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FEATURES Trades rule changes The future of agriculture Careers Section A1
LNG Canada welcomed new CEO in April
LNG Canada named Jason Klein as CEO in April. (LNG Canada handout photo)
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LNG Canada welcomed a new CEO in April. Jason Klein took over the role from interim CEO Steve Corbin, who returns to the role of vice president and executive project director. Klein previously worked at Shell Canada as vice president of Shell’s integrated natural gas business, including oversight and governance of the LNG Canada project. “I’m excited to join the team, especially at this time with construction in Kitimat progressing steadily and safely towards completion and the organization preparing for decades of successful operations,” Klein said in a statement issued in April. “LNG Canada and its joint venture participants are committed to setting the benchmark for economically, environmentally and socially responsible LNG development in Canada, creating a positive and lasting legacy with First Nations, the local community and all British Columbians based on our values of safety, collaboration, respect and transparency.” LNG Canada is building a liquid natural gas (LNG) export terminal in Kitimat, B.C., to export the gas which the Coastal GasLink Pipeline will transport from northeast B.C. Once completed in the mid 2020s, the Kitimat terminal will have the capacity to export 14 million tonnes of LNG per year. As of April, LNG Canada has
issued more than $3.6 billion in contracts and subcontracts to build the terminal, including $2.8 billion to Indigenousowned and local businesses. During construction, the project has employed roughly 5,000 people at its Kitimat site. “Jason takes over accountability for LNG Canada at a very important and active time,” Shell Canada president Susannah Pierce said in a statement issued in April. “He has extensive background in natural gas and LNG and a commitment to ensuring LNG Canada’s relationships with First Nations, communities and other stakeholders remain strong and resilient. He is also keenly aware of the important role lower carbon LNG can play in the energy transition, and I am confident he will continue to look for ways to ensure LNG Canada remains a top performer in this regard.” Shell, through Shell Canada Energy, owns a 40 per cent stake in LNG Canada. PETRONAS (25 per cent), PetroChina Company Ltd. (15 per cent) Mitsubishi Corp. (15 per cent) and Korea Gas Corporation (five per cent) are the other owners, via Canadian subsidiary companies. Klein has a degree in finance from Trinity University in San Antonio and holds a Doctor of Jurisprudence degree from the University of Texas School of Law. INDUSTRY & TRADES | SUMMER/FALL 2022
Features LNG Canada welcomes new CEO
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Trades rule changes criticized 4 Canfor aiming higher on sustainability, inclusion
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Simple device helps identify mineral deposits 7 The future of agriculture 8 Careers 16 Hydrogen, natural gas touted as allies, not rivals 18
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TRADES RULE CHANGES CRITICIZED
opposition Liberal government who say the changes will drive up labour costs, delay projects from being completed and discourage new workers from entering trades.
Ted Clarke/Glacier Media
B.C. is bringing back a requirement that all workers in designated compulsory trades will soon have to be certified tradespeople or registered apprentices.
The new rules are designed to make workplaces safer and increase the number of registered apprentices. But
That’s raising alarm bells around the province from trades organizations and the
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the head of the Independent Contractors and Business Association (ICBA) says it will punish workers from outside of the Lower Mainland, some of whom will be forced to leave their home communities to attend trades training programs that are only offered in a select few locations. “If you are an apprentice in Prince George or Fort St. John or the Interior or on (Vancouver) Island you have to come in for each level, which is approximately six weeks in class, and the rest of your year is on the jobsite,” said ICBA president Chris Gardner. “Most Red Seal trades are four-year programs The problem is it can take eight to 10 years to go all the way through the program because of the delays and the waitlists in getting into classrooms.” For ironworkers, a trade which is not on the initial compulsory trades list, their only current option is to attend BCIT in Burnaby, the one vocational school in B.C. that offers an apprenticeship program. Gardner says its vital for the government to create more training spaces and offer that training at several locations around the province to make it easier for workers to complete apprenticeships closer to their homes. He also says its in the province’s best interests to
provide creative supports for industries to take advantage of online technology and virtual classrooms to increase the ability for instructors to deliver training programs remotely to students, especially those isolated by geography. He’d also like to see more flexibility in the curriculum so it can be continually updated with relevant material that is applicable to the job. Enforcement of compulsory trades requirements will be overseen by the Industry Trade Authority, the soon to be renamed Skill Trades BC. Enforcing the new rules will require the province to hire inspectors to check the credentials of workers on jobsites and Gardner says that money would be better spent on hiring more instructors to teach tradesmen. The trades affected by the government’s mandatory trades certification requirement are electricians (industrial and construction), automotive service technicians, autobody/ collision technicians, heavyduty equipment technicians, gasfitters, steamfitters, pipefitters, air conditioning mechanics, sheet metal workers, and powerline technicians. Phase-in of the new policy began this spring in the INDUSTRY & TRADES | SUMMER/FALL 2022
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Government failed to consult broadly about the implementation of compulsory trades training, and many key industry organizations were not at the table.
