Clean Fuel Regulations success stories

Leaders in the transition to cleaner fuels

Lion Electric

Lion Electric, based in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, is an innovative manufacturer of zero-emission heavy-duty vehicles, including electric buses and trucks. Its all-electric vehicles are a positive step towards fighting climate change and helping to keep our air cleaner and communities healthier. The company’s electric school buses are already in use in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island, as well as in multiple states across the United States, including California, New York and Illinois. Recently, Lion Electric partnered with Transit Truck Bodies to launch a 100% zero emission heavy duty truck. The lightweight, aerodynamic trucks are suitable for final destination deliveries in urban areas.

Over the last decade, Lion has established itself as a leader in the all-electric school bus industry and is gaining recognition in the trucking industry. Its facilities have the capacity to produce 2,500 vehicles per year. This is creating new well-paying jobs in the Canadian automotive sector.

When Canadian municipalities and businesses switch their fleets to cleaner driving vehicles, they could be eligible to earn valuable credits under Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulations as charging network operators or site hosts.

Surrey, British Columbia

The City of Surrey’s biofuel facility transforms the city’s food scrap waste into clean fuel (renewable natural gas) that is used to heat municipal buildings and will fuel the city’s garbage trucks. It is estimated that this cuts emissions equivalent to removing 10,000 cars off the road each year. Providing eligible clean fuel to Canada can earn valuable credits under the Clean Fuel Regulations.

Carbon Engineering

Carbon Engineering, based in Squamish, British Columbia, has developed innovative technology that removes carbon dioxide from the air, so it can be transformed into a clean fuel that can be used to power businesses and transportation.

When its new Innovation Centre opens, it will support the creation of many good local jobs in the Lower Mainland.

Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulations will increase the market demand for this type of clean fuel. As Canada’s low-carbon economy continues to grow, it will create new opportunities for Carbon Engineering, and companies like it, to continue to innovate, grow and create high-quality jobs, and to find new markets around the world for their solutions.

Nuseed Carinata

Nuseed is a global company, with research and development located in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and a corporate office in Calgary, Alberta. The company produces Nuseed Carinata, a non-food oilseed cover crop first developed in Canada that is an ideal feedstock for renewable fuels.

In addition, Nuseed Carinata is one of the lowest carbon footprint feedstocks available. Nuseed Carinata production removes carbon from the air and sequesters it into the soil, substantially reducing greenhouse gases, and improving soil health while reducing erosion.

The Clean Fuel Regulations promote research and development and innovation in agriculture toward new feedstocks like Nuseed Carinata, which could provide Canadian farmers with opportunities to diversify their crops and expand their business. Companies such as Nuseed may see increased demand for their crop to produce low carbon fuels in Canada.

Anessa Biogas Software

Anessa is a New Brunswick-based software company. its award-winning software helps engineers and investors make important decisions about the design and construction of new biogas projects. It also helps operators of existing biogas production facilities maximize energy output and revenue. 

This kind of technology will be important under Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulations, as industry needs more access to clean fuels like biogas. As more biogas facilities are built, Anessa’s innovative technology will support engineers and construction workers in making decisions on the design of these facilities. In the low-carbon economy, companies such as Anessa would have increased opportunities to expand into new markets.

PlanET Biogas Solutions

Since 2006, PlanET Biogas Solutions has been developing renewable natural gas projects across Canada. Its largest Canadian facility opened in 2013 in Lethbridge, Alberta. It has steadily produced enough biogas to power 3,000 homes.

The company does this by taking manure from local farms and food scraps from nearby food processing facilities and turning it into a clean fuel called biogas. The leftover solids from this process are used by farmers as a fertilizer that has less odour because climate warming methane emissions from that soil have been reduced by 90%.

PlanET’s scalable and modular technology can be tailored for a variety of farms or food processing facilities. This makes it possible for farmers or food manufacturers to recycle their waste and generate biogas, which they can sell as Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) or clean electricity.

With the first of several projects in Western Canada already under construction, jobs are being created in rural communities. RNG plants that produce clean fuel may be eligible to create credits under the Clean Fuel Regulations.

Greenfield Global

Greenfield Global is Canada’s leading producer of low-carbon ethanol and operates four ethanol distilleries in Ontario and Quebec, including a biorefinery in Varennes, Quebec. Greenfield also operates five specialty chemical manufacturing and packaging plants in Canada, the United States, and Europe. Each year, Greenfield produces about 200 million litres of renewable, low-carbon ethanol fuel at its Varennes biorefinery.

Ethanol is a high-octane, economical, clean-burning fuel made from starch-based crops, often from local farmers. Most gasoline sold in Canada already contains some ethanol, which reduces air pollution and cuts greenhouse gas emissions compared to fossil fuel. The higher the ethanol blend in gasoline, the greater the carbon reductions and lower the greenhouse gas emissions will be.

The Clean Fuel Regulations would allow renewable fuel producers to create credits based on the carbon reductions their fuels create. These credits can be sold to regulated parties to help them meet their compliance obligation.

Greenfield’s Varennes facility is powered, in part, by renewable biogas produced by the adjacent SEMECS (Société d’économie mixte de l’est de la couronne sud) anaerobic digestion facility, which shrinks the facility’s carbon footprint and lowers the carbon intensity of the ethanol being produced. The Clean Fuel Regulations use a lifecycle approach for measuring carbon intensity. Low-carbon fuel produced at a facility that is partly powered by renewable biogas may be eligible to create more credits under the Clean Fuel Regulations than a similar quantity of ethanol produced conventionally.

Greenfield continues to innovate and be a leader in renewable energy. Companies that lower the carbon intensity of the low carbon fuel they supply to Canada may be eligible to create earn more credits under the Clean Fuel Regulations.