‘Renewable diesel’ folks coming to town

By Collin Gallant on November 3, 2018.

cgallant@medicinehatnews.com @CollinGallant

Officials with two companies looking to partner on building a “renewable diesel” refinery in Medicine Hat will be in town next week to view potential plant sites and begin talks to secure feedstock, including some volume of municipal trash collection.

Don Allan, head of Cielo Waste Management, said an initial deal with an investors group in Grand Prairie could come together very quickly, and proposals to build similar $20-million facilities in both cities within the next 18 months to two years.

“We’ll evaluate the market,” Allan told the News on Friday. “There’s definitely lots of opportunity but we’ll have to determine what’s going to happen with it … We’re moving on it and there’s no reason why we couldn’t do Medicine Hat and Grande Prairie at the same time.”

This week, Cielo signed a memorandum of understanding with Renewable U Energy Inc. that could see a deal completed within 180 days for a Grande Prairie plant, and an option for Renewable U to secure the Medicine Hat area as well.

The company’s prototype refining facility near High River was begun last April and physically complete in August, said Allan, citing permitting as a time-intensive process. It could begin shipping sales quantities by the end of the year.

Allan uses the term “renewable diesel” to distinguish his company’s product from bio-diesel, which is typically produced from canola or other crops.

His process, which is in the process of being patented, transforms any fibre or cellulose product into the fuel, he said.

That fits the profile of most municipal garbage, compostable waste, crop byproduct, tires, even contaminated cardboard, paper and plastics, essentially everything but metal, glass and soil.

“We’ll tell a landfill to recycle as much as they can and we’ll take everything else,” he said, saying that upcoming discussions in Medicine Hat will involve land (about 40 acres), utility services, transportation and also feedstock.

Renewable U president Lionel Robbins told the News this week his group is interested in creating economic diversification in Alberta’s centres in the vein of “philanthropic capitalism.”

“It’s a little more guilt-free profit, for lack of a better term,” said Robbins, who owns car dealerships and other businesses in Grande Prairie.

“We’re building businesses to make a profit and support families and investors, and create jobs, economic activity in a community, and on the other hand focusing on specific industries that bring game changers for environment and renewable energy.”

He said concerns about economic development and future growth led to the creation of his group, and guided their mandate.

“We’ve always been big, big supporters of the community.”

Allan says the technology uses a dry refuse, meaning residents should be worried about site cleanliness or smell around the plant, which closely resembles a tank farm from a distance.

He also says low water content in his product means it can be used year round, unlike traditional diesel additive.

Federal and provincial governments require fuel blending of four per cent in Alberta, and the Canadian market requires about 650 million litres per year that is mostly imported.

“The domestic market is wide open,” said Allan, who cites production levels from each plant at about 8 million litres annually from about 12,000 tonnes of feedstock.

An initial plant proposed here would be scalable to grow five fold, and initial production levels could require between 20 and 25 employees, plus trucking requirements and offshoot benefits of reducing waste from private industry and municipal waste streams.

City officials wouldn’t discuss potential partnership on Friday, one day after the News broke the story, but reducing deliveries to the city’s landfill has been a strategic priority for the solid waste department.

This year it introduced a blue cart recycling program and is tentatively scheduled to examine a food-waste program in 2020.

All the city’s utility departments are now in the final process of creating business plans for the 2019-2022 budget period, and will present them in early December.

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