electrical and mechanical trades and the automotive trades will follow suit in 2025. Although there only 10 trades on the initial list, Gardner expects the policy will eventually apply to all trades. “They’ve started the electrical and mechanical trades, which happen to be the two most regulated trades,” said Gardner. “So where they’ve started isn’t going to have as much of an impact as it would be once they start to go further, for example, into carpentry and other trades that aren’t as highly regulated, for good reason. “In electrical and mechanical you’re dealing with important parts of construction where there‘s very significant life safety issues, which is why everyone in those trades is going to be either Red Seal ticketed or an apprentice anyway. When they spread this out to other trades that’s when SUMMER/FALL 2022 | INDUSTRY & TRADES
it will have a more significant impact.” The government has not yet announced the supervision ratios which will dictate how many apprentices will be allowed on a jobsite for each journeyperson, but Gardner expects that limit on apprentices will eventually be imposed on all trades in B.C. He said will take away the flexibility of job supervisors on construction sites to decide how many apprentices might be designated for a specific task. “It will limit the number of apprentices that you can hire because you’re you’re going to be limited by the number of ticketed tradespeople you have once they impose ratios,” he said. “The more barriers you put up, the less incentive people have to explore a career option. Industry as a whole is very concerned with the direction they’re going and they’ve been very slow to come out with a formal declaration of the ratios and they have not indicated the plan to expand this to other trades.” In 2003, in an attempt to increase the number of workers pursuing careers as tradespeople, the B.C. Liberal government removed the requirement for compulsory credentials. It became the only province in Canada to deregulate trades and at that time, Prince George-Valemount MLA Shirley Bond was the Minister of Jobs, Tourism and Skill Training as part of Gordon Campbell’s cabinet. Bond says B.C. is now projected to have more that one million job vacancies in the next decade, 80 per cent of which will require post-secondary schooling, and she says the government has failed to deliver a comprehensive training plan that will address the shortage of trained workers. She says a compulsory trades system will make it more difficult for workers
considering a job in trades to find and train for one and that will especially impact people from rural and northern B.C. If they have to leave to attend programs in the Lower Mainland they are more likely to remain in large urban centres once they’ve completed their training, leaving a void in their home communities. “Government failed to consult broadly about the implementation of compulsory trades training, and many key industry organizations were not
at the table,” said Bond. “When the transition away from a compulsory trades program took place (in 2003) the number of apprentices rose from 16,000 to nearly 40,000 just before the pandemic. “We need a comprehensive training program. While we agree on the need to create more apprentices, we also know from past experience that a compulsory trades program will not be the answer.”
