Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 6th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us today.

We have three witnesses in the first hour. From Bioindustrial Innovation Canada, we have Alexander Marshall. From Ensyn Technologies Inc., we have David Boulard. From Whitesand First Nation, we have David Mackett and Craig Toset.

Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us today.

The format is for three presentations of up to 10 minutes for each group. Following the presentations, I will then open the floor to the members around the table to ask questions. We do have some tight time constraints, so if you could keep your opening remarks to under 10 minutes, I would be very grateful. If you don't, I may have to interrupt you, and I'll apologize now.

Mr. Marshall, we will begin with you.

[Alexander Marshall, Executive Director, Bioindustrial Innovation Canada]

Thank you, honourable Chair, vice-chairs, and committee members for the opportunity to speak to you today on the very important topic of industrial bioeconomy in Canada, and the opportunity it provides for Canada.

BIC is a not-for-profit business accelerator based in Sarnia, Ontario. Our vision is to create jobs and economic values sustainably in Canada. We accomplish this by providing critical investment advice and services to early-stage business developers in the clean, green, and sustainable chemistry space. Our expertise is commercialization.

Our management team has over 100 years of industrial experience in a wide variety of technical development, commercialization, and business operations from the traditional petrochemical industry. I personally came from the petrochemical industry, and retired out of that about five years ago.

Our board brings a strong governance and executive mandate to the vision. The board members play an active role supporting BIC's strategic plan by leveraging their knowledge and experience of strength and due diligence processes and the potential investments. In addition, board members use their experience and extensive network of professional contacts to provide advice, communicate successes, and identify resources to enable start-ups and SMEs in the early stages working toward commercialization.

We're focused on enabling Canada to become a globally recognized leader in converting renewable resources, such as agricultural and forestry bioproducts and residues into value-added bioenergy, biofuels, biochemicals, and biomaterials for the use in a wide range of commercial applications along the chemistry value chain to advance manufacturing, including automotive and aerospace.

Our initial efforts have been targeted in Sarnia-Lambton, home of Canada's first petrochemical cluster. Sarnia-Lambton is well positioned to diversify its petrochemical industrial base, and become North America's leader in industrial bioproducts manufacturing in an emerging hybrid chemistry cluster.

BIC has played a critical role in attracting anchor industry biochemical companies to the region, which form key assets in the assets along the chemistry value chain. Securing the location of these anchor companies in Canada is attracting significant follow-on investment in the region.

Canada has a global competitive advantage. Canada has the most abundant, sustainable and economically important biomass resources, and is highly adept at generating value from them. Our traditional bioeconomy sectors, forestry and agriculture, currently comprise over 900 processing companies, support two million employees, and generate sales of over $300 billion per year.

Canada's commitment to climate change mitigation is best addressed by extending the capacities of these sectors to produce biogenic carbon into biobase alternatives that offset fossil carbon emissions. By leveraging Canada's natural carbon storage capacity in its forests, along with residues from forestry, agriculture, and municipal waste, over 120 million tonnes of biomass are available annually to create additional economic growth, and directly offset carbon emissions.

Biomass supply chains exist within the traditional forestry industry including the lumber and pulp and paper industries. Biomass supply chains are emerging for industrial or agricultural residues. These biomass supply chains are available to support the first transformations to sugars, lignins, and thermochemical intermediates. Companies such as Comet Biorefining Inc., West Fraser, and Resolute are actively commercializing these types of technologies.

Canada's forestry industry maintains significant assets for the production of traditional products, such as lumber and pulp and paper. Maintaining and repositioning these existing assets as biorefineries can enable the transformation of this industry. Forestry companies such as CelluForce, Kruger, Domtar, Resolute, and Performance BioFilaments have established world-leading IP positions in the production and application of advanced hygiene products, biocomposites, cellulose nanocrystals, and filaments.

Ontario's chemical industry is the largest in Canada driven by economic advantages provided by the petrochemical cluster ecosystem and the global green chemical market. A number of bioproduct companies are leveraging these biomass supplies—oils, grains, and residues—to produce low-carbon biofuels, biochemicals, and biomaterials to create high value-added manufacturing products.

