Success Stories

Our members Success with Go With RNG

ABC Environmental

Based in the Lanaudière region of Quebec, ABC Environmental has been cleaning, draining, and decontaminating waste water treatment facilities in several Quebec regions since 1967. In 2017, EBI bought ABC Environmental. As a leading environmental and recycling company in the province ABC Environmental has a longstanding interest in using low emission technologies such as natural gas vehicles. Of their fleet of more than 40 trucks, close to 15 are natural gas powered. Working with Énergir, they have built an onsite refuelling station to support its fleet in Crabtree, QC.

Central Okanagan School District No. 23, British Columbia

The Central Okanagan School District, located in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley serves the communities of Kelowna, West Kelowna, Lake Country, and Peachland. District No. 23 is the first school bus fleet in Canada to operate factory-built natural gas school buses with fourth generation ISL G engines from Cummins Westport. The fleet includes 13 CNG school buses that refuel at a private fast fill station located in Kelowna. The fleet, which has been in operation since 2011, has resulted in improved air quality for students and lower greenhouse gases.

City of Surrey, British Columbia

Surrey, British Columbia, is the first municipality in Canada to require the use of natural gas refuse trucks in its contract refuse tendering process. Surrey took this step based on its own analysis showing that the economic and environmental benefits of natural gas vehicle use are significant. The Surrey residential collection business was awarded to BFI Canada in early 2012. As of October 2012, 55 natural gas trucks were operating. The City of Surrey also intends to transition the fuel supply from natural gas to renewable natural gas produced from local bin waste when supply is available from a proposed municipal facility.

Class 8 Trucks - Robert Transportation

One of Canada’s largest for-hire trucking fleets, Robert Transport, has added natural gas trucks to the growing list of green technologies in use in its fleet. Robert Transport had 160 Peterbilt 386 liquefied natural gas (LNG) highway tractors traveling between Boucherville, Quebec, and Mississauga, Ontario. The fleet has warehouses with in-yard, private refueling stations in both communities. The lower emission trucks travel along the Highway 401 and Autoroute 20 corridor. Since decommissioning its LNG fleet, Robert has embarked on a new chapter with the use of CNG vehicles, and the latest Cummins 15 litre engine.

Enbridge Gas Distribution

Canada’s largest natural gas distribution company operates one of North America’s largest natural gas vehicle fleets. With more than 675 natural gas vehicles, Enbridge is able to reduce its fuel costs and contribute to corporate social responsibility objectives. Most of the utility’s fleet consists of aftermarket, converted light duty vehicles. About three years ago, Enbridge invested in its first factory-built dump truck from Freightliner. The company now has six factory-built trucks in its fleet and additional trucks are on order.

Refuse Fleets - Waste Management

Waste Management is the largest operator of natural gas refuse collection trucks in North America with 1,400 natural gas trucks in its fleet. Based on the economic and environmental benefits for Waste Management, the company has made a commitment to purchase 80 per cent of all of its new vehicles as factory-built natural gas trucks. Here in Canada, Waste Management has two natural gas collection truck projects each of which involves more than 20 CNG trucks. One of the projects is operating in Coquitlam, British Columbia, and the other one is for Ottawa, Ontario.

Vedder Transportation Group

Vedder Transport is the largest hauler of raw milk in Canada. This for-hire fleet based in Abbotsford, British Columbia, had 65 Peterbilt 386 LNG highway tractors representing about 15 per cent of its fleet. The trucks refuel at 3 private LNG fuelling terminal (Abbotsford, Delta and Kamloops in British Columbia) in the Vedder yards. Each truck emits about 70 tonnes less carbon per year compared to a diesel truck. Fuel savings exceed $0.30 per diesel litre equivalent. Vedder marketed its LNG trucks as a green service for its customers as these are the lowest emission highway tractors on the road.

EBI, Québec

EBI is a family-owned business with a mission to integrate waste management. They collect, transport and recycle material from the municipal, industrial, commercial and institutional sectors. They also produce natural gas and electricity using biogas and are considered a cutting-edge organization in the renewable energy sector. Being a producer of renewable natural gas, EBI’s objective was to switch their entire fleet from diesel to CNG and utilize the natural gas they produce. They started with a pilot trial in 2011 in Berthierville, Quebec, where they tested the technology for one year.

Emterra Environmental, Manitoba

With CNG stations and CNG fleets in Winnipeg, Manitoba as well as British Columbia’s Capital Regional District and Chilliwack, Emterra Environmental has established itself as a leader in the use of alternative green fleet technologies. Through its initial investment in Winnipeg, Emterra developed the largest fleet of CNG collection trucks in the world operating in an extreme cold weather climate.

Refuelling Options

Refueling at an existing public CNG station may be a viable option at the early stages of switching to natural gas. If a public station is to be used, fill time and site access are important considerations.

Private onsite CNG or LNG refueling stations may be suitable if the fleet’s total natural gas fuel volume is sufficient. A general rule of thumb is that typically 20 medium or heavy vehicles are needed in order to consider a private onsite station.

Another refueling option may involve accessing a nearby private station owned by another fleet.

Visit Natural Resources Canada’s interactive map of public natural gas fueling locations across Canada: NRCan Station Locator

Compressed Natural Gas – CNG

CNG is natural gas that is:

Compressed at a high pressure to reduce its volume by up to 300 times compared with natural gas at a normal pressure.
CNG is ideal for passenger cars, pick-up trucks, cube vans, buses, shuttles, short-haul tractor-trailers, dump trucks, medium and long haul trucks, and refuse trucks.

Stations and Bunkering

Fleets that choose natural gas have a range of refueling station options and a choice of service providers for vehicle refueling. Stations dispensing CNG can be designed as fast fill stations capable of matching the filling times of liquid fuels or time fill stations that refuel all vehicles simultaneously with refueling typically taking place overnight in the fleet yard.

