The Federal Government has included a production goal of 500 million litres of biodiesel by 2010 in its Climate Change Action plan. They have also established an $11.9 million fund that will support research and provide incentives for industrial-scale biodiesel pilot plants, and support demonstrations of its effectiveness to encourage broader use of biodiesel.

One key aspect of meeting the 500 million litre target is the identification of sufficient feedstock to convert into biodiesel. Feedstock availability is quite diverse across Canada with different regions not only producing different feedstocks but also having varying supply and demand balances. The objective of this work is to investigate these feedstock issues for the Province of British Columbia.

The specific goals of this work are therefore:

1. To identify total volumes and types of potential British Columbia feedstock available annually to produce biodiesel (methyl ester), including identifying potential of feedstock imports and exports.
2. To identify whether British Columbia has sufficient (volume, type, availability, price) domestic biodiesel feedstock to supply a viable domestic biodiesel industry in the short and long-term, and to identify how feedstock imports and exports impact the industry.
3. To evaluate other issues that might arise with some of the specific feedstocks.

Six classes of biodiesel feedstocks have been considered in this report. In five of the six cases the product is currently being sold for some application. Only in the case of trucked liquid wastes (brown grease) is the feedstock being disposed of. These non-marketed volumes are very limited. In many cases there are also imports and exports of the feedstocks.