Companies such as BioAmber, Origin Materials, and Woodbridge are working with the automotive industry to provide lightweight biocomposite and natural fibre materials, low-volatile materials for healthier interiors in automobiles, and components containing sustainable and renewable materials. Additionally, the natural alliance of Origin Materials, Nestlé Waters, and Danone are commercializing bioplastics for use in water bottles and food packaging applications. Renewable fuel producers are focused on developing the lower carbon intensity biofuels for the Canadian market.

Leveraging Canada's abundant natural resources and linking innovative Canadian-based bioproducts and forestry companies to the existing chemical industry and value chains provides a competitive advantage that must be exploited for the benefit of Canadians.

I'll talk a bit about the opportunity. The chemistry industry is on the cusp of a transformation. Traditional petroleum-derived chemicals and products will increasingly be substituted and blended with more sustainable resources derived from biomass. The potential market size is staggering, as bio-based products are expected to make up 50% of consumer products by 2050. Countries and companies with the right policy framework, the desire to foster innovation, and the ability to deploy technologies are poised to take market share in these areas and experience explosive growth.

The focus on value chain creation, expansion and growth, and building regional clusters creates jobs and transforms existing sectors. Advancing the bioeconomy through value chain enhancements with the focus on decarbonizing will enable Canada to be a global leader in sustainable bio-based products.

With the growing international demand for sustainable low-carbon goods and services, and the vast biomass resources available across Canada, the economic potential is enormous. Multiple industries such as health, agriculture, forestry, and natural resources, as well as rural and urban communities, stand to benefit from the bioeconomy. The net result is the creation of new businesses, revitalization of old businesses, regional diversification, and most important, jobs.

For a sector with such high growth potential and access to vast resources, our bioeconomy is lagging. In 2018, the sector was valued at 6% of GDP, on a per-capita basis, whereas in the U.S. it's over 8%. Furthermore, Sweden is considered to be a leader in the bioeconomy, with 30% of its natural energy supply fed from biomass, compared to 1% in Canada.

Canada's slow emergence in the bioeconomy is explained by the lack of a clear strategic direction and the fragmentation of programs, which does not support all types of bioproducts and policy initiatives, as outlined in the Canadian Council of Forest Ministers' discussion paper, “A Forest Bioeconomy Framework for Canada”.

This framework is a very excellent piece of work. It includes tax measures that de-risk commercialization as one of the six key policy areas that should be addressed. There are a number of others, such as efficient standards, collaborative research and development, public sector procurement, outreach to attract investment, accessible comprehensive investment-grade data, and workforce and training development.

The key way to succeed in the bioeconomy is to address these policy areas in an integrated and coordinated effort, involving government, industry, investors, and academia. For example, at the national level, the forestry industry is seen as the key bio-based resource, and Natural Resources Canada is leading support for the industry.

Activities occurring in silos must be avoided. A comprehensive approach is required. Canada needs the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development coordinating the development of an all-encompassing framework of public policies in partnerships with the provinces, territories, and relevant federal ministries. This includes Natural Resources Canada, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, and Environment Canada. Input from private stakeholders is also essential for this framework.

Canada can leverage its strength in advanced manufacturing and resource development to lead the way on a national bioeconomy strategy. A comprehensive bioeconomy framework will create new business, high-quality and long-term jobs, and stable growth, while reducing carbon emissions.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Marshall.

Go ahead, Mr. Boulard.

[David Boulard, President, Ensyn Technologies Inc.]

Thank you, honourable Chair, vice-chairs, and members. I am excited to present here today. You'll notice I don't have any briefing notes. The story I have today is a success story in Canada about innovation in the traditional forest industry. It directly falls within your mandate of how to tie in the traditional forest industry to innovation, new products, new markets, and new demands. Today it's a case study of a company called Ensyn that represents itself as a new engineered wood products business in a traditional industry.

For example, it's just 45 minutes up the road, and there's an open invitation to the committee—I don't know if you guys do field trips, or the individual members do field trips—and I'd be happy to host you, 45 minutes away, at our facility at some later point in time.

