Tag: aviation

The canola crisis brings an opportunity to fix a major national-security issue for Canada

This opinion was written by Omar Saleh and was published in the Globe & Mail on August 14, 2025.

New high-oil variants can grow on Class 4 marginal lands – millions of acres across Saskatchewan and Alberta that aren’t used currently for food crops.

Canola could be the key to fixing one of Canada’s biggest national-security vulnerabilities

This week, China slapped a 75.8per-cent preliminary antidumping duty on Canadian canola, threatening $5-billion a year in exports and putting the Prairie agricultural economy squarely in the crosshairs.

Yet in this crisis lies an opportunity. The same crop now caught in a trade war could also be the key to fixing one of our biggest national security vulnerabilities.

Canola has quietly become one of the most credible feedstocks for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) – chemically identical to conventional jet fuel, yet with up to 90-per-cent lower life-cycle emissions. It’s a drop-in fuel – usable in current engines, aircraft and refuelling systems with no modifications. The U.S. Air Force flies on it. Lufthansa uses it regularly. NATO is preparing to deploy it. Canada isn’t.

We have committed to spending $38.6-billion on North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) modernization and Arctic deployments – without securing the fuel to support them. No strategic reserve. No domestic supply chain. No plan.

At Canada’s most remote base, CFS Alert, it takes seven litres of fuel to deliver just one usable litre. In a crisis, that’s a logistics choke point an adversary wouldn’t even need to attack – just wait for the supply chain to strain and watch operations slow.

This isn’t a technical gap. It’s industrial abdication.

Canada has the tools to lead. New high-oil varieties can grow on Class 4 marginal lands – millions of acres across Saskatchewan and Alberta that aren’t used currently for food crops. That means no pressure on food systems, and no need to convert premium farmland. That shift wasn’t driven by marketing – it was earned through hard science, better crop genetics and proven refining results.

What’s more, Canada has a real shot at global leadership not only because of what we grow, but also what we can store. Alberta already has one of the most advanced carbon-capture networks in North America. Facilities such as Quest, and the provincewide trunk line that supports it, are exactly what will separate low-carbon SAF from the ultralow-carbon SAF needed to win international contracts. That infrastructure is already there.

Put it together and the Prairies don’t just have the feedstock. They have the land, the logistics, the refining and the emissions solution. No other country has all five.

So why are we still acting like this is someone else’s opportunity?

The European Union and Britain are mandating SAF blending – 2 per cent by 2025, climbing to 70 per cent by 2050. The United States has committed billions through the Department of Energy, Federal Aviation Administration and Department of Defense. Yet Canada remains on the sidelines, siloing SAF under clean fuel programs, ignoring it in procurement and treating it as someone else’s file.

We’ve got more to lose than most. Almost a quarter of Canada’s jet fuel is imported, leaving our defence and Arctic operations dependent on foreign supply chains that are vulnerable to global disruptions. This isn’t about emissions – it’s about operational readiness and supply chain control.

Scaling SAF to 15 per cent of Canada’s jet fuel use could generate $3-billion to $5-billion annually across agriculture, refining and logistics. It could give farmers a new market, insulate us from geopolitical fuel shocks and create an Arctic fuel reserve that doesn’t cost $10 a litre to deliver. It means rural jobs. It means Indigenous-led infrastructure and northern resupply chains. It means fuel security for defence operations without relying on U.S. or overseas supply.

It also means leverage. SAF opens the door to premium export markets in the EU and U.S., and strengthens interoperability with NATO and NORAD fleets. Done right, this isn’t just industrial policy – it’s foreign policy.

If Canada can’t fuel its own jets, we don’t control our defence. If we can’t deliver fuel to our Arctic bases without draining our supply chain, we don’t control our territory. And if we can’t build the industrial system we’re uniquely positioned to lead, we don’t control our future.

Ottawa must treat SAF as strategic infrastructure, not just a climate file. That means committing to a federal SAF procurement mandate for defence and Arctic operations, subsidizing Prairie-based SAF refineries and creating a domestic strategic reserve by 2028. It also means integrating SAF into NORAD modernization planning – so the next time we upgrade our northern air bases, we’re upgrading their fuel supply, too.

