years as they rot or fuel the next blaze and expose us to more risk. It’s a deadly feedback loop.
Further, a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters this month found that roughly three-quarters of wildfire carbon emissions come not just from burning trees, but from carbon stored in the forest’s soil. Forest management is critical to how we manage the spread of fire, but wildfire’s carbon bomb is a deeper problem requiring a wider solution-set, and one of the leading contenders should be carbon removal technologies.
Where does wildfire smoke actually come from? When we're talking about wildfires and the smoke in the air, it's natural to think about the trees that are burning and the carbon that's in the branches and leaves. But that's only part of the story.
Carbon removal is distinct from carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) at an oil sands facility – such as the Pathways project – or a cement plant; it’s a distinct process that pulls carbon already in the atmosphere back out, rather than just capturing it as it’s produced, and this deserves a policy environment to catalyze it.
Carbon removal isn’t a substitute for cutting emissions, and it isn’t the right tool for every part of the problem, but it needs to play a bigger part in our economic and climate tool set.
Some carbon-removal companies take fire-killed trees that have no other use, which would otherwise decompose or fuel the next fire, and bury it in engineered, low-oxygen sites where its carbon stays locked away for a century or more. This provides needed funding for the reforestation, and it turns a fire’s aftermath into a commercial project. It’s work for forestry crews in the communities the fire just went through, and a saleable carbon credit for the carbon buried in the ground.
Projects like these are only economical in communities where lumber mills have closed or are too far away, and they can become economic drivers in regions with higher unemployment. The BC Council of Forest Industries reports that 21 mills in the province have closed since 2023, and more in Quebec, so this work is needed. Other Canadian industries have versions of the same idea.
In Quebec, there’s a project that’s studying how decades-old mine tailings could become one of the largest carbon mineralization opportunities (a process that turns carbon dioxide into solid rock) in the world. Similarly, CarbonRun, a Nova Scotia-based company, is restoring rivers by adding limestone powder to help deacidify them, while drawing down and storing carbon dioxide.
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These technologies aren’t a panacea and they won’t solve wildfires on their own. But they all share the same logic that we can turn legacy industrial costs into economic drivers and climate solutions.
The Carney government’s climate-competitiveness agenda and carbon removal procurement program are good first steps in this effort. But the agenda and initial launch of the program are only frameworks and opening salvos without enough detail at this early stage. Canada can – and must – build economic advantage and accelerate growth through further climate innovation and policy. Much more needs to be done to catalyze the industry and these innovative solutions.
In this new era of trade diversification, there’s also an untapped export market that carbon removal can tap into. The European Union has a leading position and their carbon border levy took full effect this year, and we believe that low-carbon Canadian producers can stand to gain from it. Japan and South Korea are seeking credible carbon removal solutions to meet commitments they can’t fully meet at home. As Canada works to double its non-U.S. exports over the next decade, carbon removal credits are a high-value export needing neither pipelines nor ports to reach these buyers.
Prime Minister Mark Carney has said that he wants Canada to be climate competitive, and to deliver on that agenda his government has to move from announcements to action. We believe that a key pathway to doing that is by designing programs and funding models that seize the opportunities already in front of us to integrate carbon removal into the country’s critical industries.
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The examples that we’ve illustrated are promising and they could help this country be “climate competitive,” but scaling these innovations requires more funding for demonstration projects. This should also be paired with greater early adopter incentives and funding mechanisms, including public-private matching programs that incentivize investment and help de-risk decision-making.
These projects would help accelerate the process of proving to our heavy emitters that a new way of working is worth the risk, and that we have built-in Canadian tech and companies that can solve problems and grow the economy.
Every successive fire season is devastating and leaves behind so much loss, but there is an opportunity to rethink how we move forward in this new climate and fund adaptation as well as restoration. We’ve succeeded as a species by being innovative, collaborative and adapting to shifting environmental pressures, and there’s an opportunity to lead in this emerging market.