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Canfor aiming higher on sustainability, inclusion Canfor lumber products are seen loaded on a train in an archive photo. Canfor plans to set targets to reduce its scope 3 emissions, including downstream emissions from transportation, by 2024. (Glacier Media archive photo) Arthur Williams/Glacier Media
Canfor and Canfor Pulp released their 2021 Sustainability Report on June 28, and committed to becoming a net-zero greenhouse gas emitting company by 2050. Currently 80 per cent of the energy used in Canfor’s operations comes from renewable sources and the company aims to reduce its scope 1 and
2 emissions by 42 per cent by 2030, according to information released by the company. In addition, the company intends to set “a science-based reduction target” for its scope 3 missions by 2024. Scope 1 and 2 emissions include direct emissions from the company’s operations and from the energy sources it uses. Scope 3 emissions include all
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other indirect emissions associated with the company’s operations up and down the value chain – such as using diesel powered logging trucks to haul logs, and diesel-powered trains to ship finished lumber to market. “Our vision is to create a future as sustainable as the forests, for people, our products and the planet we all share,” Canfor president Don Kayne said in a statement issued on June 28. “Making sustainability a core value in our business is not only the right thing to do for the planet, our people, stakeholders, partners and customers, but it makes us a better company.” In addition, the company planted 54 million seedlings in 2021, and more than a billion over the past 20 years. All of Canfor’s managed forests are certified to Sustainable Forestry Initiative (SFI) or Forest Steward Council (FSC) Forest Management Standards, and 100 per cent of Canfor’s U.S.sourced wood is certified to the SFI Fibre Sourcing Standard. In addition to environmental goals, the company has set goals to increase diversity in its workforce and support economic growth in Indigenous communities. Nearly a quarter of new hires are now from under-represented groups, and the company is on track to achieve 33 per cent by 2025 and 50 per cent by 2030, the report said. Indigenous vendors received
3.4 per cent of Canfor’s Canadian wood products operations total spend, and that is expected to grow to five per cent by 2025. And the company has provided more than $1.8 million in charitable giving to 310 organizations through the Good Things Come From Trees program. “Our employees want to feel proud of the organization where they work and feel an alignment with their values,” Kayne said. “Our customers want to know that the products they purchase from us are sustainably sourced and responsibly produced. Our strong sustainability practices make us a better partner, a better supplier and a better employer.” The highlights of the report can be found online here: https://www.canfor. com/docs/default-source/ annual-reports/canfor-executive-summary-brochure. pdf?sfvrsn=bb7ee091_2. OR SCAN TO SEE REPORT
INDUSTRY & TRADES | SUMMER/FALL 2022
Simple device helps identify mineral deposits Device uses sensors to test soil gases, the levels of which can indicate deeply buried mineral deposits. (Geoscience BC handout image) in these Nelson Bennett/Glacier Media
A simple device that measures CO2 and oxygen in soil could help geologists zero in on valuable but deeply buried mineral deposits, according to new research from Geoscience BC. Research has shown that soil gases that are high in CO2 and low in oxygen are indicators of oxidizing sulphides in bedrock – an indication of mineralization. Testing soil gases can be helpful to geologists when a potential mineral deposit is buried beneath sediments and glacial deposits, according to a new report from Geoscience BC, which ran field tests using a simple device developed by a BC Geological Survey scientist. “Anomalous concentrations
gases are believed to indicate the presence of mineralized faults concealed beneath glacial sediments,” the report states. The device uses the same types of sensors that are used in breweries and greenhouses for detecting CO2 and oxygen levels, and has been adapted for testing soil in the field. The device has been tested at the Mount Milligan mine in B.C. “The results from Mount Milligan Mine are very encouraging,” said Ray Lett, the BC Geological Survey emeritus scientist who developed the device and is lead author on the recent study. “The correlation of carbon dioxide and oxygen anomalies with observed fractures and potentially mineralized faults,
combined with the ability to give reliable, real-time data demonstrates a tangible benefit to the mineral exploration sector.” “Soil gas testing can help geologists to identify potential mineral deposits when this mineralization is buried beneath sediments such as glacial deposits, and the new device saves the need to send gas samples to laboratories for analysis,” says GeoscienceBC. “This research demonstrates an innovative and costeffective technique to support exploration for critical minerals in areas of B.C. and beyond that may host undiscovered mineral deposits,” said Geoscience BC vice president of minerals Christa Pellett.
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The future of agriculture: B.C. farmers, ranchers move to curb carbon emissions Stefan Labbé /Glacier Media
High in the rolling foothills southwest of Merritt, B.C., Julia Smith saddles her horse a couple of hours after first light. By 8 a.m., she rides off her 8.5-hectare, off-grid ranch to meet a half dozen neighbours on horseback and round up cattle. It’s a rhythm that has played out uninterrupted for over 100 years in this valley but one that has faced increasing pressure in recent years as wildfire, flooding and heat threaten ranchers’ livelihoods. Last summer, wildfire tore through the Bar FX Ranch, where Smith winters her cattle.
“The whole thing burned up. It was devastating. They lost 20 per cent of their herd,” Smith said. Then in November, historic floods rocked the town of Merritt, leading to the evacuation of 7,000 residents. Up the valley at the ranch, the rising water swallowed over six hectares. Like many nearby First Nation reserves, the land is just gone. “We’ve definitely been on the front lines of the effects of climate change,” Smith said. “As a community, we sure can’t deny it.”
