CHARBONNEAU – Will sustainable aviation fuels get off the ground here?

THERE HAVE BEEN other schemes for the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc reserve across the river from my house in Westsyde. Maybe this one will fly.

There was the planned amusement park that went nowhere. Sedric’s Adventure Resort & Theme Park planned to build a $250-million theme park including a water park, two hotels, a convention centre, restaurants, retail space and an NHL-sized arena in 2009. A few months later the deal began falling apart over financing.

Then there was the hop farm promoted by Joey Bedard in 2015. Bedard, who was 28 at the time, had been a construction contractor and had no experience in growing hops.

It was supposed to be the largest hop farm in the country.

What a good idea, I thought as I watched the hops grow across the river. The fertile land on the flood plain and water from the river seemed perfect.

But two years later, before the hops had matured, the farm was abandoned. Bedard ended up selling baked goods in Barriere.

Now a developer is proposing a plan to build a refinery that would produce sustainable aviation fuel.

The developer, Azure Sustainable Fuels Corp., is promoting three such refineries across Canada but they have never actually built one.

However, this scheme looks a lot more credible than ones in the past. A substantial amount of planning is going into this promotion. For one, an arm of TteS called Economic Development Corporation (SEDC), has a detailed plan for their lands.

Azure has secured millions in planning the refinery although it will take more than $1 billion to build it.

I like the idea of sustainable aviation fuel because I can feel less guilty about flying. The refinery would reduce global aviation emissions by approximately 2.6 million tonnes per year.

Sustainable aviation fuel burns cleaner and can reduce CO2 emissions by up to 80% compared to conventional jet fuel.

And the net emissions from burning it are close to zero. The canola oil used to supply the refinery absorbs CO2 while growing which is about the same amount produced as when the fuel is burned.

Azure is getting into sustainable aviation fuel at a good time. There are only two refineries in the U.S. producing the fuel, with two more to come on line this year.

Azure was hoping to be the first Canadian refinery but the Burnaby Refinery is first in producing a test batch. The Burnaby facility has refined many products in the past including gasoline, diesel, jet fuels, asphalts, heating fuels, heavy fuel oils, butanes, and propane. The Burnaby refinery is old, first commissioned in 1935.

I suspect that the new Azure refinery will be more reliable and more efficient.

The refinery could produce well-paying union jobs. An Azure project manager said that the project would produce about 1,500 jobs during construction and 150 once operational, including power engineers, electricians and accountants.

Thomson Rivers University could provide training for the skilled staff necessary to run the refinery.

This project appears well developed. But I’d rather be looking at a hop farm across the river than a refinery.

David Charbonneau is a retired TRU electronics instructor who hosts a blog at http://www.eyeviewkamloops.wordpress.com.