CNG Fast Fill Station

CNG Time Fill Station

LNG stations refuel vehicles in times similar to diesel station refueling. An LNG refueling station must have a local supply of fuel. Given that LNG is delivered by tanker truck, delivery cost and proximity of the LNG production facility are important considerations. At present, there are five LNG production facilities in Canada that can supply LNG for fleets.

These facilities are located in Montréal (QC), Calgary (AB), Delta (BC), Ladysmith (BC), and Hagar (ON).

Liquefied Natural Gas – LNG

LNG is a natural gas that is:

Cooled to a liquid state at -162 degrees Celsius to reduce its volume by 620 times compared with natural gas at normal pressure.
LNG is ideal for ferries, ships, rail, long-haul trucks, mining applications and industrial uses.

LNG Station

Technology and Feedstocks

Existing landfill sites have been regulated to reduce methane emissions that result from the slow decay of a variety of waste types that are present at these sites. Initially these gases were captured – methane is one of the most common gases – and flared. Biogas from landfill can also be captured and used to generate electricity and can be upgraded to pipeline quality natural gas – or RNG. Legacy landfill sties can be retrofitted to generate, capture and upgrade decomposing gases to RNG. Landfill operators generally do not flare the gas, instead they prefer to use it to generate energy.

These gases have a good carbon intensity score as limited energy inputs are required for production and upgrading. However, production of gas is limited and does not allow for the addition of more waste materials.

Anaerobic digesters involve complex organic chemistry, as well as complex material handling and preparation. Additional energy is required to support the process, but the RNG yields can be much higher than conventional landfill sites. Moreover, different waste streams can be collected and processed in their own facilities.

Building facilities that can digest organic material in a controlled anaerobic environment extracts the energy in the form of RNG and process the waste into digestate – which is similar to compost.

For waste facility operators, the use of anaerobic digestion can facilitate handling of large
ongoing volumes of waste materials while maintaining a relatively small footprint.

High temperature processes like pyrolysis can unlock gases from a variety of waste streams, including inorganic materials. Currently pyrolysis technologies are being piloted in converting woody and cellulosic feedstocks into RNG. Woody biomass from forest production offers very good opportunities for very low carbon intensity scores as current emissions are offset by reforestation and related organic carbon sinks.

Using hydrogen in waste handling – “hydrogenation” – can enhance anerobic production by increasing available hydrogen to bond with carbon molecules thereby boosting methane production while waste carbon dioxide is reduced. This use of hydrogen also mirrors early technology development for the production of synthetic methane, which is another path for the production of low carbon intensity natural gas.

Hydrogenation is still largely at the experimental stage. A big consideration is the need for large quantities of waste hydrogen or zero carbon intensity hydrogen to support these processes.

Vehicles & Fuel

RNG is a drop in substitute for conventional natural gas. There are no changes required to either fuel delivery or fuel use with currently available natural gas engine technologies.

Molecules and Nomination

The vast majority of RNG used today is collected and distributed in the existing natural gas pipeline and local distribution network. Because the molecules are the same, the natural gas distribution system has developed the concept of nomination. Nomination allows customers to buy a particular supply of natural gas, even though they may not receive that actual gas. In the same way that a company can contract for low-cost natural gas, a company can also contract to purchase RNG. The difference in the case of RNG is that the attribute being contracted is not just the price, but also the carbon intensity. In effect, the emissions reduction may happen somewhere else and with a different customer, but the one who purchases the RNG has also purchased those emissions reductions.

Business Case

In many ways the business case for RNG sits on top of the natural gas case.

There are opportunities for increased emissions reductions through the use of RNG. Monetizing these reductions rests on a well-established network of businesses that can offer fleets options to access RNG for their own use.

Net-zero Compliance

Canadian fleets can opt to pay a sum for RNG while reducing the emissions impact of existing natural gas vehicles. Customers will in turn pay a premium for the service of net-zero emissions transport. Municipal and transit fleets can use RNG as a low-cost pathway to compliance with local net-zero policies.

Clean Fuel Regulation Credit Generation

Under the Clean Fuel Regulation, a higher emissions reductions pathway can be created for generating end-use fuel switching credits with the use of RNG. There are a couple ways these pathways can be certified for credit generation. The simplest path is for a fleet that owns its on fueling station – the default credit creator – to purchase RNG that has already been identified as a pathway under the regulations. A similar pathway would involve a commercial vendor of natural gas fuel for transport to register a lower carbon intensity pathway based on its existing natural gas CFR pathway.

Credits can improve the business case:

In 2023 RNG for an average Class 8 vehicle would be $17,000 more expensive than diesel.

Default CFR Carbon Intensity values for RNG would generate 92 tonnes of credits for that same truck.

CFR credits sold at the maximum value of $300 per tonne could net $28,000

Net savings of $10,000 per year.

RNG Blending

Simply opting to blend RNG can result in more net greenhouse gas emissions reductions, while still maintaining a positive business case.

In 2023 an RNG blend as high as 40 percent could generate the following:

Fuel cost savings of $16,000;

Emissions reductions of 61 tonnes – roughly half over diesel baseline;

CFR maximum credit value of $18,000;

Total net savings of $34,000.

Regional Opportunities

In some regions the price for RNG relative to the cost of diesel may already generate a positive business case.

In 2023 BC full use of RNG had an average retail cost of $1.80 per litre equivalent generating a modest fuel cost savings of $4,000. This is relatively weak business case, but it shows the potential for savings as diesel prices trend higher.

Go With Renewable Natural Gas (RNG)

Why Renewable Natural Gas?

A renewable source of energy

Seamless transition to cleaner energy

Environmental compliance

Significant Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions reduction