Sovereignty isn’t a slogan. It’s fuel in the tank. It’s time to fill it.

LOOMING CRISIS

Fire­fighter `under­fund­ing and under­staff­ing’ leave province scram­bling

Firefighters carry out a prescribed burn in Northern Ontario. Union says members facing resource, staff shoratges.

This article was written by Marco Chown Oved and was published in the Toronto Star on July 7, 2025.

Halfway through one of the biggest forest fire sea­sons on record, new num­bers show Ontario’s short­age of wild­land fire­fight­ers, equip­ment and staff is worse than pre­vi­ously under­stood.

Thir­teen pilot pos­i­tions and seven air­craft main­ten­ance engin­eer jobs remain unfilled and as a res­ult, accord­ing to OPSEU, the pub­lic sec­tor union that rep­res­ents wild­land fire fight­ers, nearly a third of Ontario’s forest fire avi­ation fleet has been groun­ded.

These short­ages have left the province scram­bling to fight dozens of fires burn­ing sim­ul­tan­eously, includ­ing one that is now the second biggest fire in Ontario’s his­tory, and call­ing on other provinces for help.

“We are in an incred­ible crisis due to cli­mate change, but also due to under­fund­ing and under­staff­ing,” said OPSEU pres­id­ent JP Hor­n­ick.

“We’ve lost fire­fight­ers at the same time that the need for them has increased,” they said. “We have increas­ing num­bers of fires up north. They’re increas­ing in size and intens­ity. But our reac­tion time is slow­ing and the fires are escap­ing con­tain­ment more often.”

Cli­mate change is driv­ing a long term trend toward more and big­ger forest fires and Ontario is cur­rently facing one of its worst fire sea­sons on record. With three months to go, more than 375,000 hec­tares of forest have already burned, the fifth highest total in the past 30 years. In June, three First Nations in the north were evac­u­ated.

Last month, the Star revealed that Ontario is oper­at­ing with more than 100 fewer wild­land fire­fight­ers than it did 10 years ago — field­ing 630 fire rangers, when it used to have 732 — lead­ing to a drop in the num­ber of forest fires brought under con­trol within 24 hours, key to avoid­ing the massive con­flag­ra­tions that con­sume entire com­munit­ies.

New staff­ing num­bers provided by OPSEU show how that 14 per cent reduc­tion in per­son­nel is exacer­bated on the ground, with 27 per cent fewer crews — groups of four or five fire rangers — avail­able to dis­patch to forest fires.

This year, Ontario is short 53 of the 190 crews it used to oper­ate, with only 60 out of 101 crews in the North­w­est Region, west of Mara­thon, and 77 of 89 crews in the North­east­ern Region, stretch­ing from Mara­thon down to the French and Mat­t­awa Rivers.

Short­staff­ing means that wild­fire fight­ers are being worked to the bone, said Noah Freed­man, vice­pres­id­ent of OPSEU Local 703.

Fire Rangers have been work­ing flat out since early May, he said. They’ve just fin­ished their third 19day shift in a row, with only two days off between shifts, and they’re get­ting burned out.

“The young people, the lack of exper­i­ence. As fatigue builds, you have people who already don’t know what they’re doing mak­ing poorer and poorer decisions,” said Freed­man.

Nat­ural Resources Min­is­ter Mike Har­ris Jr. declined an inter­view request and sent a state­ment in response to ques­tions from the Star.

“Ontario works with pro­vin­cial, fed­eral, and inter­na­tional part­ners to ensure the neces­sary resources are deployed to keep com­munit­ies in our province, and across North Amer­ica, safe,” the state­ment read. “These mutual aid part­ner­ship agree­ments enable the shar­ing of addi­tional per­son­nel, equip­ment, and air­craft.”

The province has already received aid from Que­bec and B.C., which have sent two water­bombers and more than 100 fire­fight­ers this sea­son, accord­ing to data from the Cana­dian Inter­agency Forest Fire Centre.

