A concept image of a Cielo refinery. Photo courtesy Cielo Waste Solutions at www.cielows.com

By Justin Goulet

Plans for renewable diesel refinery in Lethbridge gain momentum

Jul 31, 2019 | 12:25 PM

LETHBRIDGE, AB – Plans are in the works to bring a renewable diesel refinery to Lethbridge.

Cielo Waste Solutions Corp. has announced a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Renewable U Lethbridge Inc. to build a renewable energy plant.

“That (the MOU) gives us a 25 million-dollar line of credit to build a plant in Lethbridge. They’re going to be our joint venture partners, they’re financers. Many of them are from the Lethbridge area,” said Don Allan, Cielo’s President and CEO.

“They’re our Renewable U (Energy Inc.) partners, which are also involved in financing the plants in Grande Prairie, Medicine Hat and Brooks so we’re excited to have them to continue that partnership.”

He said the partnership with the group goes back almost a decade.

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“Their Chairman of the Board has been involved with me on developing our company for almost ten years now. He managed to pull together a bunch of investors throughout Alberta and actually throughout Canada. They’ve been working with us on getting us to the next goal line. It’s great – they’ve now put up about 125-million dollars in a line of credit for us they’ve pulled down to build these plants.”

Allan explained that the next steps include looking for a site in Lethbridge. Representatives from Cielo will be visiting the area early in the fall to scope out potential sites.

He said they will talk with different companies in the area that have a waste stream they can collect from. He noted they’ll be using “a lot of different types of feed stocks”, which can include anything from potato peels to agriculture crops and various types of plastics.

“We can go in and help eliminate the requirement for the landfill. We basically have quite a selection of what we can use for feed stocks, so we’ll be wanting to get those sowed up before we begin construction, make sure we have enough feed stock. We’ll be deciding at that point by how much we get for garbage on the size of the plant we’ll be building,” Allan explained.

“We hope to build a minimum of one plant that produces about three tonnes an hour of garbage, (that) gives us about 2,000 litres an hour of fuel (diesel) that we produce for the mandated market that we sell to – people like Shell, Husky, Esso, and they use that for blending. It all comes down to how much feed stock we can get and that will decide the size of land we buy, and we hope start work on that this fall.”

Allan noted there are many benefits to a project like this. He said the contracting staff alone will help create a peak of 70 to 80 workers on-site for about a year and a half.

“We’ll end up with about 25 full-time people and then as we buy more feed stock and hopefully, we can expand this plant, we will want to go five times the size so that will increase labour,” he said.

“The big input of course is we don’t have any harmful emissions, we’re a very green refinery. We also think we can eliminate the requirement for Lethbridge to have a landfill, we’re going to work closely with the City hopefully. That’s (a) goal we have in the fall to start those conversations, but with the right partners, there’s no reason you need a landfill and we want to eliminate that and of course the agriculture waste, we want to dive into that. We think it’s very positive all the way around.”

Allan added that personally and professionally, he has strong ties to Lethbridge.

His mother, Dr. Donna J. Allan, was the first female President of Lethbridge College (1990-2005) and his father also worked in the field of education.

“We’re excited to get back into Lethbridge and start enjoying some of the fantastic city that you have.”

Cielo Waste Solutions currently operates a refinery in Aldersyde, Alberta.

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