So you probably think of canola oil
is just something you put on the frying pan.
But a lot of it now ends up in diesel tanks.
Canola is by far Canada's most valuable crop,
generating $3.7 billion in
farm cash receipts in the first three months of the year.
And a growing source of that value is in energy.
The climate policy that
started under the Harper government
pushed refineries to add cleaner sources to the mix.
And that's where canola comes in.
So how does it work?
First, the seeds are crushed,
separating the oil from the solid part of the seed,
which is called meal.
After that, the oil can go two ways.
It can either become cooking oil or it can be sent into
the fuel system as a raw material for renewable diesel.
So now we get to the refinery and the canola oil,
it can't just be mixed into the diesel.
It has to be processed further before it can become fuel.
The simple version.
Well, the refinery upgrades
the oil so that the finished product
becomes chemically similar to
regular petroleum based diesel,
and that finished fuel is renewable diesel.
And drivers, they might not even notice it at the pump
because it can move directly into the diesel supply.
The refining process is known as
Co-processing. And get this.
Existing refineries, they can
actually handle renewable feedstocks
like canola oil alongside regular petroleum operations.
That means refiners don't always have to build
a brand new plant totally from scratch.
They can actually just add the equipment to
the sites that already exist.
And really, that's the way Canada's already moving.
Ten out of 18 oil refineries in Canada have either
finished or are working on equipment for renewable fuels.
And it's huge for farmers.
According to an industry group,
about a third of
Canadian canola now ends up in the fuel industry.
Some of that canola stays in Canada,
but some also gets exported to the US and Europe.
Either way, the fuel market is now
a major customer for the crop.
Imperial Oil Strathcona refinery just near Edmonton,
shows what this can look like at scale.
With a $720 million renewable diesel facility
that just came online in July 2025.
That facility alone can yield
1,000,000,000l of renewable diesel annually.
That's a big Canadian example of canola just moving from
farm supply chains into fuel production and geography.
Well, that helps massively to a lot of
Canadian refineries are actually close to canola country.
So the crop and
the fuel plants are often not too far apart.
So in the end, it's not really
about replacing traditional diesel.
It's more of a way to lower
the carbon intensity of fuel that trucks,
farms, mines and industry still use every day.