What we do there is we receive approximately 50,000 tonnes of sawmill residue annually at that facility. There are about 1,000 trucks, so it's not a huge facility. Instead of using these residuals to make MDF boards, mouldings, or even pellets and other engineered wood products, we make liquid wood. Of anything today, think of me as the liquid wood guy. We produce about 13 million litres of liquid wood every year. That's roughly 500 tanker trucks going down the highway and delivering to customers.

I should note that we're synergistic to the existing forestry industry. We don't offer a competitive environment to fibre. We are synergistic with the mills where they are challenged by the transition in the forest industry with respect to what we are doing with all our residues. We have to make sure we have a home. There's an ecosystem for a local mill, and if that ecosystem is interrupted with respect to supply in different areas, it challenges the survival of the mill as a whole. We offer a solution by taking those residuals and working into the synergy—again, we have application throughout Canada—of these mills.

We've run this technology for over 30 years. It's a Canadian technology out of western Ontario. Our founders are Canadian. We're proudly Canadian. In effect, the technology is relatively simple. We take wood, and we expose it to heat in the absence of oxygen. Of course if you have oxygen, you have combustion. In the absence of oxygen, it vapourizes the organic chemicals. We take the vapour and condense it into a liquid barrel of wood. By yield, we achieve 70% by weight of the original wood to the liquid wood product.

Now you might quickly determine that the liquid wood represents a carbon-neutral renewable fuel. We don't have to talk about the importance of carbon neutrality and carbon reduction here, recognizing its value to the Canadian people and to the sustainable future of Canada, but it has the benefits of liquid fossil fuel. You can imagine a liquid wood, comparing it to a liquid fossil fuel. You can store it in a tank, you can pump it in a pump, you can burn it in traditional types of burners.

For example, the production of the liquid wood we produce here just 45 minutes up the Ottawa valley from Ottawa Valley Wood is delivered to hospitals, schools, and city and district energy centres. All renewable customers for the liquid wood energy product, however, are U.S. customers. The U.S. renewable fuel standard creates an economic environment where liquid wood can economically compete with fossil fuels in that environment.

The use of liquid wood by these customers is credited to the U.S., however. It's produced in Canada. The carbon reduction credits, however, go to the jurisdiction where it's consumed. Despite being produced in Ottawa and being produced in Canada, the credit for the carbon reduction aspects of the use of that fuel goes to where the customer is located. It all goes to the United States for it to meet its renewable energy and carbon reduction commitments.

Now you might say, David, you've got 13 million litres. We're oversold. I can't produce enough product to meet customer demand out of our facility in Renfrew. I'm pleased to say that, together with the support of NRCan's SDTC, we are just completing construction of a $100-million facility in Port-Cartier, Quebec, which is just outside of Sept-Îles. That facility will generate approximately 42 million litres of additional product, bringing our total Canadian production capacity to roughly 55 million litres a year.

Again, that's a significant impact for a carbon-neutral fuel. Again, we're integrated into a forestry company in that region called Arbec; also Groupe Rémabec, just out of the Lac Saint-Jean region, is part of that ownership structure. We integrate with the mills synergistically into that marketplace, recognizing again that the mills are threatened by the inability to get rid of residual fibre.

Unfortunately I also have to say that 100% of that production is destined for the United States. The markets and the renewable fuel standard in the U.S. creates a global economic environment for the competition of renewable fuels so that in effect it's just as if you made a two-by-four you'd sell it to the highest market. Our liquid wood product is no different. We make sure we get the maximum value, maximum return, for that gallon. Right now it's in the United States.

We are very thankful for the capital support we've had from the Canadian government, and the Province of Ontario, as well as the Province of Quebec in building those capital facilities and facilitating that to happen. The challenge we have now is how do we take that capital and allow that product that's developed by that capital to be used in Canada?

I'm happy to announce that our first installation of a boiler for district heating will happen on Heron Road in a federal government complex. It's a demonstration facility at this point, but we hope it's a start of many things to come, whereby our liquid fuel from our Renfrew facility, our Ottawa valley facility, will stop in Ottawa where some of the product can be used, instead of driving through Ottawa, and hopefully lend a mandate to the federal government to expand on these things. We provide for rural economic deployment of our resources and our facilities. We have a tremendous socio-economic impact as well as our carbon reduction impact in this area.