The Min­istry of Nat­ural Resources (MNR) said nine water­bombers are avail­able this sea­son, though it was unclear whether this total includes the water­bombers on loan from Que­bec.

Har­ris Jr.’s office dis­puted the notion that the Avi­ation, Forest Fire and Emer­gency Ser­vices branch (AFFES) is under­staffed, say­ing there isn’t an ideal num­ber of fire rangers but a tar­get “range” for hir­ing.

“We’re com­fort­able with the num­ber of crews we have,” said an offi­cial in the min­is­ter’s office, whom the Star agreed not to name so they could speak on back­ground. “We have a lot of con­fid­ence in our fire rangers.”

“It would be ideal to be fully staffed, but we’re not there,” the offi­cial added. “We’d hire more if there were more applic­a­tions.”

OPSEU says AFFES staff are leav­ing for more luc­rat­ive jobs because Ontario’s water­bomber pilots are the worst paid in the coun­try and the fire rangers are among the worst paid.

Start­ing pay for Ontario wild­land fire­fight­ers is $25.38 an hour.

While Premier Doug Ford has announced the pur­chase of six new water­bombers, the half a bil­lion dol­lars asso­ci­ated with their pur­chase and staff­ing has not been alloc­ated in the budget.

Due to a back­log in orders, the planes would not be delivered for nearly a dec­ade.

But Hor­n­ick said there’s no use in buy­ing new water­bombers if we can’t staff the ones we already have.

Fewer pilots means the ones on staff are being worked to the bone. Work­ing shifts that last 10 days, pilots are get­ting sick and planes are being groun­ded when they’re unavail­able to fly, Hor­n­ick said. This was the case in June when two water­bombers were groun­ded due to pilot ill­ness as blazes grew across the north.

That’s in addi­tion to another water­bomber groun­ded due to lack of crew, bring­ing the total to three water­bombers, three heli­copters, two Turbo Beaver bush­planes and one Twin Otter float plane groun­ded this sea­son, OPSEU num­bers show.

This rep­res­ents nine of the 28 air­craft oper­ated by the Avi­ation, Forest Fire and Emer­gency Ser­vices branch (AFFES) of the Min­istry of Nat­ural Resources.

The loss of exper­i­ence through retire­ment is being felt throughout the AFFES, said Hor­n­ick. The chief heli­copter pilot retired two years ago and hasn’t been replaced, they said. (The MNR says “a tem­por­ary Chief Rotary Wing Pilot is in place.”) Twenty of 46 air­craft mech­an­ics have left in the last five years.

Over­all, there’s a 40 per cent turnover at the AFFES, lead­ing to younger and less exper­i­enced staff being pro­moted into pos­i­tions of respons­ib­il­ity, Hor­n­ick added.

The MNR said it has brought in a num­ber of meas­ures to reduce turnover, includ­ing estab­lish­ing 100 new year­round sup­port jobs, reim­burs­ing train­ing costs and expand­ing standby pay and on­call bene­fits.

At the same time, however, recruit­ment num­bers have plummeted, Hor­n­ick said, mak­ing it harder to train up the next gen­er­a­tion of fire­fight­ers.

“We’re see­ing fewer and fewer applic­a­tions,” they said. “Anec­dot­ally, I’ve heard stor­ies about lit­er­ally try­ing to recruit people off the street to apply.”

Global brands join together to drive investment into sustainable fuels

This article was written by Pippa Norman and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 22, 2025.

Ingrid Ingoyen, president and CEO of the Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance, says the private-sector leaders aim to show there’s a market for sustainable fuel, ‘and then get everyone across the value chain, including in the policy space, to come together and support those new markets.’

Firms are sending a strong signal to investors and policy makers that there is market potential here, experts say

Some of the world’s biggest brands are pooling their buying power to fund the production and development of sustainable fuels as 2030 emissions targets creep closer.