In 2021, the toll of extreme weather on B.C.’s farm animals and the food they produce was steep: roughly 1.3 million farm animals cooked to death during the June heat dome or drowned in the November floods. But where some see only loss, others see an opportunity to do things better. For ranchers like Smith, it’s a chance to build on thousands of years of human ingenuity to lower the industry’s carbon footprint, while building a more secure food supply that can withstand the shocks of climate change. From extreme weather to wildfire and drought, climate-driven disasters are increasingly pushing farmers in Canada to seek out new relationships with their land and the food they grow. That’s especially important as traditional sources of out-ofprovince fresh food, such as the western United States, face a confluence of drought not seen in 1,200 years and a growing wildfire crisis. “We’re at the 11th hour,” said Kent Mullinix, director of Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s Institute for Sustainable Food Systems. “We have been so remiss in curtailing GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, it
is inevitable that many of these major food production areas around the world, including California, will face significant collapse.” “California might not even be able to rely on California.” A longtime advocate calling on B.C. to create a regional food system, Mullinix says if more small producers grow a bigger variety of food, the province will have a better chance of withstanding the shocks of a pandemic, drought and flooding. If several dozen farms fail, the reasoning goes, the system holds together. Meanwhile, food is sold directly to local consumers without a middleman taking a cut. Small producers say that increases the quality of food, gives animals a chance at a dignified life and puts more money in the pockets of ranchers and farmers. Properly supported, it could also lower the costs of food — both for consumers and the future of the planet’s climate system. But first, small-scale farmers and ranchers need some help. A PATH TO SUSTAINABLE FARMING Last Monday, 20,000 farmers
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Julia Smith moves cattle in the rangelands near Merritt, B.C. (Julia Smith submitted photo) INDUSTRY & TRADES | SUMMER/FALL 2022
The future of agriculture
released a road map for sustainable farming in Canada, calling for an “ambitious, system-wide approach” to curb carbon emissions and enhance the country’s food security. At a cost of $2.1 billion, the plan would boost funding to help small-scale producers get their products to market, according to the Farmers for Climate Solutions (FCS) report. In Canada, farming currently produces an estimated 12 per cent of the country’s total emissions. If carried out, the FCS plan would drop those emissions 14 per cent by 2028.
That means reducing or absorbing 16.2 million tonnes of CO2 from Canada’s annual carbon budget, more carbon than was emitted from the country’s entire petroleum refining industry in 2020. The report comes as the federal government prepares to negotiate its priorities for the agriculture sector over the next five years. On July 20, multiple levels of government will begin developing a new Agricultural Policy Framework, which will govern spending across Canada until 2028.
As Saskatchewan oil seed producer Cameron Goff put it, governments will be deciding on nothing less than “the future of agriculture” in Canada. “If we want to have a fighting chance at tackling climate change, we need to get everyone on board to implement these solutions,” he said. What does that look like? Glacier Media spoke to three small-scale food producers in British Columbia to understand how they are doing things differently. THE RANCHER For Smith, it started with hogs. A decade ago she rented out a scrappy patch of land in the City of Burnaby under the banner “Urban Digs.” The pasture-raised animals quickly became popular, and Smith realized she needed more space and less rain. So she moved the operation to “this really old-school ranching community” three hours up the
Fraser Valley outside Merritt. That was seven years ago. Today, Smith and her partner usually raise a team of about 60 hogs and 20 heads of cattle at Blue Sky Ranch. Big ranches rely on volume — raising a large number of animals by letting cattle roam freely across the range and selling calves in the fall for small margins. Smith, on the other hand, focuses on quality over quantity. To do that, both the animals and ranchers are always moving. In the winter, Smith sends their cattle down valley where it’s warmer. In the summer, the community of small-scale ranchers drive the cattle between portable fences in an endless cycle that gives the animals access to new patches of grass across the 44,000 hectares of rangeland surrounding the ranch. That way, the cows don’t overgraze one paddock and destroy cont.on p12
Julia Smith crosses a river outside of Merritt with her ranching neighbours. (Julia Smith submitted photo)
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WE LIFT & HAUL A11
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The future of agriculture
cont. from p9
Even the staunchest climate change denier is suddenly interested in, ‘What can I do to reduce my fertilizer needs?’