Again we're very thankful for this committee. I don't need to tell you the state of the forest industry, that innovation is required, and again as a case study it's happening. I hold an open invitation to be able to share more about what we do, how we do it, our customer base, our solutions, and our partnerships.

I thank you for your support, and I continue to look at opportunities by which our product can be used in Canada.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Mackett.

[David Mackett, Community Development, Whitesand First Nation]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, committee members.

Craig and I are here today representing Whitesand First Nation. We're here to tell a story of one community's vision of the bioeconomy. Craig and I are the community leads on this project since 2009. It's been a very challenging journey that we've travelled to get this project to where it is today.

Before I begin, I should note that in 1992, Whitesand and the hamlet of Armstrong proposed a new way of forestry that included a bio-cogeneration plant to help displace diesel use in our community. That never went forward, and that's a million litres of diesel fuel a year, just for electricity. We've kept this vision alive, and we thought the best way to talk about it was to provide a presentation. I don't know if we'll get to all the slides, because we could talk about this for days.

We'll begin with the presentation. If a picture says a thousand words, our cover slide says ten thousand, and we really believe the approach we put together meets the need for energy independence, environmental integrity, and economic development all through the bioeconomy.

We came together in 2009, Craig and I, and developed the community sustainability initiative. It's five pillars of sustainability, it recognizes all the issues we face as a community, and it recognizes how we can look at a new future by developing a different approach through the bioeconomy.

Today we're just going to talk a bit about where we began, where we are, where we are heading as a community, and how Natural Resources Canada has played a significant role in getting us to where we are today.

Whitesand is 250 kilometres north of Thunder Bay. We're not on the electricity grid, and we will never be connected to the grid. We were identified in the long-term energy plan as never being connected. Of course, we also don't have natural gas, so we're a fully diesel-dependent community for both electricity and home heating. We have a population of about 1,200, with 400 currently on reserve.

I'll be quite blunt about this current reality we're in. We're on diesel fuel, we're in the middle of the boreal forest, we're nearing max power for housing, and we can't do anything for economic development because there isn't enough power. Past industry use was to take the trees and take them to Thunder Bay for processing. That process failed; the industry collapsed. It was horrible for a lot of people, but it opened the wood supply for us through a competitive wood competition. That really was the window that moved us forward.

We also have a very high unemployment rate—70% to 80%—so we're always in recession. Social assistance is the bulk of family income.

Many are without grade 12. They leave public school in Armstrong and go to Thunder Bay; many drop out, which just continues the cycle, including drug dependencies. We don't shy away from that. It's something we have to deal with, and this project has been designed to help do that.

What is our project? It's everything. It's a five-megawatt combined heat and power plant from biomass, which will replace diesel electricity. It's a 60,000- to 90,000-tonne wood pellet plant, so we can convert our homes to wood pellets from diesel and ship pellets elsewhere throughout Canada. It will support other industry as we get full stand utilization—as we're using hardwoods, primarily—and it will reduce GHG emissions.

Currently, through partnership funding from Canada, Ontario, and Whitesand, we have prepared the site for construction. We've done all our road layouts, we've got the pads ready for concrete, lighting is in, and all the roadwork is in. Our plan is to go to full construction next year. This project cost us $4 million in total, but again it was a partnership approach, and Whitesand has put in a lot of money through the years in the project.

We've had to do many complex things. We had to get the Ontario renewable energy approval. For a five-megawatt biomass plant? We're not burning tires, but it cost us almost a million dollars to do. We had the environment minister come to us and apologize that he was talking about the green, low-carbon economy and making us do a REA.

We didn't fight it. We figured out a way to do it, and we've done it. It's the first of its kind in Ontario. All of our engineering is completed, and we have the first-of-its-kind power purchase agreement in Ontario, which is a 20-year renewable revenue stream for the electricity we're producing. It actually gave us an economic development adder, which recognized the social, economic, and environmental benefits of our project. It's a unique way of looking at the bioeconomy and, if you're going to produce power, how provincial governments can support that type of initiative.

We've completed negotiations. Even though we had a directive, which is public knowledge, it still took us over two years to negotiate with IESO for those contracts, but it's the first of its kind.