Netflix, Google, Amazon, IKEA and Vancouver-based Lululemon are among the big names listed as members of collectives such as the Sustainable Aviation Buyers Alliance (SABA) and the Zero Emission Maritime Buyers Alliance (ZEMBA). Experts say these firms are sending strong signals to investors and policy makers that there is a market for sustainable fuels, but no matter how big they are, they can’t drive the decarbonization of entire sectors alone.

“We like to have private-sector leaders go first, show that there is market potential here, and then get everyone across the value chain, including in the policy space, to come together and support those new markets as they’re being built,” ZEMBA president and chief executive officer Ingrid Irigoyen said.

According to United Nations Trade and Development, the shipping industry accounts for more than 80 per cent of global trade volume and almost 3 per cent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. In 2023, aviation accounted for 2.5 per cent of global energy-related carbon emissions, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA). Emissions from both those sectors are predicted to continue growing at a rapid rate.

Yet the IEA lists both as “not on track” to reach net zero by 2050. It cites the need for legally binding measures, policy incentives and significant investments to drive the adoption of low- and zero-carbon fuels such as waste-based biomethane, which is produced from biogas generated through the anaerobic digestion of organic matter, and electrofuels, which are made by combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide.

This is a problem for companies such as Lululemon that rely on ships and planes to move their products worldwide and must factor in distribution emissions when calculating whether they hit or missed their targets for the year.

That’s where buyers’ alliances come in, Ms. Irigoyen said. Led by expert facilitators, member firms begin by deciding the volume of freight they want to decarbonize, for example. Then, a competitive procurement process is run to find the right carrier, which has partnered with a sustainable fuel producer, to meet that demand. Once a winning bid (or bids) is chosen, a cost is finalized, companies are given the chance to re-evaluate the volumes they can afford and, finally, their associated emissions reductions can be confirmed.

The resulting flight or shipment may not deploy for a couple of years, while the fuel is produced, and the goods aboard won’t necessarily belong to the companies involved. But that’s not the point of the alliance, Ms. Irigoyen said.

“It’s a way of facilitating or enabling demand from all over the world, regardless of the physical freight flows of that company, aggregating that demand and channelling it into the available best deal solutions,” she said.

Working alone, it can be difficult, and frankly unrealistic cost-wise, for a company to transition its entire operation to sustainable fuels, said Bruce Fleming, the CEO of sustainable aviation fuel producer Montana Renewables.

“As much as they might want to, one airline cannot step out and say, ‘We’ve decided to go all renewable,’ because it costs more. And they won’t last very long if they’re paying more for fuel than the airlines next to them at the same airport,” he said.

According to a Bloomberg report, Alaska Airlines provided certificates to buyers from sustainable aviation fuel produced by Montana Renewables as part of US$200-million in deals made through SABA in 2024. Buyers’ alliances are important, Mr. Fleming said, because they help level the playing field in hard-to-abate industries.

But they can’t be the only force driving a transition to renewables. Governments must step up to the plate and recognize the value of consistent policy for growing technologies, Mr. Fleming said.

“All industry asks of regulators is, ‘Go ahead and set something up, but please then leave that alone, leave us to optimize against a predictable set of rules.’ If you change the rules every year, two years or three years, everybody’s going to give up,” he said.

However, getting the support of policy makers may soon prove more difficult for many North American companies, as a political shift to the right intensifies. Mere hours after he was sworn in Monday, U.S. President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the Paris agreement. And ahead of his second term, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance, an industry group similar to ZEMBA or SABA, saw its biggest members in the U.S. and Canada bail, questioning whether their membership was an effective way to fight climate change.

Kim Carnahan, the president and CEO of the Center for Green Market Activation, which works with and operates buyers’ alliances in five different sectors in partnership with non-governmental organizations, said the effectiveness of these groups is evident through the procurements that have been run by SABA, which she also helped found.

In its first procurement, she said, SABA had seven participants, requested 2.5 million gallons of sustainable aviation fuel but was only able to facilitate purchases for 850,000 gallons. In its second procurement, it had almost 20 participants, requested 100 million gallons and secured commitments for about 50 million. This year, she estimates, the alliance could hit $1-billion in total investment.

