Northern B.C. chief outlines plan for hydrogen megaproject

The solution is to convert it to liquid ammonia, which would then be shipped in railcars to the port facility in Prince Rupert, which is gearing up with an expansion to be better equipped to handle large-scale ammonia shipments.

“We’re negotiating right now with CN, and we’re also negotiating an agreement with BC Hydro, because it will take a lot of power,” said Chingee.

Chingee does not anticipate opposition from other First Nations whose territory the ammonia shipments will eventually pass through.

“We’ve already got the right-of-way identified,” he said. “They’ve been hauling (petroleum) condensate to Prince Rupert since the 1960s and they’re still doing it and there hasn’t been a spill. The rail is already there, that’s the beauty of it. Existing infrastructure is already there and there’s no need for consultations and all this other stuff.”

A five km rail spur line would be needed to connect to the CN line. The existing BC Hydro transmission line is about two kilometres from the proposed site. Water would be drawn from the nearby Crooked River.

The plant would produce ‘green hydrogen’ generated from non-fossil fuel sources (electricity) as well as ‘blue hydrogen’ made using natural gas.

A $2 billion straddle reprocessing plant would also be built at the site to recover and refine natural gas products to be fed into the Coastal GasLink LNG pipeline that runs through the area. Construction of that 670-kilometre pipeline which from runs from Dawson Creek to Kitimat is expected to be complete later this year.

The McLeod Lake band is working with Pacific Natural Gas to reactivate its compressor station near Summit Lake and with Pembina Pipeline Corporation to create the pipeline infrastructure needed for the project.

Surveying of the plant site, 32 km north of McLeod Lake, is set to begin July 15 and Chingee says the area will be logged this winter. If an agreement is reached by September he said construction would begin in May 2024, to be completed within two years.

Plant construction will require an estimated 600 workers. A temporary work camp as well as some permanent housing will be built, Chingee said. It will ultimately create 250 permanent jobs, which will have an economic boost to the region, with Prince George as the plant’s service hub.

Because of its potential to produce zero-emission clean energy, the plant is expected to have financial backing from the provincial and federal governments. On May 30, the BC government announced the renewal of an energy and minerals partnership with Japan.

Chingee says Mitsubishi will handle details of the financing needed to get the plant built.

“All we’re doing is leasing the land to them and doing a revenue share off the top,” he said. “We’ll lease the land and it will be secure for 99 years. There’s no risk to the nation and a big upside.”

Chingee says the hydrogen plant will provide well-paying jobs for the people of his area, on a much larger scale than the McLeod Lake band’s forestry/logging/construction firm, Duz Cho Group of Companies.

Trade schools are using simulators and video screens to train operators inexpensively without the inherent risks of turning loose inexperienced students at the controls of heavy machinery. The simulators provide live feedback to show what they need to improve to achieve maximize efficiency.

The UBC Forest Science Centre recently became home to the first global state-of-the art Forestry Trimble Technology Lab, which will give students access to the most innovative software and hardware tools available to the forest industry to be used for teaching and research.

Just as the health sector is being transformed with remote interactions between patients and healthcare professionals and doctors and nurses using realtime connections to perform remote procedures such as an ultrasound exams, Roeser says the forest sector also stands to benefit from advanced diagnostics for such purposes as repairing machinery or maintaining equipment.

He says electrification is coming. It’s already happening in places like Finland where hybrid electric harvesters are being used, while in Austria and Germany cable yarders use electric carriages to power electric engines.

Electric trucking fleets with interchangeable batteries are also coming to help companies achieve fuel savings and meet emission targets. But Roeser says B.C. will still have to overcome the challenges of its large distances and remote work sites.

The arrival of ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence chatbot first introduced to the public in late November, has the power to radically reshape the forest sector. The app essentially harnesses the entire knowledge base of the internet to provide detailed answers and articulate responses to user queries and it is already having an effect on the UBC forestry program. Roeser says all his graduate students are already using it in their studies.

“We have to adapt, there’s no way around it,” he said. “It’s making my life so much easier because I don’t have to answer any questions about coding, ChatGPT does that for me. I don’t have to correct papers anymore, ChatGPT does that for me. It’s unbelievable and I think it will change the way we all will be interacting with each other.”

To prepare for his COFI presentation on digitizing in the forest sector, Roeser asked ChatGPT for suggestions on what he should talk about and it came up with such topics as autonomous forest machines, advanced genetic research and biotechnology, 3-D printing with wood-based materials, carbon capture and storage technology and cross-disciplinary collaborations.

“I think this just shows the potential and the opportunities that AI can provide us today,” said Roeser. “But then I asked about what we need to do in B.C. to turn things around in the forest sector, and ChatGPT crashed.”

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