ABOUT THIS EPISODE

What makes Alberta’s Industrial Heartland one of the world’s most integrated industrial clusters? Mark Plamondon, AIHA Executive Director, and Chris Malayney, AIHA Director of Business Development, explore how the region northeast of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada grew from open fields in the 1950s into a $50-billion industrial cluster, and what is driving its next phase of growth.

They explore the competitive advantages that have attracted investment for decades, including access to natural gas and other feedstocks, industrial land, water, rail and pipeline infrastructure, a skilled workforce and a strong foundation of shared infrastructure.

The conversation also looks at what is being built next, from petrochemicals, fractionation, and carbon capture to hydrogen, data centres, critical minerals, and emerging clean-fuel opportunities.

At the centre of it all is the power of clustering: when infrastructure, expertise, feedstocks, and industrial facilities come together, one project can create opportunities for the next.

What began in the 1950s as an industrial cluster built around Alberta’s natural resources is continuing to evolve, creating new opportunities for investment and growth.

TRANSCRIPT

This transcript has been edited for clarity while retaining the original conversation.

Mark: Most people think of Canada and Alberta as an energy producer. What they miss is that there is a concentrated region northeast of Edmonton in Western Canada. You’ve got one of the most integrated industrial ecosystems in the world with refining, petrochemicals, hydrogen, critical minerals, data centers, carbon capture, logistics, all operating side by side.

Welcome to Built Here, the podcast from Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. I’m Mark Plamondon, Executive Director of Alberta’s Industrial Heartland Association. I’m joined with me here the Director of Business Development for Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, Chris Malayney. Hey Chris.

Chris: Hi Mark. Glad to be here.

Mark: Chris, we’re here to talk about Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. In today’s episode, we want to talk generally about the Industrial Heartland, why it’s here, competitive advantages, the types of companies that are operating here. I’m really looking forward to this conversation. I think it’s going to be insightful for our listeners. So why don’t we start with what exactly is Alberta’s Industrial Heartland? So you’ve been here eight years, and I’ve been here nine and change. So, we’ve got the most tenure here in the Association. We are funded by five municipalities: City of Edmonton, City of Fort Saskatchewan, Strathcona, Sturgeon, and Lamont counties. They fund our Association, and they’re funding us primarily as the economic development agency for Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. So we are out in the world talking to companies about where their next capital projects make sense.

Chris: A lot of people think of it being a concept, but it’s really a geographical location northeast of Edmonton, a pre-zoned heavy industrial cluster that intersects five municipalities. So when we’re talking about the Heartland, we’re talking about a physical location within the province of Alberta

Mark: So we represent the municipalities in this geographical area that we’ve branded Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. And it is Canada’s largest hydrocarbon processing region. Currently there’s over $50 billion of capital assets in the ground today. And that $50 billion is the capital that’s been invested over time. That’s the book value of those initial investments. It is not the replacement value. If you were to replace the assets in the heartland today, it would be substantially higher than that. So this is a bona fide industrial cluster that is upgrading the natural resources, particularly the oil and gas resources in Western Canada, and upgrading it to value add products that are exported outside of the region and outside of Alberta and outside of Canada. But maybe we should go back to the beginning and just talk about initially why it even started here in the first place.

Chris: That makes a lot of sense. And I mean, we’ve had assets in the region going back to the 1950s. Largescale manufacturing goes back to the 1950s and it was built around some key competitive factors which still exist today. Primarily, it was around access to natural gas and water. And this goes back to Sherritt’s operations when they set up their nickel cobalt refinery within the region.

Mark: The first industrial asset in this region was, at that time, Sherritt Gordon Mines. And they they came to this region for similar reasons that we have today. Back then, they wanted access to cheap natural gas and they needed access to fresh water, as you mentioned. And because it’s a high hydrometallurgical refining operation that uses an ammonia leach process, which needs ammonia, they needed cheap gas, they needed access to fresh water. So that was the first facility in the 1950s, but, from there, the cluster just grew, right? Dow was next.

