Carlos Soares, president of Divine Flooring, inside the company’s 100,000-square-foot warehouse just outside Calgary. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre

From the Canadian Energy Centre

By Will Gibson

Heartland Polymers to supply recyclable, low emissions polypropylene plastic

Carlos Soares has sold enough flooring to furnish all the residences, businesses and public facilities in a medium-sized city since starting Divine Flooring in 1999. 

But now the Calgary entrepreneur will expand into manufacturing luxury flooring using a key Alberta hydrocarbon that will create a more sustainable product and reduce reliance on imports. 

“People walk on luxury vinyl floors every day in their homes, malls, stores, hotels— it is the fastest growing category in our industry over the past decade,” says Soares, whose business employs 165 people and 250 contractors in Calgary, Edmonton, Vancouver and Chicago.  

“Billions of square feet of new floor coverings are manufactured and installed every year around the world.” 

While luxury vinyl products mimic the look of natural woods, they generally contain polyvinyl chlorides or PVCs, a synthetic plastic polymer used to create flexibility and durability.  

PVCs are difficult to recycle and take a lot of energy to produce. Most PVC production is in Asia, with roughly half of the world’s capacity in China. 

Soares has discovered a more environmentally friendly alternative to PVCs produced at the Heartland Polymers plant near Edmonton. 

The Heartland Polymers project in Fort Saskatchewan, Alta. Photo courtesy Inter Pipeline Ltd.

Opened by Inter Pipeline Ltd. in July 2022, the facility produces polypropylene plastic pellets directly from locally sourced propane, a first of its kind in North America. Polypropylene is one of the world’s most widely used recyclable plastics.  

By converting about 22,000 barrels per day of propane into polypropylene instead of using it as fuel, Heartland says it cuts up to one million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions annually — the equivalent of about 217,000 cars. 

“Polypropylene is our secret sauce. It can do all the things PVCs do,” says Soares.  

“But it is made in Alberta and it is a low-emission product free of chemicals that make it tough to recycle.” 

Soares and his partners in a venture called PolyCo have started construction on a $45 million facility in Balzac, about 25 kilometres north of downtown Calgary, to manufacture luxury vinyl flooring using Heartland polypropylene.  

A second-generation Canadian and entrepreneur, he wants to give back to the place where he grew up in a meaningful way. 

“My grandparents moved to Canada from Portugal in 1967 and this country has given our family so much. My father started his own welding shop in 1974 and ran it for years with old-school values. He always taught me to do the right thing and don’t compromise on quality,” he says.  

“That’s what we want to do with this proposal. We are putting more Canadians to work to make a more sustainable product and strengthen our local economy.” 

Carlos Soares, president of Divine Flooring. Photo for the Canadian Energy Centre

Production at the plant is scheduled to start in the third quarter of 2027. It will employ 100 people when it reaches full capacity, initially producing 28 million square feet of flooring every year. A second phase will eventually bring the plant’s total capacity to 50 million square feet annually. 

The plant will be a “zero waste” facility, where all the dust and trimmings from the process will be swept up and put back into future production. 

In July, Emissions Reduction Alberta awarded the project $5 million through its Advanced Materials Challenge, a competition funding innovative low-emission products in the province. 

The funding is part of $49 million in ERA grants to 18 projects, determined after independent review by a team of experts in science, engineering, business development, commercialization, financing and greenhouse gas quantification.

Together, the projects have a total estimated value of $198 million.  

ERA’s goal is to accelerate projects that can improve the economy and the environment, says Justin Riemer, the agency’s CEO.  

“In the case of the PolyCo project, it highlights how to better utilize the supply chain we have here in Alberta. Everything this plant will need to source is literally within a three-hour drive,” he says.   

ERA has provided more than $1 billion in grants to more than 300 projects valued at $7 billion in 16 years across the province. 

“Of all the completed projects who’ve received funding, 50 per cent have been commercialized, which is a much better success rate than venture capital gets,” says Riemer, who has led ERA for three years.  

“It’s important to have this funding available because a lot of financial infrastructure in this country is risk-adverse to trialing and commercializing innovation technology.” 

The agency’s grants are financed through Alberta’s Technology Innovation and Emissions Reduction (TIER) fund, which collects contributions from the oil and gas sector under the province’s carbon pricing and trading system. 

“ERA receives about 10 per cent of the TIER contributions,” Riemer says.   

“Through these competitions, we have managed to see successful commercialization of technologies across a broad array of sectors beyond oil and gas including forestry, agriculture, power generation, critical minerals and even nuclear.”  

For Soares, the vote of confidence given by the agency in the proposal was crucial. 

“This ERA grant is huge for this project to go ahead but so was the decision. It gives us the confidence the government is behind the project and wants to see it materialize,” he says.  

