Energy transition

It takes a lot of effort to produce the energy that keeps the world running. Building on the strength of our base business, we’re well-positioned to expand our low-emissions energy sources.

Our expanded energy offerings are and will be in business lines we understand well – low-carbon power, renewable fuels and hydrogen; and they will focus on key value drivers – leveraging existing expertise, complementing our integrated business, and connecting to the energy consumer.

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 and allocating a significant portion of this capital toward advanced technologies that provide strong, double-digit returns such as our Base Plant Cogeneration project.

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 7% of the current demand.

Renewable fuels

We’ve been in the renewable fuels business since 2006, when our St. Clair Ethanol Plant in Sarnia began production. 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.

Hydrogen

We’ve been producing and using hydrogen for over 50 years. Hydrogen is currently used in our Commerce City, Edmonton, Montreal and Sarnia refineries and in our upgrading operations as feedstock to produce different end products. We produce it at our Base Plant and the Montreal refinery.

As Canada’s largest producer and consumer of hydrogen in Canada with deep knowledge of, we are expanding our use of hydrogen for two reasons: we’re looking to decarbonize emissions from our existing hydrogen use and to expand it for use in other applications including as a clean fuel or feedstock for the production of biofuels.