Chris: As you mentioned, the program is around attracting new investments, and is built around what are our competitive advantages. Like a lot of jurisdictions want to be everything to everyone. We try to really build a program around where do we have a strategic advantage relative to other jurisdictions. So, when we’re working with companies, it’s “Why build it here?” versus our competing jurisdictions, which could be the US Gulf Coast, could be the Middle East, it could be Europe, it could be Southeast Asia, it could be anywhere. Largely these companies are indifferent where these build these projects. They’re just looking for the best return on their capital. So, when we’re looking at projects, we’re looking at what are our key advantages, why would a company come here? Where do we have that economic mote or these key competitive advantage factors to actually bring companies in? And it’s largely built around our cheap resources. Western Canada, Alberta’s been blessed with oil, gas, natural gas liquids, as well as other raw inputs which do put us at a very competitive advantage. So we’re working trying to find those companies that will take those as primary feedstocks or utilities and and see the benefits through basically reduced operating costs over the lifespan of their project, making them competitive with these alternatives around the world.

Mark: Growth in the region has stemmed from exactly what you’ve just said. Companies coming here to take advantage of the competitive advantages that are here. So, looking back again, Sherrett was first, Dow was next. Not only did they have access to cheap ethane, they also had access to high-quality salt. Because, at that time, they needed salt for their process. Fresh water. So, then, Dow was next. And the the Industrial Heartland grew from there, building off those competitive advantages that we talked about. Access to abundant low-cost feedstocks, whether that’s natural gas or natural gas liquids, access to fresh water. And then as a cluster built up, the industrial skill set, rail, obviously proximity to class two Class 1 railways, both CN and CPKC operate here. So there’s strong access to the East Coast, West Coast, Gulf Coast, all the way down to Mexico, if needed.

One thing that we haven’t talked about is the abundance of flat, pre-zoned heavy industrial land that is competitively priced. Land here is not expensive. So, you put this all together and you start to build a cluster that we’ve seen build up since the 1950s. So we’ve gone from in the 1950s, basically open fields, to well above $50 billion in assets, and we’re on a tremendous growth trajectory right now that we’ll be happy to talk about later.

Chris: And a lot of that work took leadership from those who started up the Association and setting up a plan to attract heavy industrial development. So, setting aside land, buying land, opening up land for availability so that you can have companies come in and have a simplified process to constructing. And, in addition to all that, it’s the social license in this region for investment. You don’t get opposition to projects. You have largely a work base that’s located in the greater Edmonton region. So, you have people going home at the end of the night, they’re not out in work camps. There’s a lot of drive because people want to see the jobs here and the communities want to see the the companies move in this area because of all the economic benefit they bring.

Mark: That’s a really good point. I think what we found in the time that we’ve been with the Heartland Association is there’s very strong social license, very strong community support for growth and development in the Heartland, recognizing that the municipalities did put that effort in to identify this region as a heavy industrial growth region. The area structure plans were developed as a result or with that intent. And what we have here, since 1999 when AIHA was stood up, is a very focused growth of the heavy industrial cluster that is benefitting the region, the province, and the country. And, part of that community support and social license is that recognition of the economic benefits, the economic activity, the jobs that all come with the industrial growth that is happening here.

So, we can talk about growth here and what’s going on, but let’s let’s not go there yet. Let’s give our listeners a little bit more background of the types of projects, types of companies that are operating here, the types of products that are produced here.

Chris: Largely, we cut up the companies that are operating here into three buckets generally. There’s the hydrocarbon processing, and that’s generally starting with either bitumen or crude oil and going to refined fuels. Then, you’ve got the chemicals, petrochemicals, and fertilizer space, which is generally taking natural gas or natural gas liquids and upgrading those into higher valued products. You also have midstream infrastructure, which is largely the fractionation or the processing of natural gas within the region to make products like ethane, propane, and butane which either go direct to consumer and markets or get further upgraded into higher value products. And then you’ve got a diversification and some infrastructure play, which is all the support services that that support industry, whether it be rail or industrial gases, to support the industrial activity. And then a slate of projects, which deem as diversification, which would be companies like Sherritt that are taking kind of non-hydrocarbon-based products and upgrading those into higher value products like nickel, cobalt, and some specialty chemicals like hydrogen peroxide.

