In 2023, Expander Energy Inc. and Rocky Mountain Clean Fuels Inc., announced a project to produce low carbon bio-synthetic diesel fuel by combining pieces of waste wood and synthetic gas using a patented gasification process.
Once it becomes operational later this year the plant east of Calgary will be capable of producing eight million litres of renewable bio-diesel fuel per year.
Expander Energy CEO Gord Crawford spoke Monday at the inaugural Future Fuels Forum at the House of Ancestors Uda Dune Baiyoh Conference Centre in Prince George, and said his company is working on a feasibility study funded by the federal government’s Clean Fuels Fund to determine new locations for future gasification plants that turn forest products into fuel.
Northern BC is being considered as a potential plant site.
“One of them is in this region, one is in northern Ontario and one of them is in Quebec and we’re getting very close to the end of that feasibility phase, where we will finalize those locations and then move each into a full front-end engineering package, cost estimate and financial package that would be ready for project sanctioning and construction,” said Crawford.
While he can’t disclose where exactly the bio-mass plant would be located, Crawford said northern BC has all the elements needed to support a carbon-neutral project, including fibre supply, renewable energy from the electrical grid and an existing track record of industrial development.
“There’s lots of talented trades people here and a (provincial) government that is very supportive of these sort of projects moving forward to the extent that we at Expander just received BC low-carbon fuels branch approval of the fuel we are planning to produce at our facility outside of Calgary, using biomass as the feedstock,” said Crawford.
Expander Energy is focused on utilizing biomass, electrolysis, captured carbon, power-to-liquids and other low-carbon intensity processes to make alternatives to conventional diesel fuel. Expander uses Fischer-Tropsch principles in combination with its patented gasification technology to make paraffin (candle wax), which can be further processed into diesel or aviation fuel (kerosine).
“The use of biomass, of forest residuals, and renewable electricity to make a globally tradable high-quality fuel is strategically dead-centre for the provincial government of British Columbia because these are fuels that are needed here and around the world,” said Crawford.
“This is an opportunity for Canada to generate export revenues and GDP and thousands of jobs that move the country forward. These are good forestry jobs, trucking jobs, plant jobs millwrights, panel operators - they’re good-paying jobs and they’re generating a finished fuel product that competes on the world stage. These plants won’t be located in Vancouver, they’ll be in Prince George, Fort St. John, places like Fort St. James, rural and remote.”
Crawford referred to a study by the Canadian Sustainable Aviation Fuel Association which estimates that by using the biomass inventory currently available in Canada the country could produce eight billion litres of sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) annually. Almost none of it is being produced right now.
There is a market for it, as Frank Femia of Air Canada pointed out to the conference audience. Just 0.3 per cent of the fuel Air Canada burns is SAF, due to the high cost of production, and the airline is looking for ways to incentivize new industry to produce all the renewable fuels the country needs.
While governments have tried to provide a helping hand, that’s not all going smoothly.
Matt Millard, general manager of the Tidewater Midstream Prince George Refinery, spoke about the struggles his company has faced since it opened its $430 million biofuel diesel refinery in November 2023.
Subsidies for biofuel diesel producers in the U.S. and a glut of biofuel projects south of the border that have come on-stream over the past year have dropped commodity prices to a point where Tidewater can’t compete with them.
Millard said the demand is there for what gets produced in Prince George. Biofuel is blended into other types of fuel such as a gasoline, but the price of the product makes it too expensive to produce.
Tidewater Renewables reported a loss of $367 million loss in the third quarter of 2024.
“It’s a huge issue for our long-term viability, potentially,” said Millard.
Tidewater has said it could lead to a closure of the renewables plant by as early as March and possibly threaten the company’s plan to expand into producing renewable jet fuel.
“Ultimately we’re looking for a level playing field, there are a high number of subsidies available to U.S. producers and (for them) the best economic model is you produce it in the U.S. and bring it to Canada,” said Millard.
“There isn’t enough low-carbon fuel production in B.C. to meet the targets that are set out, so some of it needs to come in. The problem is that there’s been a lot of new projects built in the U.S., almost to the point where it’s overbuilt, and some of that is shipped north, so that’s making it really challenging for BC producers. We still get the Canadian credits, but the U.S. producers get them as well when the volume comes in, and they get a U.S. production subsidy.”
Tidewater has otherwise been successful with its Prince George refinery and has so far produced 160 million litres of renewable diesel since it opened 15 months ago and that has all gone into the BC market. It refines primarily canola oil, tallow (beef fat) and a small amount of used cooking oil to make its renewable energy.
The carbon reduction associated with what it has so far produced is more than 400,000 tonnes and Millard says that’s helping decarbonize the province’s resource industry. Tidewater’s fuel has gone into logging trucks, the forest industry, the mining sector and liquid natural gas projects to help them meet the province’s low-carbon fuel regulations.
He said the provincial government’s mandate for industry to achieve a 40 per cent reduction in carbon emissions by 2030 in “an aggressive target.
“Certainly, having more of these types of projects in BC will help them get to that target,” he said. “The fuel itself ins a drop-in replacement. The beauty of renewable diesel is you don’t have to change your equipment, you don’t have to change your fleet, it goes into every diesel engine and diesel pumps, it’s a direct replacement for fossil diesel.”
