The Canadian government says imports are flooding its renewable diesel mandate, but a group that works for renewable diesel and biodiesel says those numbers are being overblown in an attempt to hurt that mandate. This article in The Western Producer says the government believes the country’s renewable fuel content will consist of 90 percent imports, buoyed by imported soybean and canola biodiesel from the U.S. and hydrogenation-derived renewable diesel (HDRD) from overseas. But the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association says those numbers are a bogus attempt to water down and are intended to water down the two percent renewable diesel mandate:
“We’re seeing Canadian-based canola being shipped into the United States for upgrading and then sent back into Canada. They are describing that as an import,” said CRFA president Scott Thurlow.
Once Archer Daniels Midland’s Lloydminster canola biodiesel plant starts in September the flow of imported canola biodiesel from the U.S. will slow.
The ADM plant will be capable of producing 265 million litres of the alternative fuel annually, bringing Canada’s total biodiesel capacity up to 450 million litres.
The existing federal mandate requires about 600 million litres of renewable diesel per year.
The CRFA also questions the charge that HDRD is going to be such a large chunk of renewable diesel in the eastern part of the country. While the association acknowledges the high quality of the imported fuel, Thurlow makes the case that it will be not cost-effective to use that imported fuel.
“Its disadvantage is that it is ruinously expensive,” he said.
“More and more biodiesel is pushing the HDRD out of the marketplace and that’s being done almost entirely because of price.”