the carbon-capturing abilities of the soil. Instead, when a cow takes a bite of grass, its roots slough off, depositing photosynthesized carbon dioxide into the soil in layer after layer of storage. In just a few years, Smith says the rotational grazing practice transformed her 8.5-hectare property from a relatively unproductive area to a lush pasture. That’s important in an arid, windy region of the province, where without grass, the soil could easily get swept away. “We couldn’t even keep our one dairy cow out there for very long,” Smith said. On the range, the small-scale ranchers do the same thing, only on a much larger scale. What the animals eat matters too. Moving the animals in contained areas allows the rest of the range to recover and develop key legumes like sainfoin, clover and birdsfoot trefoil. A range planted with one-third of those legumes has proven to drop methane emissions from
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cow burbs — a powerful source of greenhouse gas — by more than 10 per cent, according to the farmer-led FCS report. Planting legumes also fixes atmospheric nitrogen into the soil. Together with the cattle manure deposited over the range year-round, the legumes reduce the need for expensive artificial fertilizers known for releasing nitrous oxide emissions — another greenhouse gas. With inflation and rising fuel costs leading to an increase in the price of almost everything, that’s leading to some unlikely converts, says Smith. “Even the staunchest climate change denier is suddenly interested in, ‘What can I do to reduce my fertilizer needs?’” said Smith. The benefits of rotational grazing extend beyond the climate. Ranchers who deploy the practice have also found it improves animal health, reduces parasites and increases biodiversity at a time the world is facing steep declines. It’s all part of a growing regenerative farming movement, which seeks to maximize quality food production while maintaining topsoil, increasing wildlife and improving water quality. In short, says, Smith, “it really is part of the climate change story.” Transitioning commercial ranches into something more sustainable doesn’t come without barriers. One is finding people willing to work long, hard days.
It takes more people to move modular fencing around than it does to release animals out in a big field, Smith said. Then there’s competition with the ongoing construction of the Trans Mountain oil pipeline extension. “You can just go work on the pipeline for $46 an hour,” said Smith. The biggest challenge, however, is what Smith describes as the “cut and wrap problem.” Commercial ranches usually send their animals to feedlots where they spend the last six months of their lives being fed large quantities of grain-rich feed. While the production of that feed is itself driving deforestation in places like the Amazon rainforest, the system also gives big producers preferential access to slaughterhouses, or abattoirs, where animals are killed, bled, cleaned and dressed. In the first survey of its kind, B.C.’s Small Scale Meat Producers Association — which Smith founded in 2017 — polled 708 operations across the province. The results, released in April, found that many small-scale meat producers were “desperate” to scale up their operations to satisfy demand for highquality, local meat. Smith, who puts her meat up for sale directly to consumers on her website, says she usually sells out within six minutes. Still, without scaling up, paying off the bills can be hard for many ranchers.
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Josh Brown of Similkameen Nurseries plants 18 cover crops on his Cawston, B.C., land, a practice that helps boost biodiversity and soil health while reducing carbon emissions. (Josh Brown submitted photo) INDUSTRY & TRADES | SUMMER/FALL 2022
The future of agriculture
“We see overwhelmingly people are supporting their ranches with off-farm income,” she said. A combination of land speculation, rising operating costs and climate-driven natural disasters have all put pressure on ranchers, notes the study. But a bottleneck on meat processing facilities is the most pressing obstacle to scaling up. To fix that problem, Smith and her fellow small-scale ranchers in the Nicola Valley have started to build a local co-operativerun abattoir near Merritt. With funding from the B.C. government, it’s expected to be completed by 2024. Add more local abattoirs, and Canada could see a boom in small-scale ranchers, say advocates, all while taking a cut out of the country’s cattle emissions. “We have huge consumer demand for these products. It’s just been a matter of being able to scale our operations to a point where we can meet that
demand,” said Smith. “This is the key to pivoting the cattle industry here to make it more sustainable, both financially and environmentally.” According to the FCS report, changing the way livestock is managed is the fastest and cheapest way the agricultural sector can reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and could shed over a quarter of the report’s planned emissions reductions at a cost of $7 per tonne. Part of that funding would help support a Canada-wide grazing management plan and help back infrastructure costs to farmers so they access portable fencing and water. As Smith put it, “We just need to get over this hump. We have a lot of potential here.” THE NURSERYMAN Josh Brown’s organic farm is an oasis of fruit trees and fallow fields that lay nestled in Cawston, B.C. — “the coolest little farm town,” as Brown describes it. “[The town is] still very much
