Canadian jet biofuel initiative selects Montreal-Trudeau for co-mingled fuel supply project
Wed 1 June 2016 – Montréal-Trudeau Airport has been chosen by Canada’s Biojet Supply Chain Initiative (CBSCI) for a project to supply aircraft with sustainable aviation biofuel from a shared fuel system. The three-year collaboration involving 14 stakeholder organisations, including Air Canada, is aiming to introduce 400,000 litres of biojet. Previous Air Canada biofuel flights used biojet that was segregated from regular jet fuel and loaded separately into an aircraft by a tanker but CBSCI is looking to develop a more efficient operational framework that will make use of a multi-user, co-mingled airport fuel supply system. The first of its kind in the country, the objective of the CBSCI project is to create a sustainable Canadian supply chain of biojet using renewable feedstocks.
The biojet will be sourced from Canada’s abundant agricultural and forestry biomass resources, says Air Canada, using globally recognised sustainable production and harvesting practices. The commercially available, certifiably sustainable oleochemical feedstocks will then undergo a Hydroprocessed Esters and Fatty Acids (HEFA) conversion process before being blended with conventional petroleum jet fuel and introduced into a shared fuel tank at Montréal-Trudeau. The CBSCI project will also identify and help solve supply logistic barriers that arise when aviation biofuels are introduced at major Canadian airports.
“We are pleased that this important initiative will be held at Montréal-Trudeau Airport," said Teresa Ehman, Director of Environmental Affairs at Air Canada. “We have invested billions of dollars in fleet renewal to reduce our fuel consumption and meet our current emission reduction goals. Biojet holds the potential to be an important part of our strategy for achieving our longer-term industry goals of carbon neutral growth from 2020 and a 50% reduction in emissions by 2050, relative to 2005 levels. The CBSCI project will contribute significantly to advancing a biojet supply chain in Canada by facilitating the logistics involved in the introduction of biojet to an airport’s shared fuel system.”
Added Aéroports de Montréal (ADM) CEO James Cherry: “This initiative is consistent with ADM’s efforts to reduce GHG emissions. We are proud that Air Canada has chosen Montréal-Trudeau for this project. Let’s hope that this will be just the start of a strong short- and medium-term partnership to ensure the project’s success.”
CBSCI is coordinated through BioFuelNet Canada’s Aviation Task Force and managed by Waterfall Group, with primary funding from the Green Aviation Research and Development Network (GARDN), a non-profit organisation funded by the Business-Led Network of Centres of Excellence of the Government of Canada and the Canadian aerospace industry. The project includes a strong research component with the participation of Queen’s University, University of Toronto and McGill University, which will be assisting in modelling feedstock availability, identifying and addressing barriers to biojet adoption in co-mingled fuel systems and implementing the IATA Sustainability Meta Standard.
