Canadian Energy Centre
Canadian renewable propane could be a fuel of the future

From the Canadian Energy Centre
‘We want to make sure we reduce emissions while keeping in mind affordability and reliability’
Four years ago, Craig Timmermans’ two Ontario radio stations became Canada’s first to go on the air from off the grid.
Faced with an $80,000 connection fee and ongoing electricity delivery costs, Timmermans opted for another solution: solar and propane.
“I did our power calculation: five staff, hot water tank, heating system, etc., right down to a coffee maker…then we need a heating source, so it made sense to go with propane,” he said.
“When I looked at all the different heating systems, I found that propane is hands down the most efficient.”
Now Timmermans is building a new home that will run exclusively on propane. He says he wanted propane appliances due to their efficiency.
Ontario radio operators KT and Craig Timmermans power their off-grid business with propane and solar. Photo supplied to the Canadian Energy Centre
“A propane cooking stove is the best cooking appliance…The heat is continuous, it’s instant. It just works so well.”
Lower environmental footprint
Propane serves many purposes in Canada, from supporting mining and oil and gas operations to fueling heating, cooling, cooking and power in remote, off-grid communities.
In these communities, propane can replace diesel with a lower environmental footprint. Propane’s carbon intensity is estimated at 72 grams of CO2 equivalent per megajoule, compared to 100 grams for diesel.
That could be slashed by more than half with a move to renewable propane, according to the Canadian Propane Association (CPA). The CPA has commissioned a new report that looks at potential pathways to producing renewable propane in Canada.
Propane storage tank. Getty Images photo
Pairing with heat pumps and hybrid energy systems
The report serves as the foundation of the CPA’s roadmap for scaling up renewable propane production in Canada.
The CPA says the fuel is ideal for pairing with electric heat pumps to provide back-up heat in low temperatures, especially in remote regions that are not near natural gas grids.
It’s also promising for hybrid systems where solar or wind provides baseload energy and renewable propane provides support when renewables are not available.
Part of propane’s appeal – renewable or otherwise – is that it’s easily liquefied and stored in pressurized cylinders, making it a versatile energy source used almost anywhere, the CPA says.
“We want to make sure we reduce emissions while keeping in mind affordability and reliability as key pillars in any energy transformation,” said CEO Shannon Watt.
“Propane goes where other fuels can’t go.”
Producing renewable propane
Today, most propane produced in Canada comes as a byproduct from natural gas processing.
Among other sources, renewable propane can be co-produced with renewable diesel and sustainable aviation fuel, made primarily from plant and vegetable oils, animal fats or used cooking oil.
Cost is the barrier to renewable propane production – about double what it takes to produce conventional propane, the CPA says.
The United States is offering incentives for renewable propane that are not available in Canada.
Through the Inflation Reduction Act, Renewable Fuel Standard and Low Carbon Fuel Standard, renewable propane producers can receive C$20 per gigajoule (or more than C$30 per GJ in California).
Through Canada’s Clean Fuel Regulations, the incentive is just over C$5 per GJ, or about C$10 per GJ in British Columbia.
“In order to attract investment the same way as the U.S. under the Inflation Reduction Act, we need to have competing measures in place,” Watt said.
“We’ve got the technology and we’ve got the feedstocks. We’ve got a lot of those big puzzle pieces that we need. Now we need the dollars to flow.”
The Ridley Island Export Terminal in Prince Rupert, B.C. ships Canadian propane to overseas markets. Photo courtesy AltaGas
Exporting renewable propane to the world
A large-scale renewable propane industry wouldn’t just benefit Canadians, she said.
That’s because global demand for propane is growing.
Market research firm IMARC Group projects world propane use will rise to nearly 250 million tonnes by 2032, more than one-third higher than demand last year.
The transition to cleaner energy sources is a major factor propelling growth, analysts said.
Until recently, Canada’s only propane exports went to the United States. That changed with the startup of two export terminals at Prince Rupert, B.C.
Since 2017, Canada’s propane exports outside the U.S. have grown substantially, reaching 42 per cent of total propane exports in 2023, according to the Canada Energy Regulator.
“We export more and more propane to non-U.S. locations,” Watt said.
“Now, roughly 50 per cent of Canadian propane is shipped to South Korea, Japan and Mexico, displacing higher emission intensity sources, namely coal and timber.”
Exporting renewable propane would take the benefits a step further, she said.
“That carries the conversation on about reducing global emissions and not just what’s happening in our own backyard.”
Banks
The Great Exodus from the Net Zero Banking Alliance has arrived

