Nova Scotia startup aims to turn seawater to sustainable jet fuel

Atlantic Canada’s emergence as a hub for wind energy and green hydrogen production has helped attract two American siblings to Nova Scotia, where their clean-technology startup will turn seawater into sustainable aviation fuel.

Aeon Blue, founded in Texas in 2018 by the brother-and-sister team Lark Meadow and Deois Ua Cearnaigh, has partnered with Eskasoni First Nation in Cape Breton to establish eFuels Mi’kmaq Limited, a joint venture that will build a pilot production facility on Eskasoni land at an industrial park in Sydney Harbour.

The venture is believed to be the first clean fuels company in Canada majority-owned by a Mi’kmaq First Nation. Eskasoni is investing $1.5 million in the $4-million project, which aims to demonstrate that synthetic fuels can be produced at a cost competitive with conventional fossil fuels while capturing carbon from the atmosphere.

For Meadow, Aeon Blue’s co-founder and chief executive officer, Cape Breton offers a combination of renewable energy resources, access to international markets and a community willing to embrace ambitious clean-energy projects.

“There’s such an incredible, supportive ecosystem in Atlantic Canada to commercialize clean technologies,” Meadow said. “Cape Breton specifically, there is a blue-collar workforce, it’s very community driven. For clean-tech startups that are scaling hard, you really need a community mindset because you need a lot of help.”

Aeon Blue’s technology uses electricity to separate hydrogen from seawater and captures carbon dioxide. The two feedstocks can then be combined to produce synthetic fuels, including aviation fuel designed to work in existing aircraft engines without modifications.

The company plans to power the process with renewable electricity, including wind energy from onshore and offshore sources as they become available.

“The wind technologies and the companies that we’re going to be buying our power from, it’s some of the best in the world,” Meadow said. “This area is really optimized for wind. And we can use solar, too. We can use any sort of variable renewable power, and our technology is interruptible, so that means that we can go off grid and then sync with the variable renewables.”

Ua Cearnaigh, an electrochemist and renewable-energy scientist who spent more than 20 years studying clean fuels, hydrogen and carbon removal at the famed Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, developed Aeon Blue’s technology.

“He is an electric chemist, renewable energy scientist. The guy has like nine different degrees,” Meadow said of her brother.

His research found conventional electrolysis can consume so much electricity that producing hydrogen costs more than the resulting fuel is worth.

“The cost is really high,” Meadow said. “This is why it hasn’t been adopted yet because it doesn’t have price parity with fossils.”

Aeon Blue addresses the economic barrier while also tackling the carbon emissions associated with fuel production.

The company’s patented process uses a saltwater electrochemical system that produces hydrogen and sodium hydroxide, which helps capture carbon dioxide from the air. Some of the captured carbon is then converted back into a concentrated stream of carbon dioxide for use in synthetic fuel production, while the remainder can be sold as an industrial feedstock or permanently stored.

Hydrogen and carbon dioxide are combined to produce synthetic hydrocarbons, which can be processed into fuels such as jet fuel and synthetic methane. The process can also produce ultrapure water.

“It’s based in salt water, electric chemistry,” Meadow said. “We were guided by the cargo industry and by the airline industry in our early days. And we answered every single one of their pain points, which is price parity – that’s a big one, especially with airlines because they have such tight margins – and where the carbon was coming from.”

For Meadow, the source of carbon is particularly important when building infrastructure designed to operate for decades.

“The carbon needs to come from the air. It needs to come from the atmosphere, especially when you’re building a plant that’s going to last 30-to-50 years,” she said.

The company is initially targeting aviation because of the industry’s demand for lower-emission fuels and the advantages of a product that can be used in existing aircraft.

The technology could eventually be used to produce marine fuel, gasoline and other synthetic fuels, including products blended with conventional fuels to reduce their emissions.

“We can make any kind of fuel with it. It doesn’t have to be jet fuel. But jet fuel is where the demand is,” Meadow said.

The initial pilot, expected to begin operating in early 2027, is designed to produce about one tonne of fuel annually. A second phase in 2028 is expected to increase annual production capacity to about 30 tonnes.

Meadow said those stages will allow the company to test efficiencies, demonstrate commercial-sized equipment and establish the performance needed to support a larger investment.

The company is targeting 2030 or 2031 for a commercial facility on a coastal property in Cape Breton. That development is expected to have substantially greater capacity, although a location has not yet been disclosed.

Meadow said there has been interest from the aviation industry, with announcements expected as discussions progress.

“Our work is not just about commercializing this technology, partnering with Eskasoni and building a commercial facility,” Meadow said. “It’s about creating a sector inside Nova Scotia where we can provide the feedstocks to help build this industry up.”

The siblings moved the company to Canada after the federal government learned about its technology and invited them to consider commercializing it on this side of the border. The move to Sydney about two years ago allowed them to take advantage of government incentives and access to research facilities and technical expertise at Cape Breton University.

“It was the best decision we could have made for a company,” Meadow said.

“There was a cultural mindset shift that happened because of COVID because people couldn’t go to work. They were watching the news and seeing these factories shut down and the reduction of pollution that they were emitting.

“We had to wait for the perfect time with this platform, for clean fuels, for there to be a real demand for clean fuels.”

The siblings also saw a strategic advantage in Cape Breton’s geography, with access to Canadian and American markets and shipping routes to Europe.

“It’s the geographic positioning,” Meadow said. “At this point we have plenty of buyers who are located in Nova Scotia and throughout Canada. But for exporting, importing, it’s on a really optimized geographic region to access Europe, as well as the United States.

“I joke with my brother about how we had to go to the edge of the world to commercialize this technology. But I love Cape Breton.”

The partnership with Eskasoni reflects another priority for Meadow: ensuring Indigenous communities have a meaningful stake in the clean-energy transition.

Following the move to Canada, Meadow began looking for a First Nations community interested in developing their project. She eventually cold-called Eskasoni CEO Steve Parsons, beginning a relationship that developed over roughly six months before the parties signed a memorandum of understanding to explore the project.

“My brother and I are part Native American,” Meadow said. “When we came here, one of my very first goals was to find a First Nations community that really wanted to do something ambitious and something that could really transform energy as we know it.

“Working with First Nations is so incredibly important, especially when you are building a clean technology on unceded territory. At Eskasoni, they are so progressive. They are definitely going to be leaders of the clean transition in Nova Scotia.”

Eskasoni Chief Leroy Denny has described the venture as an opportunity to bring the community’s environmental stewardship to an international stage while creating economic benefits for its members and Canada.

The joint venture plans to begin training as many as 12 Eskasoni members in engineering, operations and management, with the potential for the larger commercial development to create up to 80 full-time jobs.

“Eskasoni First Nation is proud to bring our culture of environmental stewardship to the international stage through a project being developed on Eskasoni lands, while creating meaningful economic opportunities that can directly benefit our people, our community and the people of Canada,” Denny said in a media release.

As Meadow put it: “It doesn’t just take a village. It takes an entire country to scale a technology like this.”