“They are serious about real ideas that can produce sustainable and affordable products right here.” 

Soares is unapologetic in having his project funded by carbon levies collected from oil and gas. 

“We produce oil and gas more responsibly than anywhere in the world in Alberta and I’m proud of that even though I don’t work directly in the industry,” he says.  

“The fact that oil and gas contribute to grants that help create more sustainable products and technologies demonstrates the province’s commitment to doing things better.” 

From Resource Works

By Geoff Russ

Canada misjudged the future of LNG, but we should still strive to salvage our current situation.

Mark Carney hasn’t been in office long, but his pivot on liquefied natural gas (LNG) may be one of his defining decisions. For years Ottawa said there was “no businesshttps://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/8/22/canada-would-need-business-case-for-lng-exports-to-europe-pmcase” for Canadian LNG, a phrase first uttered by Justin Trudeau in 2022 when Germany’s Olaf Scholz came knocking for alternatives to Russian gas.

That hesitation left Canada sitting idle while allies signed long-term contracts with Qatar, the United States, and Australia. Now, after years of missed opportunities, Carney is betting LNG can be both an economic strength and a foreign policy tool.

The question is whether Canada can move fast enough.

Europe’s appetite for LNG is not hypothetical. Germany has built four terminals since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with the latest opening in Wilhelmshaven in May.

Europe’s LNG imports reached near-record highs this past winter, pulling cargoes away from Asia where demand softened. In January alone, Europe imported nearly 12 million tonnes, while United States cargoes hit record levels.

Half of Europe’s LNG comes from the Gulf Coast. That infrastructure advantage, billions of dollars worth of liquefaction plants, pipelines, and tankers, is something Canada does not have.

Canada has only just begun. LNG Canada in Kitimat shipped its first cargo in July, a milestone nearly a decade in the making.

Six projects are on the drawing board. If all are built, Canadian capacity would hit 50 million tonnes a year, still half the United States total but enough to matter in a global market where even small shifts in supply mean billions of dollars and hard power gains.

Carney’s government is framing this as a nation-building moment. His Building Canada Act (Bill C-5) gives cabinet the ability to fast-track major projects deemed in the national interest.

In Europe last week, he teased upcoming announcements, hinting port expansions in Montreal, the East Coast, and Churchill, Manitoba could be among the first out the gate.

Churchill, Canada’s only deepwater Arctic port connected by rail, has long been written off as a grain terminal with a short summer season. But Indigenous-led Arctic Gateway has been expanding its capacity, with the first critical minerals shipped last year and new talks underway to evaluate year-round operations.

Turning Churchill into an LNG port would be no small task. Icebreakers, new jetties, and upgraded pipelines would be required. But Carney calls it “essentially a new port” that could unlock LNG and critical minerals exports to Europe.

Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew has signed on as a way to connect prairie energy and resources to the world, and Fednav, one of the few shipping firms with Arctic ice experience, has signed on to explore year-round access.

Skeptics point to the obstacles. Shipping windows in Hudson Bay are limited, and investors remember the 670 billion dollars in cancelled resource projects since 2015.

Spain’s Repsol abandoned its Saint John LNG conversion plan in 2023 citing costs. Critics argue if Canada could not make East Coast LNG work, then why would Churchill?

Carney’s answer is demand. Germany under Chancellor Friedrich Merz has taken a pragmatic line: it needs gas and lots of it, even as it invests in renewables and hydrogen. Brussels has committed to reducing Russian imports, but that gap must be filled from somewhere.

That is where British Columbia comes in. The west coast projects once seen as solely Asian-bound are now strategic for Europe too.

The Panama Canal provides a shorter shipping lane to Atlantic ports, and Canadian LNG is marketed as having the lowest carbon footprint in the world, a selling point in a Europe still tied to its climate goals.

Energy Minister Tim Hodgson says “there are buyers” and describes LNG as a cornerstone of Canada’s ambition to be an “energy superpower.”

Canada’s misjudgment of LNG was costly. Had exports been flowing between 2020 and 2022, analysts say Canadian gas could have displaced an entire year’s worth of Canada’s emissions by replacing coal abroad.

Instead, Asian and European utilities leaned on dirtier fuels and allies turned elsewhere. The United States and Qatar seized the moment. Canada said no.

Now the calculus has changed. Trump’s trade war has made diversification urgent. European allies are asking again, and this time Carney is listening.

Infrastructure on both coasts, from Kitimat to Churchill, may finally put Canada into the LNG game it once sat out.

The opportunity is still there, but hesitation is no longer an option. For Canada LNG is not just about moving gas molecules. It is about sovereignty, power, and resilience.

It is about whether we can still do big projects. And it is about whether we will finally turn our natural resources into real clout.