Written on: January 28, 2025
Lawmakers at multiple levels of government have been making investments in renewable propane over the last year. Public institutions on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border are recognizing how renewable liquid gases can reduce the carbon emissions impact of buildings and roadways.
As 2025 kicks off, we’ve already heard two announcements that show how rPG adoption is likely to grow considerably in the year ahead.
Incorporating rPG into autogas vehicles has proven to be a way to instantly and significantly lower greenhouse gas emissions. Conventional propane autogas already offers these instant GHG reductions:
However, renewable propane can bring transportation decarbonization to another level. In 2024, we saw Raleigh, NC, introduce new garbage trucks that ran on rPG.
Now, the British Columbia city of Chilliwack is following suit. Chilliwack’s government entered into an agreement with Superior Propane to begin receiving renewable propane for its fleets in September 2024. The goal is for the city to run roughly 100 autogas vehicles on 100% rPG. This fleet spans different classes and engine types and includes snow plows and street-sweeping vehicles.
Chilliwack’s initiative follows only a few months after a Canadian Propane Association (CPA) study determined that rPG could reduce conventional propane’s already low emissions by 85%. This ultra-low-carbon fuel is an integral tool for decarbonizing North American fleets.
This month, The U.S. Department of Energy’s Bioenergy Technology Office (BETO) announced it was dedicating up to $23 million to fund the research and development of biofuels from biomass and waste. The initiative is called Sustainable Propane and Renewable Chemicals (SPARC). It will focus on “producing chemicals and propane and/or a mix of gases similar to liquid petroleum gas (LPG) from renewable feedstocks.”
We know that rPG derived from used cooking oil can have a CI score of 20.5 (roughly one-quarter the CI of conventional propane and about 16% the CI of the average U.S. grid electricity). SPARC and other research promise to bring that CI even lower, potentially into net-negative territory!
You may recall that last year, BETO released its “Billion Ton” report, finding that the U.S. could triple the bioenergy economy with existing feedstocks.
Bottom line: the sky increasingly appears to be the limit for renewable propane’s potential as governments of all sizes prioritize its inclusion in our decarbonization strategies.
Every week, we’re getting new, exciting updates about rPG and other low-carbon liquid gases. If you want to stay informed about these developments and gain access to the rPG supply pipeline, please consider joining the Renewable Propane Alliance.