We can go a little bit deeper here on generally where the largest activity’s been to date. Alberta’s Industrial Heartland is essentially the cluster for crude oil processing. So as many people note, you’re extracting bitumen and crude oil from around Western Canada, primarily Alberta, and then you’re delivering it to this region to get refined or exported. So, we’ve got within the Greater Edmonton region, four refineries operating, being Imperial, Suncor, NWR, as well as Shell. So, those are starting from either bitumen or crude oil and going to refined fuels, which serve a variety of markets, whether it be in Canada or exported into the US.

When you look at the natural gas, it’s worth stepping back in what is the natural gas industry. Essentially, when you’re out in the field, you produce a natural gas. Whether you’re going for it directly or going for products like condensate, you get natural gas, but that’s got a variety of constituents, which are ethane, propane, butane, which are what we refer to as natural gas liquids (NGLs). So a product like propane, most people know what that is, it goes into your barbecue, but it can go into other applications, other chemical processes to be higher value add. So, when we look at that value chain, referred to as the C3 value chain, we’ve got a company, Inter Pipeline, and they’re taking propane to produce propylene, which is an olefin, and then essentially polypropylene, which is a plastic resin. When you look at the large activity through Dow, which you mentioned before, they start with ethane, which is another natural gas liquid. They extract the ethane from the stream, or the midstream players extract ethane, and provide it to Dow. It gets upgraded to ethylene and then polyethylene, another plastic resin, as well as they produce with some of their partners ethylene glycol. So, there’s a variety of applications, and ethylene is kind of the starting building block for when you talk about generic petrochemicals. When you look at pure natural gas, this goes into larger in this region it goes into fertilizer production.

Mark: Methane, I guess.

Chris: Primarily methane. Natural gas and methane, I kind of used interchangeably. But, for this case, we’re talking about not just the NGL feedstocks. So, a natural gas or methane would go into the large player in our region would be Nutrien, who’s got two different sites producing fertilizers, whether it be ammonia, urea, or ammonium sulfate.

Mark: So we’ve got refineries producing your fuels. So, your gasolines, your diesels, your jet fuels, basically your transportation fuels. We’ve got our petrochemical facilities, which are producing derivatives from ethane and propane primarily. So, ethane through to your various derivatives of ethylene, polyethylene, and propane through to propylene and polypropylene. You’ve got fertilizers, as you mentioned. Then, we’ve got a wide variety of of more diversified products.

We didn’t talk about hydrogen peroxide, but Evonik has a plant here producing hydrogen peroxide, right?

Chris: Yes, and really the backbone to all this, too, is the natural gas liquid fractionation within the region. Anytime you talk about NGLs, essentially you’re out in the field, you produce a natural gas slurry that’s got ethane, propane, butane, and condensate. The condensates generally go into the oil sands to help move bitumen. But, then, that mixture of liquids, often referred to as Y-grade, it comes into this region and it gets fractionated out. So, when we talk about fractionation, it’s either pressuring up or cooling down. That slurry of natural gas, ethane, propane, butane, until the liquids fall out. So, those facilities are located in this region. And one of the key advantages of this region is we’ve got a salt dome underneath the Heartland. They can store those hydrocarbons underground rather than build above-ground bullets or domes, which are highly capital intensive. And now, over the years, we’ve got all the infrastructure to access these liquids as well as the natural gas pointed towards this region, and we see continual expansion of this fractionation. And this would be companies like Pembina, Keyera, Inter Pipeline and previously Plains before they were purchased by Keyera.

Mark: That’s a really good point. This region really is an epicenter of of fractionation activity. I mean, tremendous amount of natural gas liquids. Do you remember more or less what’s the total barrels barrels per day coming out? Over 500,000?

Chris: I think we’re going to see tremendous growth here. I think we’re a little bit over 400,000 bpd, which will be butting up about a 20 per cent increase once a few of the new fractionators come online. But, yes, we’ll be around that five hundred mark, if I’m not mistaken.

