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Biomass Energy

Saturday
18 Jan 2025

Calgary Company Considering Northern BC as Potential Site of Biomass Diesel Manufacturing Plant

18 Jan 2025  by princegeorgecitizen   

Future Fuels Forum panel speakers, from left, Gord Crawford of Expander Energy Inc.; Matt Millard of Tidewater Midstream Prince George Refinery; and Owen Miller of Deadwood Innovations spoke to the conference audience Monday at House of Ancestors Uda Dune Baiyoh Conference Centre.
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.

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