“It’s not enough. The overall aviation market needs vastly more investment. But having increases year on year that are as significant as those is certainly a sign of real progress and a sign that the initiatives we’re running work,” she said.

Andrew Dempsey, the director of climate at REI Co-op, said the outdoor gear seller joined ZEMBA in 2023 to help achieve its goal of halving emissions by 2030, based on a 2019 baseline.

By participating in ZEMBA’s first tender, which was awarded to Hapag-Lloyd to procure low-carbon biomethane fuel, Mr. Dempsey said the co-op will reduce its carbon emissions by roughly 2,700 tonnes in each of 2025 and 2026. That’s about a 90per-cent reduction in the company’s ocean freight emissions from a few years ago, he added.

“That’s what it will take … for decarbonization in a lot of these hard-to-abate sectors. You need market signals. You need solutions that can scale. The carriers need to see that their customers want this, and they’re willing to pay a premium for it,” he said.

Labrador airport eyes energy deal with Quebec

This article was written by Sarah Smellie and was published in the Globe & Mail on January 1, 2025.

An Air Borealis twin otter is seen on the landing strip in Nain, in northern Labrador, in 2023. Flight costs in the region have climbed at more than three times the national rate.

Pact could help attract competing company to region, lower flight costs, executive says

An airport executive in Labrador hopes a new energy deal with Quebec could help attract a competing airline company to the northern region, where flight costs have climbed at more than three times the national rate.

But even if another airline company is enticed to operate in Labrador, Rex Goudie, the Goose Bay Airport Corporation’s chief executive officer, believes it will still take work and government action to make airfares in the region more affordable.

“I don’t think there’s any one solution,” Mr. Goudie said in a recent interview.

“Particularly for northern regions, like here in Labrador, which is so remote, is that air travel is not a luxury, it’s an essential service,” he added. “And so one would think there would be programs or policies put in place that would reflect that.”

Flight costs in Labrador have increased by 33 per cent since 2019, compared with just 9 per cent across Canada, according to an October report commissioned by the Goose Bay Airport Corporation. A return flight from Nain, in northern Labrador, to the provincial capital of St. John’s is nearly $2,500.

The southern part of Labrador is served exclusively by PAL Airlines, while Air Borealis, in which PAL is a partner, is the only carrier offering flights in northern Labrador.

Earlier this month, Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador signed an agreement in principle to build new hydroelectric facilities along the Churchill River in Labrador that could bring thousands of jobs to the region. If the work goes ahead, a competing carrier may be enticed to set up shop in Labrador to serve what may be a large number of rotational workers needing flights, Mr. Goudie said.

He and his team are studying the market opportunities available to interested airline companies, but it’s a “bit of a balancing act,” he said: “If we’re looking for new entrants, we don’t want to negatively impact our other, existing carriers.”

In the meantime, Labrador Affairs Minister Lisa Dempster said she met in October with the Competition Bureau, the federal business watchdog, about flight costs in the region. Her department has also submitted a brief to the bureau’s ongoing study of competition in Canada’s airline industry, she said in an interview Monday.

“We have an airline carrier that has a monopoly right now in Labrador, which is never good for the consumer,” she said.

Ms. Dempster and Mr. Goudie also provided submissions to the federal standing committee on transport, infrastructure and communities as it reviews the Competition Act and air travel in northern, rural and remote parts of Canada.

Mr. Goudie said his group has asked the Newfoundland and Labrador government to consider launching something mirroring Quebec’s regional air access program, which allows air travel between smaller, remote regions of the province and larger provincial centres for $500 return, with some conditions.

Documents obtained through an access to information request show that an information note on Quebec’s program was prepared for Ms. Dempster in May. Her department has had “conversations” about a pilot program, “with some parameters, to see how that would go,” she said Monday.

The Newfoundland and Labrador government has an agreement with WestJet Airlines Ltd. supporting direct flights between Europe and St. John’s. As of Tuesday, a round-trip ticket for some dates in May was about $600, according to the airline’s website.

