Andrea Kent is Vice President of Government and Public Relations at Greenfield Global Inc. We spoke to her at the World Ethanol & Biofuels conference about Canada’s ambitious Clean Fuel Standard, its likely implications for the ethanol industry, and the need for a joined-up approach to decarbonising the country’s transportation system.
“You can’t be too fixated on a particular pathway or compliance mechanism, or even a mode. You really have to look at it in its entirety, and you really have to find ways that the most practical and immediate things like biofuels and ethanol can be accelerated while we wait for those longer-term solutions like electrification to come online.”
If you look at Canada’s Clean Fuel Standard, what is the level of opportunity that presents for the biofuels industry?
“Absolutely, I think it’s an exciting time to consider the Canadian policy landscape. We have a national dialogue on carbon pricing right now, we have some jurisdictions that are looking at increasing their regional policies, and then we have this really ambitious national Clean Fuel Standard. So it’s seeking to reduce emissions across all of industry, and I think that’s really the point of differentiation. We’re not just looking at transportation, which is of course a huge tricky sector to decarbonise, but we’re really looking across all of industry as a whole. So it’s ambitious, and I think that where there’s great opportunity there’s great challenges, but the success really can be in the details.
“So I think what you’re looking at is that Canada is seeking to decarbonise transportation, building off that momentum, carrying it over into the industrial sector and really creating a viable low carbon market in the process. So it has to attack consumer behaviour, it has to change that, it has to come up with a new economy that’s going to kind of incentivise and support that transition to low carbon fuels across all sectors. And then of course too I think there’s a real component of global leadership that a lot of people in Canada are proud of right now for biting all of this off. You don’t want to lose the progress to date though, and a lot of positive reductions in GHG emissions have already come out of transportation because of biofuels mandates.
“So the challenge – the other side of the coin – is how do you continue to get those reliable reductions and grow those reductions from transportation biofuels without compromising the longer term objectives.”
Are some of those challenges specific to Canada, would you say?
“I think looking at what’s specific to Canada is you have a really ambitious national government right now, and you have some provinces that are kind of coming up in their election cycle, and the approach might be a little bit different. I think what everybody wants to do is create jobs while they decarbonise, not deindustrialise. So looking at the Canadian challenges, it’s going to be how do these regulations end up being complementary and kind of a mosaic across the country, rather than a patchwork. Because that’s not going to work for consumers or producers, whether you’re a fossil fuel producer or an ethanol producer. And that’s kind of where the policy challenges are really focused right now.”
And you’ve said that it’s not all about road transportation, but that road transportation is definitely a big part. Could you say a bit more about where you see road transportation in Canada heading in say the next ten years – what it will look like then?
“I think a lot of people would agree with me there than ten years down the road – pun intended – it needs to be a mix, right? So I think you’re absolutely going to see an increase in liquid transportation fuels that are lower carbon, I think you’re going to see that in road transportation – you’re going to have to see it in heavy duty. There’s aviation and other modes that are especially difficult to decarbonise; all of those are going to have to be addressed. I think you’re going to see electrification, I think that it’s not going to be either/or. And you know the real kind of delicate dance that needs to be done with industry and governments right now is that there is no silver bullet. You can’t be too fixated on a particular pathway or compliance mechanism, or even a mode. You really have to look at it in its entirety, and you really have to find ways that the most practical and immediate things like biofuels and ethanol can be accelerated while we wait for those longer-term solutions like electrification to come online. Canada is a vast country with a lot of seasons and a lot of geography as well too. So what works for where I’m from, an urban centre in Ontario, is not going to work for the great white north. So those are the other considerations that you have to cover.”
So we’ve talked a lot about the big picture. Could you maybe explain to me where Greenfield Global fits into this, and particularly about your co-products strategy, and how important that is for your business model.
“Well I think that anybody who follows the commodity markets right now, when you look at the inputs for ethanol – and Canada is absolutely a price taker with ethanol production riding the margins right now, and they’re very thin. So that’s when co-product streams like DDGS and feeding into the animal feed market really stabilises, and that allows you to kind of ride those peaks and valleys that you see in the market for ethanol. It also creates this technology that you can continually leverage and continually build on as well.
“So with co-products, traditionally we talked about distillers grains, which are very much associated with corn ethanol. But we also do a lot of our own R&D, and we’re looking at things like anaerobic digestion, and how do we get methanol, and how do we get to biogas, and even looking at some things like hydrogen fuel cell technology. So I think that the way that we approach and think about co-products is going to be even more robust going forward, and an even bigger part of not only just stabilising the current economics around ethanol, but really turning it into an origin for some of those other fuel mixes that we need.”
