BioCapture CO2 into Cattails, burn for net GHG Reducing Electricity, then Store CO2 in Geology

1. harvest and pellet cattail etc biomass from marshes (also preventing methane GreenHouse Gas from marshes),

2. burn in turbines for secure electricity generation meeting peak demand,

3. send CO2 flume gas into deep geological sequestration,

4. repeat harvest of free wild cattail, grass, willow regrowth every year,

5. reuse ash to fertilize crops and sequester carbon as enduring biochar.


Manitoba Hydro could professionally manage this enterprise in the public interest:

Source cattail biomass from farmers.

Provide contract, joint venture and employment opportunities to local communities (first nations, towns, farms), such as for:

Sell the cleanest net-GHG-capturing electricity at a premium price, attracting value-added processing industries to Manitoba,

Sell the highest integrity carbon credits. (Governments may later replace carbon credit markets with GHG polluter pay taxes.)

All operations can be locally engineered, with no dependence on intellectual property nor profit loss to out of province investors.

Possible that many small scale biomass burning turbines for local electricity generation feeding into the Manitoba Hydro grid could be cost efficient, similar to solar panels.

Nobody has ever informed we farmers that cattail biomass derived electricity is not feasible. Indeed we might be economical, and the most reliable with quickly repaired supply lines should the Kremlin target us like Ukraine to steal our north for China. (Certainly not adversarily extortion priced, whereas fossil gas may be at the price dictated by the owner of the well and pipeline if new burners are installed in Brandon and Manitobans are captured customers via Manitoba Hydro's debt).
https://climateactionmb.ca/new-provincial-fossil-gas-fired-power-plant-contradicts-climate-commitments-misses-opportunities/


Avoid a CO2 Desert Limiting Crop Yields:

This replaces the Deep Sky proposal intended to do the exact opposite as a user of massive amounts of our clean hydro electricity thus forever preventing new value-added industries. Ref:
https://climateactionmb.ca/why-direct-air-capture-isnt-a-climate-solution-for-manitoba/

If mechanical/chemical direct air capture removal of CO2 from air did succeed, then farms downwind would receive much less CO2 in their air supply than anywhere else in the world, meaning much less plant growth and grain yield, and thus crop production would become uncompetitive.

(Greenhouses add CO2 to increase crop growth. Bigger yields in recent years is partly due to greater carbon supply, now that atmospheric CO2 ppm has increased, for photosynthesis due to stomates in leaves not needing to be as wide open and thus not loosing as much water vapor.)

Metal fans for mechanical direct air CO2 capture are likely very noisy, disrupting wildlife communications, killing flying animals, and screeching into homes miles away as bearings wear.

Carbon credits is not an enduring market, may easily become oversupplied or demand small and thus low priced, and possibly terminated when governments decide to instead fairly tax GHG polluters to pay for governments' climate change disaster, refugee settlement and war costs. Deep Sky's residual shareholders might then have no revenue source.


Local Research into Biomass, Cattail etc Energy:

Hank Venema of Strategic Systems Engineering
https://strategicsystemsengineering.ca
presentation to Manitoba Sustainable Energy Assoc in 2023 regarding cattails:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1Hl4LixcaZJ1XffeDkuj9cqUzAs7-EG0x/edit?slide=id.p43#slide=id.p43

Slides 19,34,42 have indications of the potential of cattail, as an alternative to fossil gas. Suggested the cost per bale is $40 to capture $80 of energy value.

Richard Grosshan of IISD, International Institute for Sustainable Development:
https://crk.umn.edu/sites/crk.umn.edu/files/2022-03/cattail-management-northern-great-plains.pdf
p 36

https://www.iisd.org/system/files/publications/manitoba-biomass-fuel-protecting-environment-saving-money.pdf
Cattail (Typha spp.) biomass harvesting for nutrient capture and sustainable bioenergy for integrated watershed management 2014
http://mspace.lib.umanitoba.ca/handle/1993/23564

"...Utilizing harvested biomass as a bioenergy feedstock provided a further benefit displacing fossil fuels for heating, and generated valuable carbon offsets. Cattail was compressed into densified fuel products, and combustion trials revealed an average calorific heat value of 17 MJ/kg to 20 MJ/kg, comparable to commercial wood pellets. Average ash content was 5 to 6%, and no major concerns identified regarding combustion emissions and ash. Estimated greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation potential from coal displacement was one tonne of cattail biomass generated 1.05 tonnes of CO2 offsets..."
https://www.iisd.org/publications/report/cattail-typha-spp-harvesting-manitoba-legislative-and-market-analysis

Manitoba Hydro's extensive investigations:

https://natural-resources.canada.ca/funding-partnerships/bioenergy-optimization-program-demonstration

Reduction of the Potent GHG Methane:

The tall cattails in our marshes are invasive new hybrids dominating potholes that at homesteading were primarily of grasses which we harvested a century for hay before the new cattails, willows and poplars took over. There is likely now greater methane greenhouse gas emissions from new tall cattail marshes than in all prior centuries since the ice age. By removing the annual top growth of cattail to prevent its anaerobic fermentation under water creating methane, we could also reduce that annual source of the potent GHG methane.

Proposed by:

Grant Rigby
farmer with 10 acres of wild cattails, Dec 2025

Above sent to Manitoba Ministers of Business, Climate, Agriculture, ManHydro, Resources Indigenous, and local governments of Canupawakpa, Pipestone, Two Borders, Brandon, and copied to associations KAP, Crop Alliance, Pulse Soy, Canola, Beef, Forage, ManSEA, ClimateActionTeam, ClimateConnections, and engineers Venema, Grosshans.


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Following box advertisement placed Jan 9 2026 in the SW Manitoba newspapers Guide, Gazette, Recorder:

To Councils and Ministers:

CO2 BioCapture into Electricity

1. Harvest/pellet frozen cattail marshes,
also preventing marsh methane GHG.

2. Burn in turbines generating electricity.

3. Store CO2 GHG exhaust in deep geology.

World's first GHG reducing electricity?!

(Versus outside investors noisy fans killing flying creatures,
using up scarce low GHG hydroelectricity thus preventing new low GHG industries,
and leaving a low ppm CO2 desert thus preventing profitable grain yields.)

Links to local engineering studies are emailed.

www.GrantRigby.ca