“The flights to Europe [are] frustrating for someone like me, who represents Labrador,” Ms. Dempster acknowledged. When asked if a similar arrangement could be struck with PAL, she said the agreement with WestJet is not a direct subsidy but a “guaranteed revenue” contract for the company.

“It’s a little bit tough to go out subsidizing a private airline company when they’re already making profits,” she said, referring to PAL.

Ms. Dempster said federal departments could help by lowering costs such as landing fees. And she agrees with Mr. Goudie that the pending energy deal with Quebec could attract more competition.

“I do believe that an all-of-government approach, all levels of government, is needed to address this right now,” she said.

Quebec and Newfoundland and Labrador are hoping to formalize their agreement in 2026. A final report from the Competition Bureau’s study on airline competition is expected by June 30, 2025.

Greener gas

Parkland’s B.C. refinery has made lowcarbon fuel for jet planes

This article was written by Chuck Chiang and was published in the Toronto Star on December 12, 2024.

Parkland Corp. said it has successfully produced about 100,000 litres of lowcarbon jet fuel at its refinery in Burnaby, B.C.

The first commercial batch of madeinCanada lowcarbon aviation fuel sourced from nonfood grade canola and tallow has been produced and quickly purchased.

Fuel retailer Parkland Corp. said this week it has successfully produced about 100,000 litres of the fuel at its refinery in Burnaby, B.C., “using existing infrastructure.”

Parkland senior vicepresident Ferio Pugliese said it means production can easily be scaled up, but only if Canada provides the necessary conditions to create an ecosystem around the nascent commodity and its adoption across the country.

“We need to do more to make low carbon air travel a reality,” Pugliese said during the announcement in Vancouver. “We need a longterm Canadian solution for lowcarbon, sustainable aviation fuel.”

While the potential for emission reduction is massive, production in Canada is also significantly more expensive, Pugliese said.

He notes that similar low carbon fuels used in vehicles, buses and ferries have about one eighth of the carbon content when compared to traditional fuels.

Pugliese said other countries such as the United States incentivize production and use of lowcarbon jet fuel, creating the necessary ecosystem to support a local industry.

“Currently, the Canadian aviation industry purchases lowcarbon aviation (fuel) from other countries and imports it from across the globe into Canada. That makes little sense.”

Parkland began trying to develop the fuel in 2017, and the entire batch of the first production run has already been purchased by Air Canada. Pugliese said the purchase of the fuel by Air Canada completes a value chain within the country that shows local development, production, sale and use of lowcarbon jet fuel can be achieved to the benefit of everyone — but only if the support from government is there.

“Airlines need very practical solutions, and today, right here in B.C., Parkland has created a made-in-Canada solution to a global challenge,” he said.

The comments echoed that of WestJet CEO Alexis von Hoensbroech, who in 2023 said the global push for decarbonizing commercial aviation by 2050 will cause spikes in airfares unless governments intervene.

Part of the challenge, von Hoensbroech said, is that alternative energy sources such as electric or hydrogen aircraft remains a long way from reality, making the sector difficult to decarbonize.

In February, a pair of industry groups, including the National Airlines Council of Canada, said the country needed incentives matching that of the United States to spark production of sustainable aviation fuels.

Commercial aviation giant Airbus has said that lowcarbon jet fuel can reduce carbondioxide emissions by about 80 per cent, and development is ongoing for planes to be able to run completely on it instead of needing to mix it with conventional fuels.

But Airbus also said the ecosystem for the fuel is still “in its infancy,” with just 600 million litres produced last year, making up 0.2 per cent of all aviation fuel for 2023.

Cleared for takeoff: Air Canada planes flying on canola-based fuel from Parkland’s B.C. refinery

This article was written by Andrew Willis and was published in the Globe & Mail on December 11, 2024.

Lab supervisor Bill Sihota works at Parkland’s refinery in Burnaby, B.C., in 2021. The company began pumping jet fuel made from canola and animal fats into Air Canada planes on Tuesday.