What does that mean to us? It means 60 full-time jobs. If you think 400 people and what 60 jobs does at $3.5 million in annual wages, it's significant. If you move that over to Toronto or Ottawa, what type of plant would we be talking about? It's all through the bioeconomy.

How did we get this far? Craig and I sometimes look at ourselves and we say we don't know how. We've lived fiscally...writing funding proposals, looking for support. It's not a traditional project in the forestry industry where a bigger company could come and say, we see an opportunity, let's do our feasibility study, let's do our engineering, and let's build the thing. We haven't been able to do it that way. It's been very difficult, but we've kept this going based on the need of the community. What we're trying to show in Canada is a completely different way of looking at things.

Without NRCan, especially the indigenous forestry initiative, we would not be here today. That support has helped us at all of these steps, along with Ontario funding, and both FedNor and INAC have been involved. However, Natural Resources Canada has been our mainstay and our main helper. We've even used some of the scientific research reports to help move the project forward.

This rather complex-looking slide is about looking forward to 2025. What does the sustainable bioeconomy look like? We're now having the local forest for a local community maximizing benefits from it. We're creating our own electricity. We're producing economic development of a wood pellet plant. We're going to use waste heat for a greenhouse for fresh vegetables for the community.

It's full circular. We're going to look at new housing and using some of the wood for our own houses. All of our circles and community sustainability are within it now. As a special note, by the year 2050—and this was an analysis done by both Canada and Ontario—we will be reducing 488,000 tonnes, or 163 tonnes per person, of GHG, compared to Ontario's target of 26 tonnes per person. It is revolutionary. It's something that is based on Swedish and Finnish models. It's a bioeconomy village.

To close, I think what drives me and Craig in this project is the notion that if you're on social assistance in Canada, you're living in poverty. I don't believe that with the wealth and resources from our forests, from all of our natural resources, and from our innovation in Canada, anybody should be living in poverty.

For the committee, we're not here to get more or do more. We're here just to let you know that the bioeconomy is something special. It needs any type of support, as these gentlemen have said, that can help it flourish. What does it mean for social growth, economic development and environmental responsibility? In a community like Whitesand, carbon reduction through the bioeconomy is poverty reduction, and to me that is one of the loftiest goals anybody can try to do.

We want to thank you for your time, and today is a very big day for us. At the Treasury Board Secretariat of Ontario this morning, the Minister of Natural Resources and Forestry is presenting our project to the Ontario greenhouse gas reduction account for $30 million in capital funding.

That is hand in hand with Canada's low carbon economy leadership fund, which Ontario nominated us for as their priority project. That would also give us $20 million. That $50 million in capital funding has allowed us to secure $22 million in financing as a small first nation.

We're very confident that this is going through and that we'll be beginning construction this year. We extend an invitation to this committee to have a meeting up there in two years' time when we're built, to see what the bioeconomy looks like.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Harvey, you're going to start us off.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

I'll start with David and Craig.

First of all, thank you very much, everybody, for coming. Thank you for presenting such an impassioned speech on your project and the effects it's going to have on your community, both short term and long term.

You answered part of my question in your closing comments, but I was curious. That $70 million, roughly, what does that entail? The cogeneration plant won't be $70 million. You're going to produce five megawatts, right?

[David Mackett]

Right. It's both the CHP, the wood pellet facility, and a wood merchandising yard.

We're doing something rather unique. It's not done in Ontario. MNR has agreed to allow us to bring all the wood onto our site, both hardwood and softwood, full stand utilization. That will optimize that wood for other primary users such as Resolute Forest Products, and we're looking at a hardwood-softwood exchange. They have lots of hardwood that they can't do anything with. They can't get into stands because they're mixed, so they're going to bring us a trailer full of hardwood, and they're going to take softwood. The total projected is about $72 million capex for the entire project.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Okay.

You looked at doing additional projects based on your waste steam and....

[David Mackett]

That's what's unique about it. Having the CHP provides us efficiencies in the wood pellet plant for drying biomass and the pellets, and with the waste steam from those situations, we want to do a greenhouse. The price of vegetables in these communities.... Further north, it's even more than us.