centred around farming. It hasn’t become overly developed,” Brown said. “There’s still tractors driving up and down the road. And when it’s harvest time, you can feel it.” Tucked between the U.S. border and the southern end of Okanagan Lake, Brown’s nearly eight-year-old garden nursery is named after the Similkameen River, which snakes across its western border. Here, Brown grows an assortment of fruit trees, including
apple, plum, nectarine, peach and cherry. The nursery supplies tens of thousands of young trees to backyard gardeners and landscapers across the region, making it the second-largest nursery of its kind in the province, according to Brown. Brown, who studied environmental geography and economics in Toronto before moving to the Similkameen Valley 15 years ago, said he came into farming with an understanding
Annelise Grube-Cavers on her farm and ranch near Armstrong, B.C. (Annelise Grube-Cavers handout photo)
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The future of agriculture
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of environmental issues and has integrated this into his own “1,000-year soil” farming philosophy. The idea, he says, is simple: continue growing healthy crops year in, year out for the next 1,000 years. But in his eight years of farming, Brown says that vision can quickly get derailed by unreliable growing conditions made increasingly volatile under a changing climate. “It’s impossible not to notice,” he said, pointing to bigger swings in weather and flood threats. “[Farmers] don’t have the luxury of, in the middle of a torrential downpour, just driving into an underground parking garage and hanging out in an office.” At Similkameen Nurseries, Brown said he is focused on preserving his “little chunk of land,” its carbon sequestration capabilities and natural biome for years to come. To do so, he has turned to
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a practice known as cover cropping. Josh Brown of Similkameen Nurseries plants 18 cover crops on his Cawston, B.C., land, a practice that helps boost biodiversity and soil health while reducing carbon emissions. Courtesy Josh Brown Instead of planting for harvest, a cover crop boosts soil fertility and soil health. It’s one of several recommendations put forward in the Farmers for Climate Solutions report. Farmers have long left fields fallow to regenerate. But planting cover crops takes that practice to the next level, upping the land’s ability to absorb carbon, limit erosion, retain moisture and improve soil structure and biodiversity. At a cost of $81 per tonne, cover crops could “catch” nitrogen not used in the soil and that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere as nitrous oxide, found the FCS report. If widely implemented alongside ‘intercropping’ — planting nitrogen-fixing legumes next to regular crops — the practice could allow Canadian farms to absorb up to 4.3 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, says the report. Like rotational grazing, Brown’s 18 different cover crops — including barley, oats, fava beans, winter peas and radish — provide a variety of spin-off benefits. It also makes the land a nice place to just be, says Brown. “You walk through our cover crop and it’s the most lush, beautiful… there’s a ton of stuff growing,” he said. Aside from letting his fields grow wild once in a while, Brown also tries to preserve the streams, ponds and wetlands on his farm. Such environments are powerful carbon sinks, and can also provide shade and shelter for livestock — not to mention people. Brown points to a “beautiful big willow tree” growing in the middle of their fields “where we have lunch.” Despite their proven success,
Brown acknowledges planting more cover crops across the country could be a challenge. “All this stuff costs money,” he said. “It’s a constant expense.” Some farmers might see fallow land as a waste; seeds for the cover crop species can be expensive, as are irrigation and the labour required to prepare fields. And in the Canadian Prairies, short growing seasons and low soil moisture levels make it especially difficult to sow cover crops, notes the farmerled report. Still, Brown says it’s clear the practice pays off, both for the land and the planet. Through funding and education, Brown said he hopes the government can help farmers get over the initial expensive hurdles. “It might be expensive to do it. But I would say that it’s far less expensive than other ways that we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” he said. THE EVERYTHING FARMER About 150 kilometres up the Okanagan Valley, Fresh Valley Farms sits in the shadow of Silver Star Mountain. Just outside the town of Armstrong, B.C., Annelise Grube-Cavers and her partner, Steve, have operated the farm for the past decade. A fourth-generation farmer, Steve’s family still lives a kilometre down the road on farmland they bought 100 years ago. Together, Annelise and Steve raise pasture-raised beef, pork, chicken and turkey. The farm also houses a small abattoir where they slaughter their own livestock and was recently approved to cut and wrap its own red meat. “It’s like farm to table,” GrubeCavers said. “We sell direct to consumers who purchase from us.” In recent years, however, she has had to explain to her customers how the changing climate is affecting the health of her livestock. Last summer’s heat dome killed at least 651,000 poultry; for Grube-Cavers, the extreme INDUSTRY & TRADES | SUMMER/FALL 2022
