Funding awarded to advance tailings and mine water technologies

May 18, 2026

A government agency has awarded $46 million to technologies focused on improving management and treatment of oil sands mine water and tailings.

Emissions Reduction Alberta (ERA) announced funding in March for its inaugural Tailings Technology Challenge, which called for proposals to treat tailings and mine water stored by oil sands operations.

Whether extracting nickel, diamonds, copper or oil sands, all mining operations generate a by-product called tailings. Oil sands tailings are made up of sand, clay, water and residual hydrocarbons. The tailings are deposited in facilities called tailings ponds, which also hold mine water. The term mine water is used to describe the water managed by oil sands operators. It includes process water, which is mainly recycled from the extraction process, upgrading recycled wastewater, and groundwater removed prior to and during mining. Under current regulations, mine water and any precipitation that falls on mine sites, including rain and snowmelt, must be stored in engineered facilities. 

Treating both fluid tailings and mine water is essential for oil sands operators to successfully reclaim and close their mine sites.

While the ERA has provided more than $1 billion to more than 300 projects valued at $10 billion in 17 years across the province, this is the first time the agency has targeted tailings and mine water.

“The Alberta government wanted to ensure they were investing dollars into accelerating tailings innovations so they asked us if we’d put out a specific challenge for tailings technologies,” says ERA Chief Executive Officer Justin Riemer, who has headed the agency since 2022. “Our agency has a role to play in advancing environmental innovation as well as improving our province’s economic competitiveness. This challenge was a great fit for us.”

All three mining members from Oil Sands Alliance submitted proposals for the challenge and were awarded funding.

• Canadian Natural received $15 million to develop improved in-pond mixing technologies through inline flocculation of thickened tailings. It also received $1.2 million to test passive technologies to manage and treat tailings water at closure, and $1.5 million to test a desalinization pilot.

• Suncor received $4.5 million for a project that will assess the development of oil sands-specific modular amphibious equipment to improve access to soft tailings deposits for reclamation. The company also received $3 million for a joint industry project with Canadian Natural that Suncor is leading. The project will further test advanced membrane-based technologies for treating oil sands mine water.

• Imperial Oil received up to $12.8 million to advance their Enhanced Thickened Tailings (eTT) technology towards commercialization. The eTT process speeds water recovery and improves tailings drainage and supports better water reuse and long‑term reclamation at Kearl. Learn more.

“This largely is geared towards field-ready technologies that can tackle real world conditions and we were very happy to see every oil sands mining player submitted applications. It was very important to have the companies with tailings ponds participate,” says Riemer. “But we also had some smaller companies and entrepreneurs receive funding. Having smaller innovators collaborate with major industrial players is really important and they brought excellent ideas to the table worth pursuing.”

One such player was H2nanO, a cleantech firm which has already tested harnessing sunshine to treat mine water at the Kearl mine.

H2nanO received $1.8 million for a $3.6 million project to demonstrate two low-energy mine water treatment technologies that remove organics, address salinity and enable year-round water reuse.

“We are very excited about the funding and received a lot of support from Oil Sands Alliance member companies, who wrote letters in support of our proposal,” says Zac Young, H2nanO’s President and co-founder. “As a small business, it’s nice to get that kind of support to pursue this project”.

The agency’s investments in developing technologies are financed through Alberta’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) fund, which collects contributions from the oil and gas sector under the province’s carbon pricing and trading system.

Finding solutions that can help solve today’s challenges is important for Riemer.

“This is a big environmental focus for the province, and we need to be investing with industry on technologies that are going to improve both the environmental benefits as well as the economic competitiveness of treating tailings and mine water.”