From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Gina Pappano
Next, we need a Great Exodus from net zero ideology
In 2021, all of Canada’s Big Five Banks – TD, CIBC, BMO, Scotiabank and RBC – signed onto the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) and the Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA).
U.N.-sponsored and Mark Carney-led, GFANZ is a sector-wide umbrella coalition whose goal is to accelerate global decarbonization and the emergence of a worldwide net zero global economy.
But now, in the first month of 2025, four of Canada’s Big Five Banks – TD, CIBC, BMO and Scotiabank – have announced their decision to exit the NZBA.
This came on the heels of similar announcements by six of the biggest U.S. banks – Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo as well as the investment firm BlackRock leaving the Asset Management subgroup of the GFANZ.
That group, the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative, has now suspended operations altogether, and the GFANZ and all of its subgroups are falling like a house of cards.
At InvestNow, the not-for-profit that I lead, we’re considering these developments a victory and a vindication of our work.
In November of 2024, we submitted shareholder proposals to Canada’s Big Five banks asking them to leave both the NZBA and the GFANZ. As of this writing, all but one of them have done just that.
But this is only a partial victory.
When they signed on to the NZBA, the banks pledged to align their lending, investment and banking activities with decarbonization goals, including achieving net zero emissions by 2050. They pledged to focus on higher emitting sectors first and foremost. In practice, this means they would be setting their sights on Canada’s natural resource sector.
That’s because the net zero ideology motivating these groups requires the drastic reduction of oil and gas production and use over a comparatively short period of time.
That is a serious threat to Canada since we’ve been blessed with an abundance of natural resources. Hydrocarbon energy has become the backbone of our economy, and the war being waged against it has already made our lives harder and more expensive. Left unchecked, these difficulties will compound, with ruinous results.
In joining the NZBA, the Big Five Banks agreed to divest from oil and gas, eliminating projects and companies from the investment pool simply because of the sector they work in, as part of a long-term goal of totally decarbonizing the economy.
Presumably, having left the Alliance, those banks could now change course, increasing investment in and lending to oil and gas firms with an eye toward increasing the return on investment for their shareholders.
Except the banks have stressed that they have no intention of doing so. In the press releases and articles about leaving the NZBA, each bank emphasized that this move should not be interpreted as them abandoning net zero itself. All of these banks remain committed to aligning their activities with decarbonization, no matter the cost to Canada, the Canadian economy or the good of its citizens.
This means we still have work to do. While we applaud the banks for exiting the NZBA, we will continue to work to get them to leave behind the net zero ideology as well. Then, and only then, will we claim a full victory.
Gina Pappano is the former head of market intelligence at the Toronto Stock Exchange and TSX Venture Exchange and executive director of InvestNow , a non-profit dedicated to demonstrating that investing in Canada’s resource sectors helps Canada and the world. Join the movement and pass the InvestNow resolution at investnow.org.
Alberta
Alberta extracting more value from oil and gas resources: ATB

From the Canadian Energy Centre
By Will Gibson
Investment in ‘value-added’ projects more than doubled to $4 billion in 2024
In the 1930s, economist Harold Innis coined the term “hewers of wood and drawers of water” to describe Canada’s reliance on harvesting natural resources and exporting them elsewhere to be refined into consumer products.
Almost a century later, ATB Financial chief economist Mark Parsons has highlighted a marked shift in that trend in Alberta’s energy industry, with more and more projects that upgrade raw hydrocarbons into finished products.
ATB estimates that investment in projects that generate so-called “value-added” products like refined petroleum, hydrogen, petrochemicals and biofuels more than doubled to reach $4 billion in 2024.
“Alberta is extracting more value from its natural resources,” Parsons said.
“It makes the provincial economy somewhat more resilient to boom and bust energy price cycles. It creates more construction and operating jobs in Alberta. It also provides a local market for Alberta’s energy and agriculture feedstock.”
The shift has occurred as Alberta’s economy adjusts to lower levels of investment in oil and gas extraction.
While overall “upstream” capital spending has been rising since 2022 — and oil production has never been higher — investment last year of about $35 billion is still dramatically less than the $63 billion spent in 2014.
Parsons pointed to Dow’s $11 billion Path2Zero project as the largest value-added project moving ahead in Alberta.
The project, which has support from the municipal, provincial and federal governments, will increase Dow’s production of polyethylene, the world’s most widely used plastic.
By capturing and storing carbon dioxide emissions and generating hydrogen on-site, the complex will be the world’s first ethylene cracker with net zero emissions from operations.
Other major value-added examples include Air Products’ $1.6 billion net zero hydrogen complex, and the associated $720 million renewable diesel facility owned by Imperial Oil. Both projects are slated for startup this year.
Parsons sees the shift to higher value products as positive for the province and Canada moving forward.
“Downstream energy industries tend to have relatively high levels of labour productivity and wages,” he said.
“A big part of Canada’s productivity problem is lagging business investment. These downstream investments, which build off existing resource strengths, provide one pathway to improving the country’s productivity performance.”
Heather Exner-Pirot, the Macdonald-Laurier Institute’s director of energy, natural resources and environment, sees opportunities for Canada to attract additional investment in this area.
“We are able to benefit from the mistakes of other regions. In Germany, their business model for creating value-added products such as petrochemicals relies on cheap feedstock and power, and they’ve lost that due to a combination of geopolitics and policy decisions,” she said.
“Canada and Alberta, in particular, have the opportunity to attract investment because they have stable and reliable feedstock with decades, if not centuries, of supply shielded from geopolitics.”
Exner-Pirot is also bullish about the increased market for low-carbon products.
“With our advantages, Canada should be doing more to attract companies and manufacturers that will produce more value-added products,” she said.
Like oil and gas extraction, value-added investments can help companies develop new technologies that can themselves be exported, said Shannon Joseph, chair of Energy for a Secure Future, an Ottawa-based coalition of Canadian business and community leaders.
“This investment creates new jobs and spinoffs because these plants require services and inputs. Investments such as Dow’s Path2Zero have a lot of multipliers. Success begets success,” Joseph said.
“Investment in innovation creates a foundation for long-term diversification of the economy.”
-
Banks2 days ago
The Great Exodus from the Net Zero Banking Alliance has arrived
-
Bruce Dowbiggin2 days ago
The Limping Loonie: Are Canada’s Pro Sports Team In Trouble Again?
-
Business1 day ago
Trudeau Liberals pledge $41.5 million for over 100 pro-2SLGBTQI+ projects
-
Economy1 day ago
Human population set to decline for the first time since the Black Death
-
Politics2 days ago
Florida Panthers receive special honour during White House visit
-
Energy2 days ago
There is nothing green about the ‘green’ agenda
-
Energy20 hours ago
LATE TO THE PARTY: Liberal Resource Minister Minister Suddenly Discovers Canada Needs East-West Pipeline
-
Censorship Industrial Complex2 days ago
Report recommends government surveillance to monitor “disinformation”