How Parkland is Driving Towards a Net Zero Future

Parkland Corporation, a provider of oil and petroleum products across North American and the Caribbean, says it is the first company in North America to co-process bio-feedstocks such as canola and tallow (animal fats) alongside crude to make renewable gasoline and diesel.

The result is a fuel that is identical to conventional gas and diesel but with a markedly reduced carbon intensity. They’re also exploring how to incorporate wastewater biomass and tall oil (a forestry by-product) into their refining operations to create a new generation of biofuels.

“It’s an exciting time as we work out how to reduce our own impact and help our customers reduce their impact as well,” says Christy Elliott, Chief Sustainability Officer, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, Parkland Corporation.

The company supplies over 21 billion litres of petroleum products annually to communities in Canada, the United States, and the Caribbean.  It has a refinery in Burnaby, BC and operates nearly two thousand convenience stores across Canada alone under well-known brands like Pioneer, Ultramar, Fas Gas Plus, Chevron, and On the Run / Marché Express.

In its latest sustainability report the company says that it aims to help customers reduce their GHG emissions by up to 1MT a year by 2026 through increased production of low-carbon fuels - the equivalent of taking over 350,000 cars off the road.

In this interview, Elliott discusses sustainability at Parkland, describes how her company is helping customers to reduce their emissions, and explains why she believes that biofuels are essential to the energy transition.

Diana Davis, Oil and Gas IQ: What does sustainability means to you at Parkland?

Christy Elliot, Parkland: For us, sustainability means providing the products and services that our customers need in the most the most responsible way that we can. It is a responsibility we have to our customers, our employees, and the communities in which we operate. Not only is it about environmental sustainability, it is also about safety and having integrity in everything that we do.

Diana Davis, Oil and Gas IQ: Many companies are focused on reducing their carbon emissions in line with Canada’s net zero ambitions. How are you operationalizing your commitments to reduce scope one and scope two emissions at Parkland?

Christy Elliot, Parkland: Parkland’s business is quite diverse, so different sides of the business are attacking the problem slightly differently.

On the retail side, we are looking at solar, wind, and heat pumps and other ways to increase energy efficiency at our sites. These may be included in our new sites or retrofitted to existing sites.

On the commercial side of our business, we are looking at using renewable fuels and biofuels in our delivery trucks to make our operations as low emission as we possibly can.

We are also focusing on making our refinery as energy efficient as possible. This is naturally a more challenging environment to reduce emissions, especially considering the smaller size of our plant.

We are also focused on helping our customers reduce their emissions. One of our goals is helping our customers reduce their emissions by 1MT per year by 2026. This is a very material reduction - the equivalent on taking 350,000 cars off the road a year - which we are looking to achieve through manufacturing renewable fuels at our refinery.

We were the first refinery in North America to co-process bio-feedstocks such as canola oil and tallow (animal fats) through existing refinery infrastructure and expertise. We are co-processing these bio-feedstocks alongside crude to make renewable gasoline and diesel. The product is identical to the gasoline and diesel that we would normally produce but has one eighth of the carbon intensity (CI) of conventional gasoline and diesel. This is something we are very proud of.

In 2021 alone, we achieved the equivalent of taking over 70,000 cars off the road through co-processing. That is a material reduction. What’s also interesting is that anyone who has filled up at a Chevron site in Vancouver in the past few years has likely been filling up with gasoline and diesel with renewable content.We are planning to expand the scope of that program and looking towards second-generation bio-feedstocks. This includes tall oil, which is derived from forest residue, and a partnership with Metro Vancouver exploring the use of wastewater biomass that has been converted into biocrude for co-processing.

Notably, many of these inputs are waste products. That allows us to create fuels as part of a circular economy that supports the low-carbon transition. This is not only better for the planet, but it is also better for us to have optionality with respect to bio-feedstocks.

Our biofuels work is something we are really excited about, but we have other projects too.

One example is our solar projects going on in the Caribbean. We are installing state-of-the-art solar photovoltaic (PV) systems on many of our retail sites in that region. Not only do they power our retail sites, but we are able to put excess power back into the local grid.

It is an exciting time as we work out how to reduce our own impact and help our customers reduce their impact as well.

Diana Davis, Oil and Gas IQ: One challenge that many in the industry are struggling with is how to reduce scope three emissions. What do you think it will take to reduce scope 3 emissions?

Christy Elliott, Parkland: The question we ask ourselves every day is how can we reduce the environmental impact during a transition towards more EVs in the vehicle fleet?

We focus on renewable fuels because they do not require a change to infrastructure or consumer behaviour; they can be used in existing vehicles and fleets without modification. Few people get a new car often, so how can we reduce the impact of those conventional vehicles that are going to be on the road for quite some time?

In addition to that, renewable fuels help us make a positive impact on those sectors that are harder to electrify such as aviation, marine, and long-haul trucking.

From our perspective, the way that we can contribute the most is to help reduce the impact in the areas that cannot be electrified in the short or medium term.

Diana Davis, Oil and Gas IQ: Is there a tradeoff between short-term profitability and these long-term sustainability goals?

Christy J. Elliott, Parkland: They support each other. We are a business, so naturally we are not going to do something that does not have returns because we have obligations to our shareholders.

That said, we are doing it not only because we think it is the right thing to do. We think it is the future and we think there is huge opportunity in the energy transition. That is why we are leaning into it so hard.

Everything that we are doing has returns and is valuable to our business.

As an organization, we are committed to being nimble. Nobody knows what this is going to look like in 15 years. We need to be able to move quickly to take advantage of emerging opportunities, and to respond to what our customers need in different geographies and markets.

Our goal is to give our customers what they need, and we are confident that if we are serving our customers well, our returns are going to be there.

Diana Davis, Oil and Gas IQ: What skills and capabilities do you think companies like yours will need in the coming years to make decarbonization a reality?

Christy Elliot, Parkland: Creativity. You need to be open-minded in terms of what the future is going to look like and not married to one vision of the future.

Digital is also key. That is how we can best learn what our customers need, what our customers are looking for, and how to best serve them.

Then, on the renewable fuels side, we need technical expertise on refining and bio-feedstocks.

Diana Davis, Oil and Gas IQ: What's on your agenda at Parkland in the year ahead?

Christy J. Elliott, Parkland: We are launching the largest network by site count of super-fast EV chargers in British Columbia. The province is the ‘California of Canada;’ it is where most EVs are in Canada.

We see this as something our customers really need and as a great learning opportunity for us to see how to serve our customers better in the future.

We are also increasing our co-processing volumes – something we do every year.

Finally, we are taking steps to achieve our GHG reduction targets that we set in our in our latest sustainability report.

Interested in learning more about this topic?

Christy Elliott will be speaking on Parkland’s decarbonization journey in more detail at our upcoming Operational Excellence in Energy, Chemicals & Resources Summit in Calgary, Alberta. Now in its 9th year, summit brings together 200 senior level executives to the BMO Center May 30- June 1, 2022. Global industry innovators will share their own transformation journey and how they are tooling their operations up for the net zero future. Find out more about the event here.