“
The more different farmers start to advocate for those practices… I think the more farmers will pick up on them
The future of agriculture
temperatures stunted her birds’ growth. “Just like any animal, you’re not eating a ton when it’s 45 degrees out,” she said. “So that’s a pretty dramatic and immediate impact.” To dampen the effects of extreme heat, Grube-Cavers turned to rotational grazing, just like Smith. The benefits to the land and its productivity are already evident, says the Armstrong farmer. “We can look out in our field and see where we rotated turkeys and chickens last year, because you can see… how their manure was spread across the field and the deeper green foliage that’s there,” she said. Annelise Grube-Cavers on her farm and ranch near Armstrong, B.C. Courtesy Annelise Grube-Cavers On feedlots, keeping cows inside over the winter leads to big piles of stored manure, itself a source of emissions.
On pasture, cow patties and poultry poop act like fertilizer, absorbing into the ground and stimulating further plant and animal growth. In addition to rotational grazing and growing more cover crops, the farmer-led report found minimizing synthetic nitrogen-based fertilizers could cut 3.8 million tonnes of carbon from Canada’s carbon budget by 2028. That’s equivalent to roughly a third of New Brunswick’s entire emission output in 2020. Properly treated manure, suggests the report, is a good alternative, and Grube-Cavers is well-positioned to integrate her manure-producing livestock with crops. For example, she knows that covering liquid manure tanks prevents methane emissions. But just like Smith and Brown, cost is limiting the Armstrong farmer from ramping up all the sustainable farming practices open to her.
At the top of her wish list is a No-Till drill. Designed to plant seeds without eroding the soil, the price of this “essential piece of technology” is holding Grube-Cavers back from implementing even more climate-friendly practices at Fresh Valley Farms, such as cover cropping. While she awaits the federal government’s decision on what the next five years of funding will look like across Canada’s agricultural sector, Grube-Cavers said she’s relying on other farmers — in farmers institutes or fall fairs — to get the word out about climate-friendly farming solutions. “The more different farmers start to advocate for those practices… I think the more farmers will pick up on them,” she said.
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Hydrogen, natural gas touted as allies, not rivals HTEC CEO Colin Armstrong: (Chung Chow photo) Nelson Bennett/ Glacier Media
At a session on hydrogen at May’s Canada Gas and LNG Conference, one panellist raised a question that was probably on the minds of a few attendees. “What are we doing here?” asked Gary Schubak, vice-president of business development for Ekona Power. Ekona is the Burnaby company
that’s commercializing a methane pyrolysis process for producing clean hydrogen from natural gas without requiring carbon capture and storage. The process produces hydrogen and solid carbon, which is easier to dispose of or use than gaseous CO2, since it requires no geological sequestration. As the discussion progressed,
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it was stressed that hydrogen should seen as a future fuel that doesn’t threaten the legacy natural gas and liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry so much as complements it in a way that will allow fossil fuel industries to diversify and transition from producing one low-carbon fuel (natural gas) to an even-lowercarbon fuel (hydrogen). “I think we’re all firm believers that natural gas and hydrogen and LNG need to work together,” said Colin Armstrong, CEO of HTEC, which specializes in hydrogen production, distribution and fueling infrastructure. Hydrogen is an important decarbonization fuel because of its flexibility. Without producing CO2 emissions, it can power hydrogen fuel cells, either for vehicles or stationary power, and can also be burned in industrial processes, like steelmaking, and in transportation. It can also be blended with pipeline natural gas to reduce its emissions intensity. And when it is produced with wind or solar power through electrolysis (green hydrogen), it can solve the energy storage problem that intermittent wind and solar power have, since the hydrogen produced can be stored – and transported – to power fuel cells to produce electricity when it’s needed. Schubak said there are certain sectors – aviation, shipping and some heavy industries – that will never be able to fully electrify.
