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The energy industry gets a bad rap when it comes to innovation, yet the oilpatch is by far the largest spender on clean tech in Canada, to the tune of $1.4 billion a year. As part of its continuing coverage of the innovation economy, the Financial Post reports on the intersection of technology and energy, from the oilpatch in Alberta, off the shores of Nova Scotia to the plains of Saskatchewan.

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During an almost disastrous science experiment involving his natural gas-fired furnace, Jaeson Cardiff nearly blew up his house.

“Who doesn’t just happen to have sodium hydroxide in their basement?” joked Cardiff, the CEO and co-founder of CleanO2, who had been tinkering with an early version of a device he built to capture the CO2 that emits from the gas-fired appliance. “I didn’t think. I just threw it in,” he said.

The combination of sodium hydroxide and aluminum, his top chemist later informed him, produces hydrogen gas. And hydrogen gas in the presence of fire — triggered by the ignition on the furnace — can explode.