Mark: 500,000 or so barrels per day of total fractionation capacity in the region. So, and as we mentioned previously, a lot of that moves by by rail. You’ve got a lot of our upgraded products moving by rail. All the rail infrastructure is here as well. So, it’s an interesting blend of companies operating here, but it is a value-add cluster. Outputs from one can become inputs to another. And I think we really have a economies of scale starting to shape here into a world-class infrastructure.

One area that we haven’t talked about, at at least up to this point for a competitive advantage that we’ve seen basically become more and more important over the last five, six, seven years, is really the opportunity for carbon management. You’ve got carbon management optionality here that you may not have in other jurisdictions. Do you want to talk a little bit about about that? What’s happening here?

Chris: It ebbs and flows how curious companies are around low carbon products. It’s really a function of the market and the incentives in place, whether it be the carrot or the stick to drive them. But over the past, probably since I’ve been with the Association, we’ve had a variety of low-carbon projects be evaluated and some come to fruition. So, when we’re generally talking about low carbon positioning of an industrial asset, there’s the integration of renewables, tapping into renewable power from a variety of sources. We generally don’t have a lot of renewables produced within our region itself, but the way the Alberta grid is structured, you can do virtual or physical offsite PPAs for renewable power.

Solar wind or a variety of renewable assets can be packaged together, but really where the Harland became world leading in carbon management was through carbon sequestration. We’ve been blessed in Western Canada, specifically Alberta, to have a pore space that’s amenable for carbon sequestering. Essentially capturing carbon off of industrial assets and putting it underground. Shell’s been doing this since 2015. They’re capturing about 1 million tonnes per year of carbon through their Quest project. And we’ve seen that grow into their next phase of projects as well as others looking to utilize some of the carbon infrastructure that’s been built out for sequestration, or taking that CO2 and not just sequestering, but going into activities like enhanced oil recovery. This is what Nutrien is doing as well as NWR in Sturgeon County. They are utilizing Wolf’s Alberta Carbon Trunk Line to move CO2 from their operations into central Alberta for enhanced oil recovery, which is essentially going back into debleed reservoirs and washing them with the CO2 to produce more oil.

Mark: And that Alberta Carbon Trunk Line, I mean, just to put it in perspective, it’s capacity was built for 14.7 million tonnes per year of CO2 transported, compared to, just in perspective, Shell Quest is doing about 1 million tonnes per year. So the Alberta Carbon Trunk Line was built intentionally with surplus capacity in mind to underpin capturing of new large emissions from emitters in the region, capturing that CO2, and transporting it down to central Alberta. It was in intentionally oversized, if I could say that, at 14.7 million tons. It’s operating at about 10 to 15 per cent capacity at the moment. So, one of the advantages when you’re out talking to companies about their next potential investment, you’re pointing out that this infrastructure exists in the region today. It has capacity and it’s a real advantage for Alberta’s Industrial Heartland.

Chris: It’s a message that resonates well with investors to say if you could put down an asset tomorrow, you have the infrastructure in place to be sequestering your asset’s CO2 or moving for enhanced oil recovery essentially immediately. That’s not too common around the world. A lot of jurisdictions are starting to build up their sequestration infrastructure, but the fact that we’ve got assets sitting here both proven operationally, but also available to take on additional capacity, that is a huge selling feature for those developers who want to go a low carbon route.

Mark: The geology is just conducive. It is one of the most highly desirable locations for carbon sequestration because of the geology. And, from what I understand from the Alberta Geological Survey is that the capacity to store carbon dioxide in the Basal Cambrian sandstone layer: centuries and centuries and centuries of emissions volume could be stored in the Basal Cambrian. It is a very strong competitive advantage for our region that, if I can say, essentially future proofs some of the new projects that are happening here, which maybe leads us to to some of the growth that we’re seeing here and some of the exciting things that are happening in the Heartland.

Chris: Often, the term’s been “net-zero ready.” So the price signals might not be there today to add on capture because it is a highly capital intensive process. But if those signals come to fruition, you’re in a jurisdiction where you know you can sequester effectively.

Mark: And if you think about somebody building a project in the Heartland today, the plan would be that that’s going to operate for 40, 50, 60 years, not 10 or 20 years. So, if you’re thinking 50, 60 years out, you want to have some optionality as to carbon management going forward. And this region is certainly well positioned for companies to be able to future proof or be net-zero ready, depending on how the world unfolds with respect to net zero, green premiums, or any other revenue associated with low carbon products.

