Approval clears mine designed to store 1.5m tonnes of CO2 a year
Canada Nickel has secured federal approval for its Crawford project in northeastern Ontario, clearing the way for a mine engineered to permanently mineralise carbon dioxide in its own tailings at a rate the company estimates could reach 1.5 million tonnes annually.
The Minister of Environment, Climate Change and Nature issued a positive Decision Statement for the open-pit nickel-cobalt operation located roughly 40 kilometres north of Timmins, the first mining approval granted under Canada’s amended Impact Assessment Act since 2019.
The carbon storage mechanism is intrinsic to the geology rather than bolted on. Crawford is hosted in ultramafic rock, which naturally absorbs and sequesters carbon dioxide through reaction with magnesium silicate minerals, principally brucite. Canada Nickel has developed a process it calls In Process Tailings Carbonation, which injects a concentrated carbon dioxide source into tailings while they remain in the milling circuit, fixing the gas geologically before the material is finally deposited rather than waiting for passive weathering after disposal. The potential to capture and sequester carbon was a stated consideration in the company’s acquisition of 42 square kilometres of ultramafic ground in the Timmins area.
Laboratory testing established the performance basis. Work initially completed at XPS, Expert Process Solutions, a Glencore company, and reproduced independently at Kingston Process Metallurgy, found that conditioned tailings reached the net zero carbon capture threshold in under 36 hours and achieved gross capture of at least 26 tonnes of carbon dioxide per tonne of nickel within six days, a rate eight to twelve times faster than passive approaches tested at the same scale. Subsequent testing at Kingston recorded 37 tonnes of carbon dioxide captured per tonne of nickel, with 34 tonnes of that fixed within 25 hours, and confirmed the process functions at the higher solids densities expected in commercial operation, a result the company identified as significant because pulp density and residence time drive capital and operating costs.
The company has estimated the process could generate an average of around 710,000 tonnes of carbon credits annually and 18 million tonnes over the life of mine set out in its preliminary economic assessment, equivalent to roughly 21 tonnes of credits per tonne of nickel after offsetting all operational emissions. Higher-capture scenarios drawn from maximum-potential testing would equate to approximately 1.1 million tonnes captured annually, or 27 million tonnes across the mine life, though the company has cautioned that laboratory maximums may not be achievable commercially. A separate 2023 pilot confirmed potential to store up to 1.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year at the site.
A third strand of work is testing in-situ mineralisation, storing carbon underground before mining begins, run with a University of Texas at Austin team led by research associate professor Estibalitz Ukar and funded by the United States Department of Energy’s ARPA-E. Ukar said laboratory research into how ultramafic rocks permanently store carbon through in-situ mineralisation found Crawford an appropriate setting to move the work into the field.
Canada Nickel has argued the requirement for a concentrated carbon dioxide feedstock, combined with the storage capacity of its landholding, could anchor a zero carbon industrial cluster across the Timmins-Cochrane region, with the mine functioning as a sink for emissions from neighbouring industry rather than solely as a source.
Chief executive Mark Selby said the decision recognises the strategic importance of developing critical mineral resources in partnership with all levels of government and Indigenous Nations while maintaining rigorous environmental standards, noting the federal permit was completed in four years. An independent analysis by Mansfield Consulting estimates a contribution of approximately $70 billion to Canadian GDP and around 185,000 person-years of employment over the mine life. Approval conditions include fish relocation and Indigenous consultation on that plan. Construction remains contingent on finalising a financing package of around US$2.5 billion and on remaining provincial and federal permits.
