In September this year, Electric Autonomy Canada, an independent news platform that reports on electric vehicles (EVs) and the future of transportation, hosted a webinar series called "Alternative Fuels: The promise, the potential and putting it into practice".

Sponsored by Petro-Canada, a Suncor business, this three-part series brought together panels of experts in the energy field to talk about:

• what kinds of alternative fuels are being developed in Canada, both for the everyday consumer as well as the trucking industry;
• the infrastructure challenges of transitioning to alternative fuels; and
• how Canada can get, and stay, competitive in the alternative fuels space.

The panel for the first webinar topic, "On the road, rails and in the sky with alternative fuels", included Dave Fath, General Manager, Petro-Canada Brand Marketing, Suncor. Dave shared his thoughts on which alternative fuels could prove most useful in industry and trucking in the next few years:

"For heavy industrial use, and for heavy transport specifically, I think there's a great potential for hydrogen-treated renewable diesel, it's a product that has a significantly lower carbon footprint than traditional diesel and it performs just like regular diesel. It's not yet widely available to consumers but we are starting to see it enter markets in Canada. We've recently launched it in British Columbia (Petro-Canada EcoDiesel^TM available to commercial customers) and over the next five years, I think it's fair to expect that HRD products will become more widely available across the country."

Consumer adoption of alternative fuels was a hot topic in the third webinar, "Looking into the future – where do we go from here?" and panelist Shannon Wing, Senior Director – Petro-Canada Strategy & Development, Suncor, had this to say about the energy industry’s role in educating customers about the benefits of alternative fuels:

"A lot of customers are gaining knowledge in this sector about alternative fuels but there's a lot of skepticism around some of the results. So, I think we really have a role to play in sharing real world case studies and information and experiences. As organizations that previously considered themselves competitors, we're going to have to band together on this transition and share that information more readily than we may have in the past, to have those customers really believe that the transition [to alternative fuels] can work."

Providing energy alternatives is a key element in helping Petro-Canada customers move toward a lower-carbon future. Visit https://electricautonomy.ca/alternative-fuels-canada-2022/ to check out these three webinars and learn more about the future of alternative fuels in Canada.

What questions do you have about alternative fuels? Let us know in the comments and we might feature your question in a future post.

We all have a role to play in reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, including CO2 (aka carbon dioxide) emissions. Petro-Canada is helping our customers contribute to a net-zero world by providing them with cleaner energy choices such as renewable fuels and the Petro-Canada™ Electric Highway.

Through it’s membership in COSIA – the Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance – Suncor, the proud owner of Petro-Canada, supports the Carbon XPRIZE, a partnership between the U.S.-based XPRIZE Foundation, American power company NRG, and Canada’s Oil Sands Innovation Alliance (COSIA), that is designed to accelerate new technologies for converting CO2 emissions from industrial facilities (electricity generation and oil and gas production) into valuable and usable products.

The Carbon XPRIZE competition is structured as a two-track prize, with the new technologies tested at either a coal power plant in Wyoming or a natural gas power plant in Calgary – the Alberta Carbon Conversion Technology Centre (ACCTC), which is an outdoor testing site designed specifically for demonstrating CO2 capture and conversion technologies. Suncor is a partner in the ACCTC.

Since 2015, teams from around the world have been taking their big ideas on what we can do with CO2 emissions and accelerating the development of technologies that transform CO2 into valuable products. Get to know the featured finalists and winner of the Carbon XPRIZE, all proud Canadian companies, through their explainer videos.

CarbonCure Technologies (Carbon XPRIZE Winner) – Dartmouth, NS
The Big Idea: embed CO2 in concrete— to improve its performance and make it stronger.

CERT Systems (Finalist) – Toronto, ON
The Big Idea: convert CO2 emissions into chemical feedstocks, and when powered by renewable energy sources, provides net-negative production of precursors for fuels and consumer plastics.

Carbon Upcycling (Finalist) – Calgary, AB
The Big Idea: transform CO2 into the base materials for a wide range of products, ranging from batteries to plastics to concrete.

Air Company (Finalist) – Toronto, ON and New York, NY
The Big Idea: transform CO2 into impurity-free alcohols, which can be used in everything from spirits and fragrances to cleaning products and carbon-neutral fuel.

~Kate T.

Remember that scene at the end of Back to the Future where Doc Brown shoves some garbage into the “Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactor” that was attached to his time-traveling DeLorean? That film came out a few years before I got my driver’s license and I remember thinking that it would be really cool to just toss a few banana peels into the car instead of stopping off at the gas station.

