Growing Deep Sky from a small test site in Alberta to multiple industrial-scale facilities in Canada is the daunting task ahead of Alex Petre, the new CEO of the Montreal-based carbon removal company.

Taking over the top executive position from Damien Steel (who left in May for personal reasons), she is moving up from COO to lead a company of just over 30 employees that aspires to effectively reverse climate change.

“I felt very excited about the opportunity to continue to work on something that I deeply believe in,” she said in an interview with Sustainable Biz Canada, “and that has a mission that I fundamentally relate to and think that is crucial to our existence on Earth.”

At her previous position, Petre’s priority was overseeing the construction of Deep Sky Alpha, its facility being built in Innisfail, Alta. There, the company wants to test a variety of promising technologies that absorb carbon dioxide (CO2) from the air so it can be stored underground, and set a foundation for commercialization. The carbon removal credits it will generate have been pre-purchased by the likes of RBC and Microsoft.

Despite a stumble when the anticipated commissioning of the facility was delayed from the spring, construction is continuing and the facility is scheduled to operate in mid-summer. The experience taught Petre lessons for her new role, as Deep Sky harbours ambitions of developing far larger facilities that can suck up hundreds of thousands of tons of CO2 per year.

Doubling down on climate issues

Petre’s professional background includes roles as a consultant for Accenture, vice president of financial markets advisory at BlackRock, and COO of micromobility company Bird Canada.

She joined Deep Sky to “double down even more on working on climate,” after helping to resuscitate Bird. Taking on the COO job before construction of Deep Sky Alpha started, Petre was responsible for bringing the site to life.

At Alpha, the company is aiming to remove 3,000 tons of CO2 per year by using technology from companies such as Sherbrooke, Que.-based Skyrenu, Skytree and Airhive. The removed carbon will be injected underground to be held for thousands of years, with the service sold as credits.

A goal with Alpha is to lower the cost of direct air capture, an expensive endeavour today costing between US$600 to US$1,000 to remove a ton of CO2 from the atmosphere, according to the World Economic Forum.

Petre spent much of her tenure as COO “building out the team, the culture, the processes to make sure that Deep Sky is positioned to deliver commercial facilities in Canada as soon as possible.”

The lessons from Alpha have taught the company about scheduling, cost control and construction management which it will apply to larger-scale facilities, she added. Another critical lesson was taking a measured approach.

“In a world where we all sense the urgency of what we’re trying to do, I think optimizing for speed is correct,” Petre said. But, it's important to temper that haste with protocols for budget control, health and safety.

Deep Sky Alpha was initially scheduled to launch in the spring, but was hit with shipping delays dye to uncertainty stemming from U.S. tariff policies, pushing the facility’s operations to the summer. It was only a temporary setback, as Deep Sky now has all the equipment on site and being installed, Petre said.

Canada can lead on carbon removal, Petre says

As CEO, Petre’s priority is ensuring Alpha is running successfully and safely and producing carbon removal credits. Another is scaling the best carbon removal technologies to commercial deployment in Canada, which will require sites for CO2 storage, clean energy to power the facilities, and generating the credits for revenue.

Deep Sky’s ambition is to have at least two commercial-level sites in Canada that will each capture 500,000 tons of CO2 per year at full capacity, sizable projects expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Though sizeable by carbon removal standards, it would represent a sliver of Canada’s annual pollution. This has led to the process being criticized as an expensive distraction from other efforts, and highly challenging to make economical.

Petre said candidate sites have been identified, and Deep Sky is making progress on securing the building blocks for the projects. Further information is to be unveiled soon.

Canada has a unique opportunity to lead in the fledgling sector, she continued. The country has the ideal combination of geology amenable to CO2 storage, a mostly clean electrical grid and abundant talent to bring this industry to life, especially when the U.S. is stepping back from climate leadership.

“In the context of everything else going on in the world, Canada is actually amazingly well set-up to take advantage of this opportunity,” Petre said.