I stated earlier that we are on a pretty significant growth trajectory here in the Heartland. In fact, when you and I started here, it was the end of the last decade. We were probably in the $30 to $35 billion of total capital invested here. And, at that time, we were saying, over the next decade, over the 2020s, we think we could get to additional $30 billion, getting ourselves up to about around $70 billion in capex. And, we’re projecting by the end of this decade to be substantially higher than $70 billion in total capital here. So what are some of the projects that are that we’re seeing here? What are some of the final investment decisions that have happened in the last couple of years that are really underpinning the capital growth that’s happening here?

Chris: As you mentioned before, about a $50-billion jurisdiction today, and we probably have close to $30 billion under construction right now, or at least that have hit a final investment decision. So, some of the large projects taking place is the continued expansion of refraction capacity. If you look towards a lot of the consultants that we work with that look at the growth forecast for natural gas, natural gas liquids, you see continued growth in NGL supply as well as natural gas going to about the 2040s. So, with that, you’re going to need the processing to extract it from the the slurried natural gas stream for those spec products. So, you’re seeing a lot of the midstream companies either expand their existing footprints or build new fractionation or announce intentions to build new fractionation from new companies evaluating the region.

Mark: I was just gonna jump in there. Interesting, you know, lots of interest in fractionation, lots of growth in fractionation. And there’s substantial tailwinds to that right now, too, because you’ve got demand pull from Asian markets given what’s going on in the Middle East and what’s going on globally, but also with the ambitions of the Government of Alberta to double oil and gas production by 2035. Any growth in the oilsands is going to require growth in demand for condensate or diluent condensate (DC), which is going to drive natural gas liquid, which will further drive fractionation opportunities in the Heartland, correct?

Chris: Yeah, there’s going to be a pull from the oilsands to DC expansion. You’re going to have more gas to serve their needs, liquids come with it, and the secondary pull would be LNG. As more LNG comes online, more feed gas going to those facilities, there’s the opportunity to extract those liquids from those plays as well, deliver them into this region or frac in the field in B.C. But, the way the infrastructure is geared here, we should see an uptick in liquids coming into this region because just where the pipelines are positioned today.

Mark: And, you know, there’s conversations around LNG Canada too, right? As one of the projects on the major projects list. LNG Canada, the first phase, came online. There’s conversations around the second phase of LNG Canada. That would all drive additional liquids into this region for continued fractionation. So growth and fractionation, that was one area, what are other areas that we’re seeing, final investment decisions.

Chris: On the chemical side, the big project under construction right now is Dow’s Path2Zero project. Dow is an existing company within the Heartland. They’ve had an ethane cracking and derivatives complex operating for years. And now they’re moving forward with their Path2Zero project, which is their first foray into a low-carbon project through the use of hydrogen. Essentially, what they’re doing is they’re going to build another cracking facility. This is a facility that takes ethane and then basically breaks the ethane chain to produce ethylene. From there, you go into polyethylene or other derivatives. You can go into a variety of different chemical products. The unique project on its own, a cracker, is an amazing win for any region. This one’s unique in that they’re going to displace the natural gas, which is going to be used to crack the ethane, with a blue hydrogen. So they’ve partnered with Linde to build an ATR; so, basically a hydrogen production usually which takes natural gas. They convert the gas to hydrogen and then they’ll sequester the CO2 from that facility to provide a blue hydrogen to Dow to displace their natural gas within the facility.

Mark: It’s interesting. The Path2Zero project is exciting for a number of reasons. There’s this, I guess, technological advancement with with using hydrogen in this case, but not only are they tripling their ethylene manufacturing capacity, they’re also converting the whole site to a net-zero site, right? Utilizing hydrogen and the Linde hydrogen facility that’s being built on the site as well.

Chris: That’ll be part of the full package of how to get to net zero. That will be one of the major contributing factors.