To my extreme disappointment, Back to the Future’s vision is still just science fiction and we don’t all have our own “Mr. Fusion Home Energy Reactors”. However (silver lining!), we are making progress on the process of turning waste into energy.

Suncor, the proud owner of Petro-Canada, is giving a second life to commercial and industrial waste (no banana peels though) as part of a new partnership to build a biofuel plant in Quebec. On Dec. 8, Enerkem, a world leader in converting waste to biofuels and chemical products, along with Suncor, Shell, and Proman, with the support of the Québec and Canadian governments, announced they were working together on the construction of a biofuel plant in Varennes, in the Greater Montréal area.

The new facility in Québec - Varennes Carbon Recycling (VCR) - will convert more than 200,000 tonnes of commercial and industrial non-recyclable waste and wood waste into an annual production of nearly 125 million litres of biofuels. Once complete, the facility will contribute to greenhouse gas reductions equivalent to removing almost 50,000 vehicles off the road annually.

Suncor has previously invested in Enerkem and has worked with the company to scale up operations at its Enerkem Alberta Biofuels (EAB) plant located in Edmonton, Alberta by seconding Suncor people with expertise in operating industrial facilities. EAB is the first commercial-scale plant in the world to turn non-recyclable, non-compostable mixed municipal solid waste into cellulosic ethanol, a popular biofuel. Combusting a biofuel significantly reduces carbon emissions, therefore, when the ethanol is blended with our petroleum products (our fuel is currently 10% ethanol) we’re burning cleaner fuel as we drive.

So, for the foreseeable future, we’ll need to keep putting the banana peels in the composter rather than our fuel tanks. But, investments like the VCR facility help bring us closer to a low-carbon future.

~Kate T.

Professional truck drivers all across the country go the extra mile to make our families, businesses and communities proud. This year, of course, our reliance on truck drivers was all the more profound. For the past few years, we’ve recognized these essential workers through our driver appreciation contest at Petro-Pass^TM sites that we hold in the spring. Every Canadian truck driver deserves our gratitude, but for this year’s $2,000 prize, these four drivers really stood out in their communities.

QUEBEC
Jean-Guy Laflamme
He’s the hero of the wheel.
When Jean-Guy’s daughter nominated him, she talked about his passion, his 30-year accident-free record and all he taught her about trucks. But she was proudest of his commitment to driving so Canadians could have the supplies they needed to stay at home.

ALBERTA
Janet Brown
She drives to save lives.
Janet is passionate about hauling pharmaceuticals. Throughout the pandemic, she put herself at risk to make sure Canadians could get vital medications. Janet says she’s happy to be a quiet support in our healthcare system, but we know she deserves recognition for all she does. Thank you, Janet, for driving for a better world.

ONTARIO
Vijayan Ratnam
His small acts make a difference.
Vijayan is the type of person who directs people as they back out, shunts units when needed, and trains newly licensed drivers during his personal time. Vijayan was nominated because of his safe and reliable driving, but he won because of his willingness to go above and beyond to help others—in big and small ways.

NOVA SCOTIA
Branislav Simic
He hit the ground driving.
When Branislav came to Canada in 2013, he brought his work ethic with him. With a senior mechanic and international trucking background, he trained to learn the Canadian transport industry. After driving all over North America, Branislav started his own company, becoming a job creator, and earned a reputation for safety and reliability.

Many thanks to these four drivers and to all the truck drivers across Canada, working tirelessly to keep Canadians supplied and our economy moving.

~Kate T.

So many conferences and large events are going virtual this year – and in a number of cases are free to stream. I’ve attended sessions at Comic-con, the Hillside music festival and the Just for Laughs Festival – all online this year. It was obviously a very different experience, but I still managed to view some great content as well as make some connections. I did, however, have to provide my own refreshments.

This year, the Petro-Canada Sport Leadership Sportif Conference (Nov 4 - Nov 6, 2020) – Canada's largest conference for coaches, researchers, sport executives, and administrators – is going virtual as well. And it’s open to everyone to attend for free!

Courage by Design is the theme this year; keynote speakers and breakout sessions will focus on how intentional acts of courage, inclusivity, and resilience can shape positive change in Canada’s sport community. Presenters and facilitators include Benoit Huot, Paralympic athlete, and Kimberly B. Davis, Senior Executive Vice President at the National Hockey League. You can see the full program at the #SLS20 virtual event space [2].

For more information and to register for the event, click here. Registration closes on October 28.

What do you think? Will you take advantage of this year’s virtual event? Let us know if you plan to attend in the comments.

~Rose R.