Our low-emissions businesses

We have been in the low-carbon power business for more than 20 years with a focus on natural gas generation and we started producing renewable fuel in the mid-2000s. By leveraging existing expertise, complementing our integrated business and connecting to the energy consumer, our low-carbon power and fuels are helping to meet our GHG objectives.

We aim to allocate approximately 10% of our annual capital budget over the medium term (2022-2025) to investments that advance our low-carbon energy offerings. 

Low-carbon power

Low-carbon power, including cogeneration, is one of the components to reduce our emissions by 10 megatonnes by 2030. We already use cogeneration at our operations at Base Plant, Firebag, Fort Hills and Syncrude. By producing both industrial steam and electricity through a natural gas-fueled process, cogeneration is the lowest greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions intensity of hydrocarbon-based power generation.

Since we produce more power than we need, we export the excess to the grid. The GHG intensity of cogeneration power is approximately 75% lower in emissions than coal-fired power generation, something that still exists on Alberta’s grid today.

We are building on that success with a project to replace aging boilers that use petroleum coke with new cogeneration facilities at our Base Plant operations. These facilities were designed to provide the steam needed for operations by replacing coke combustion with natural gas cogeneration. The units will also make it possible to export an additional 800 megawatts of baseload electricity to Alberta's provincial grid, equivalent to roughly 12% of Alberta’s 2021 average electricity demand.

Renewable fuels

We’ve been in the renewable fuels business since 2006, when our St. Clair Ethanol Plant in Sarnia began production, which is Canada's largest ethanol plant. Since then, we have continued to research lower-carbon-intensity ethanol and are advancing a portfolio of projects with universities and companies aimed at producing advanced renewable fuels through investments in Enerkem, LanzaTech and LanzaJet, making us well-positioned to be a low-emissions energy company.