Mark: And then just think about the economic pull of that project in our region. I mean, it is a tremendous project here. If I understand correctly, you’ll have peak construction in the order of 5,000-6,000 employees later this decade, but it also pulls other infrastructure. There’s the Sturgeon Rail Terminal at Cando Rail. They’ve got a pretty substantial $200 million expansion going, and I think a lot of their expansion is underpinned by the Dow project.

Chris: As well as the upstream infrastructure, so the midstream. To get more ethane to site, you have to build more infrastructure to extract ethane from the stream. An example would be Pembina going forward with their HEP plant to pull ethane off of ATCO’s Yellowhead Pipeline. So, there’s a variety of upstream benefits from a downstream facility, which is all large scale capital builds again.

Mark: You can even say ATCO, right now, is starting construction on the Yellowhead Pipeline, bringing more natural gas into the region for all sorts of growth opportunities. So the amount of infrastructure build that is either supporting projects in this region or projecting additional growth in this region, it really should lead to even more growth. So this is all underpinning the the trajectory, the growth trajectory that we talked about earlier.

Ok, so we’ve got petrochemicals growth, fractionation growth, some infrastructure growth. What else?

Chris: CCS. Shell is active and they’ve been a leader in the the the carbon sequestration piece as well as the capture piece through their Quest project, which is a partnership with CNRL on that project. But they’re going forward with their Polaris project to capture CO2 off the refinery for sequestration. So, kind of the evolution of that site is going from Quest off the upgrader or capturing CO2 off the upgrader to now capturing CO2 off the refinery through the Polaris project.

Mark: And so that’s the capture and then there’s this sequestration piece associated with that, right?

Chris: Yep, they’ve announced the Atlas project, which would be their next sequestration scheme. So, the way we kind of think about the capture, the Polaris piece of the on-site facility to pull the CO2 from the stream and then the pipeline infrastructure as well as the injection infrastructure will be their Atlas project.

Mark: So the total capital of all we’ve talked about is substantial, but even in the last few weeks, we’ve had probably s in the order of $17 billion of total capital announced, final investment decisions in the last few weeks.

Chris: It’s unique to an extent, but some of it’s familiar. So one of the big projects that was announced a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago now, was the the Greenlight Energy Centre. So that’s a part.

Mark: It was the first week of July that they announced that.

Chris: That is a large-scale natural gas power plant that’s going to be built in Sturgeon County and it’s being underpinned by Meta. So, Meta will be going forward with their Sturgeon facility, which will be a large-scale data centre, but 1.8 gigawatts total for AI services.

Mark: So, it’s interesting that you see the development of the type of project that’s in the Heartland, right? There is the evolution of the type of project. One of the challenges for Alberta always has been around the logistics and the cost of getting its energy resources to market. And what’s really interesting about data centres, it is an opportunity for Alberta to take its natural gas and upgrade it to electricity. So, that’s the first step of upgrading. And then upgrade electricity through the data, which can be exported whether in North America or elsewhere through fibre. And, so exporting of data, in my view, that’s a very elegant way for Alberta to get its energy resources to market, as opposed to exporting natural gas. But I think, for the Heartland as a whole, it’s a nice addition from a diversification standpoint as to what products are produced in the Heartland. This will be the first time that we will produce large-scale data that can be used either regionally within North America or for export. So, very interesting growth here. And what’s driving, I think, the total capital in the Heartland we expect to be in the order of $80 billion by 2030 in that in that range.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that there’s lots of interest as well from governments for defense and critical minerals. And we also view, I think, maybe you can correct me here on this, but our view is that the Industrial Heartland could be a very effective refining or upgrading hub for critical minerals. Now, the critical minerals need to go where the deposit is. That deposit, if it’s in Canada, could be in the Northwest Territories, could be in B.C., could be could be in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba. My view is from Manitoba West, there’s a real opportunity where you upgrade your minerals at the mine site, bring the concentrate into the Heartland, and then refine to finish metals for export. Primarily, there’s lots of interest for defense here. So I also see an opportunity here, and I think the Government of Alberta does too, of the Heartland being a growth centre for critical minerals processing.