“We need chemical fuels in this society,” he said. “Natural gas has become really the leading chemical fuel in our society, and the real challenge is decarbonizing its delivery for heat, power and chemical feedstocks. Hydrogen is really the vector to do that, so decarbonizing natural gas and hydrogen delivery are the same story. “I think there’s tremendous synergy between natural gas and hydrogen as energy carriers,” Schubak said. “I think leveraging existing infrastructure is the key to going fast. What we want to do in Ekona is build off of our existing natural gas infrastructure. And we have a wonderful infrastructure that’s taken decades to build.” Matthew Klippenstein, moderator and regional manager of the Canadian Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association, suggested legacy infrastructure – pipelines, storage, fuelling, LNG carriers – could eventually be used for hydrogen, which can also be a zero-carbon drop-in fuel for internal combustion engine vehicles without having to replace the engines. Natural gas will likely be the main feedstock for producing hydrogen in Western Canada. Not surprisingly, oil and gas companies accounted for the lion’s share of the $79 million in Series A funding that Ekona raised earlier this year. “They’ve invested in our INDUSTRY & TRADES | SUMMER/FALL 2022
“
I think we’re all firm believers that natural gas and hydrogen and LNG need to work together.
company because they see the technology as something that protects their business interests and, more than that, allows them to be a player in a decarbonization story,” Schuback said. “I believe natural gas is the most abundant and low-cost feedstock for hydrogen that we have in North America, and that we should exercise every bit of technology to exploit that resource.” Most hydrogen production in Alberta is expected to be “blue” – hydrogen made from natural gas through steam methane reforming, with the carbon captured and sequestered. “Alberta’s enormous natural gas reserves and potential for CCUS (carbon capture utilization and storage) means we are positioned to be one of the lowest cost, clean hydrogen producing regions in the world,” said Dale Nally, Alberta’s associate minister of natural gas. “Whenever I say that, people always say ‘Great, who has the cheapest?’ The answer to that is Russia.” Alberta not only has abundant natural gas, it also has both the geological sequestration capacity and dedicated CO2 pipeline infrastructure needed for large scale CCUS. Schuback said natural gas with CCUS is “a great way” to make hydrogen. But not every jurisdiction has Alberta’s CCUS advantages, which is where Ekona’s solution comes in. It can be installed anywhere that has a natural gas supply. An LNG receiving and regasification terminal in Japan or South Korea, for example, could install a methane pyrolysis SUMMER/FALL 2022 | INDUSTRY & TRADES
processor to then use the natural gas to make hydrogen and solid carbon. “We don’t need to scrap or move away from our existing LNG infrastructure,” Schubak said. Nor do trucking fleet owners looking to decarbonize heavyduty diesel trucks need to scrap entire fleets and replace them with hydrogen fuel cell trucks, because hydrogen can also be cocombusted with diesel and other fuels. Hydra Energy has developed a business model in which it covers the cost of converting diesel truck engines to burn diesel and hydrogen in exchange for hydrogen fuel supply contracts. This co-combustion technology allows fleet owners to displace 40 per cent of the diesel burned in heavy-duty trucks, with only minor modifications to engines. “Next year we will offer a solution that is 50-50,” said Laura Guzman, Hydra Energy’s director of government affairs. She added that LNG carriers could be converted to run on hydrogen, or even transport it, possibly in the form of ammonia, which is an ideal carrier for hydrogen, bbecause it can be easily shipped and then “decomposed” into hydrogen and nitrogen. The B.C. government is betting big on the hydrogen economy as a way to reduce domestic emissions and capitalize on what is expected to be a multibilliondollar export market. Last year it developed a hydrogen strategy aimed at building a hydrogen supply chain. “Hydrogen alone has the potential to reduce the province’s emissions by over 30 per cent of the 2050 CleanBC target,” Bruce Ralston, minister of Energy, Mines and Low Carbon Innovation, said at an earlier session at last week’s conference. “There are approximately 40 hydrogen projects currently proposed or under construction in British Columbia, and the number is growing,” Ralston said. “These projects represent more than $5 billion in proposed investment in British Columbia.”
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