Everything we've done in our project is to maximize benefit for the community, for jobs, and that's very challenging. We have some skills issues. We're working with a bunch of funders. Ryerson University has come in and provided us with an incredible amount of funding to hire a workforce coordinator.

It has been so hard. There are so many pieces to the project. Now we have a plant, but do we have a workforce? We have so many people who have dropped out of high school based on no hope and no jobs. It's a very hard thing to describe unless you've been in it and live in it.

I think Craig could even talk about the drug treatment program. It's part of our project. I know the bioeconomy is why we're here today, but everything is related in an indigenous community like ours. We started our own community-based drug treatment program with our own funding, and it ended up being ranked one of the highest in Canada, and then it actually secured funding.

I think you have 36 or so people in there now, right?

[Craig Toset, Business Development, Whitesand First Nation]

Well, I don't have 36 people in there, but I believe the last number I was told indicated about 55 people enrolled in the program. They're not all on the drug treatment program. Some are just taking some counselling.

We're four years into the program. There are a couple big statistics that I like to talk about. Since the program has started, I believe there are eight clean people now who are totally off drugs, not requiring Suboxone. I think nine people have jobs, five of which are full-time and four of which are part-time. Three child and family services cases have been closed with children returning to their parents. I believe that's the biggest one. This whole program was all started because of our project, the CSI project.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

David, I'm going to run out of time, but you touched on your second facility. I believe you said Sept-Îles.

[David Boulard]

It's in Port-Cartier, Quebec, near Sept-Îles.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Was that location chosen because of proximity to wood supply ? What was the driving force behind that location? It's not really a common....

[David Boulard]

That's a good point. It is on a deepwater port, so it allows access to the St. Lawrence to loop around to the U.S. northeastern seaboard, but it was really about partnerships. Our business is really focused on partnerships. We know what we do really well. We make liquid wood really well.

As far as markets are concerned for biomass security, security of supply, harvesting, accumulation, transfer points, that's not our expertise so we were able to do a joint venture with an innovative forest products company called Arbec, which is a Quebec regional firm, and Rémabec. They look after the security of supply because, again, in order to get financing in the forestry industry, security of supply is key.

We were able to knot that through a partnership, and that partnership was there. Because of its remote location, that mill is susceptible to the inability to get rid of residual fibre. There are not a lot of local exits for it, so they looked at our opportunity to become very synergistic to support the sustainability of the mill and its customary products, and at the same time, to remove the threat of excess residual, which ultimately if you can't exit it, you lose it.

[TJ Harvey, Liberal, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Marshall, where do you see the biggest opportunity for the federal government to build on what's already being done to help foster growth and innovation in the sector?

[Alexander Marshall]

I think when it gets into the bioeconomy, it's taking a broader perspective. I think NRCan and the forestry side have done a really good job of developing their framework, and it works well for forestry, but I think we need an all-encompassing approach here in Canada, which is broader. It's one thing to have the forests and the raw materials and do a supply push and try to put products out into the market. You need market pull, and where is the market pull going to come from? It's going to come from downstream, down these value chains, whether that be automotive, aerospace, furniture, construction materials, or whatever. Linking those all together and getting them all working together, pulling and pushing together in Canada, will help us to be successful in this space.

When you start looking at it from that perspective, you need all of the supply side groups, which is forestry and ag, and you need the market pull side, which is economic development, and you need the capability to do it, which means environment, to work together with industry to be able to make these things happen in a coordinated way. If it stays fragmented, you won't get maximized value out of it, and we will lose out to other jurisdictions, which are getting much more coordinated.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Van Kesteren, you're up next.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

I have just a few short questions for you, Mr. Boulard. I'm a guest here, so they are being kind to me. I just want some clarification.

How hot do you have to heat this sawdust before it turns to liquid?

[David Boulard]

We vaporize it, so it's about 400 degrees.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

What fuel do you use to do that?

[David Boulard]

There are three products for our process. I will get to it, but we use two of the by-products to generate the heat, so when we hit steady state it's all internal use of the feedstock. There's no external requirement for heat energy.

[Dave Van Kesteren, Conservative, Chatham-Kent—Leamington, ON]

This fuel stays in liquid form?

[David Boulard]

It does.