Chris: And we’re working with a number of developers in the critical mineral processing space. One of the large drivers there, it’s an infrastructure play, is that you might not be next to the mine site, so you’re not right on top of the feedstock, but you need capital execution. So, you need to be in a jurisdiction where companies are familiar with building projects, you have access to the labour, but also the logistics. You’re not building in the middle of nowhere. So you’ve got railroads and highways that are highly serviced and maintained to service large industrial clients. So you’re seeing kind of the the operational benefits of locating within a cluster.

Not to mention some of the feedstocks. If you need acid from a plant, it’s available or other kinds of byproducts that could feed into one or that are being produced by one project are now a critical input into the mineral processing space. So, that’s really the pull we’re seeing on the mineral processing side. We do have projects that have announced their intentions, purchase land. So, we’re seeing that come to fruition. I think, generally, it’s going to be a function of the market where these projects find their economics.

Mark: And that’s actually a good segue as well because you’ve got staff in your shop dedicated to some of these new developments, new technologies, maybe some of the sustainability that economics maybe you don’t quite see the line of sight at this moment for the economics, but project developers are looking at new ideas for advancing projects. Maybe you can just give us a snapshot as what you’re seeing in the future or at least some of the projects that are being looked at from a sustainability standpoint here.

Chris: When we look at the sustainability side, there it’s almost similar to the mineral processing space, where you might not have a feedstock advantage, which would be kind of the cornerstone of petrochemical development within this region, but you’ve got the infrastructure around you. Clean fuels would be an example. Going into products like SAF, sustainable aviation fuel, renewable fuels, all these different fuels, you’ve got those refining complexes here. So, they’re available for blend. So, you can pull some of the resources, whether you’re going from different agricultural processes, wood biomasses into this region and co-locate or cluster around these different facilities because your market is right there. And then, once again, it all ties to the CO2 infrastructure, which is a critical piece for a lot of these, especially when you get into some of these new novel processes which are being evaluated around the world, like direct air capture, which is essentially sucking CO2 from the sky to sequester. They really monetize in the voluntary markets, but you need that infrastructure to back it up. So, there’s a variety of what we term sustainability projects. And some of it’s just different pathways to low carbon power, either starting with natural gas and going through a different process, or even the small modular reactor conversation going into nuclear energy within this region, because you have an industrial base here that can be a tenant to that power to underpin it rather than participate in the merchant market.

Mark: It really emphasizes, at least to me, the importance of clustering and the competitive advantages that come with clustering. Economics, of course, from one facility to the next, from environmental stewardship as well, from shared infrastructure, from shared services. It really makes sense why clustering matters, why growth of the Industrial Heartland makes good sense for Alberta and for the region.

So, look, I really appreciate the conversation here today. I think there’s hopefully a lot of interesting insight for our listeners. And, for those who are listening, thank you very much for listening. This is our first episode of Built Here: The Podcast from Alberta’s Industrial Heartland. Please subscribe or hit the like button.

One of the questions we are asked around the world when we meet with corporate leaders and head offices is why should my company invest in Alberta’s Industrial Heartland? One of the most important answers is that our region has low-cost feedstock, and more specifically, low-cost natural gas. Alberta’s Industrial Heartland sits close to one of the world’s largest proven natural gas reserves, anchored by the AECO pricing hub, historically among the lowest natural gas benchmarks globally. Over the past decade, Alberta natural gas has traded on average about 41% below U.S. Henry Hub prices, giving investors long-term cost certainty for energy-intensive operations like petrochemicals, hydrogen, fertilizers, and clean fuels.

But the advantage isn’t just cost, it’s integration. The Heartland is directly connected to Western Canada’s major gas production basins through extensive pipeline infrastructure, ensuring scalable, reliable supply for large industrial users. And, importantly, this is not just about today’s energy system. Existing carbon capture and storage infrastructure in the region means companies can pair natural gas use with real near-term decarbonization options, reducing emissions while managing investment risk.

It’s that combination of low-cost feedstock, reliable supply, and decarbonization optionality that makes Alberta’s Industrial Heartland a globally competitive destination for industrial investment.

Thanks for listening to Built Here. To learn more about Alberta’s Industrial Heartland, visit industrialheartland.com, follow us on LinkedIn, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. We’ll see you next time.