Parkland Corp. began pumping jet fuel made from canola and animal fats into Air Canada planes on Tuesday, marking the first use of domestically produced low-carbon fuel to lower an airline’s emissions.

Parkland tapped support from the British Columbia government to launch the country’s first commercial production of what the company has applied to certify as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) at its refinery in Burnaby, B.C. Air Canada bought Parkland’s first 101,000-litre batch of the fuel, which produces lower carbon emissions than regular jet fuel.

Parkland is breaking ground domestically on SAF production, which is seen as a necessary shift in fuel sources critical to achieving the aviation industry’s emission-reduction targets. To date, European, Asian and U.S. energy companies have been the only source of low-carbon fuel to the country’s carriers.

“Currently, the Canadian airline industry is dependent on international imports of low-carbon fuels, making Parkland’s accomplishment a critical first step in creating domestic supply,” Air Canada chief executive officer Michael Rousseau said in a news release. “We encourage all levels of government to support the development of a competitive low carbon aviation fuel or SAF industry.”

Government subsidies are critical to SAF because the feedstocks for jet fuel, such as the non-food grade canola and tallow or animal fats used at the Parkland refinery, are far more expensive than the crude oil used to make conventional aviation gas. Without incentives, SAF costs two to three times more than regular jet fuel, which sold on Tuesday for $1.37 a litre at the Vancouver International Airport, the country’s second-busiest hub.

“This pilot project demonstrates how constructive incentives can spur Canadian production of low-carbon aviation fuel,” said Ferio Pugliese, senior vice-president at Parkland.

Calgary-based Parkland is one of the country’s largest fuel suppliers, with roughly 4,000 convenience stores and gas stations, mostly branded as On the Run, and aviation and marine fuel businesses.

Last December, B.C. became the first jurisdiction in North America to mandate low-carbon jet fuel, requiring SAF account for at least 3 per cent of fuel sold in the province by 2030. The province’s target is a 10-per-cent reduction in the carbon intensity of jet fuel in the next five years.

“I want to congratulate Parkland on this groundbreaking initiative,” Adrian Dix, B.C.’s Minister of Energy and Climate Solutions, said in a news release. “Parkland continues to be an outstanding partner and role model for biofuel producers.”

The International Air Transport Association said that last year SAF production globally doubled to 600 million litres in 2023 from a year earlier. The B.C. government projects SAF production will rise to two billion litres annually by 2030.

Every domestic airline is working on lowering carbon emissions by tapping low-carbon fuels. In April, Calgary-based WestJet Airlines Ltd. began buying SAF from Houston-based Shell Aviation – a unit of Shell PLC – as part of the carrier’s strategy to hit net-zero emissions by 2050. In Quebec, a company called SAF+ is developing lowcarbon fuels with support from aircraft manufacturers Airbus Canada and Pratt & Whitney Canada.

Parkland is shipping SAF from a refinery that activist fund manager Engine Capital LP is pushing the company to sell. As part of a two-year-old campaign, New York-based Engine said Parkland’s stock price would benefit if the company sold non-core business such as refining, paid down debt and focused on running convenience stories, or sold the entire company.

Over the past year, Grand Cayman-based Simpson Oil, Parkland’s largest shareholder with a 19.7-per-cent stake, has also pushed the company to put itself up for sale.

Parkland acquired the B.C. refinery in 2017 as part of its $1.46billion purchase of 129 gas stations and 37 commercial fuel facilities from Chevron Corp.

In the wake of Engine and Parkland’s demands, Parkland announced the sale of its gas stations and stores in Florida as part of a plan to raise $500-million from asset sales by the end of 2025. The company is at the midpoint of a five-year growth strategy aimed at doubling cash flow and returning $1.5-billion to shareholders through dividends and stock buybacks.

The aviation sector needs to dramatically increase SAF production to meet emission goals, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA), an industry trade group. To lower airlines’ carbon intensity 5 per cent by 2030, IATA forecast SAF demand would rise to 24 million tonnes a year. This represents a 16-fold increase in demand and would require “a minimum of about 100 new renewable fuel plants,” IATA said in a report.