Overview
- This week South Korea’s presidential chief of staff disclosed Project Beaver, a C$3.1 billion plan to build hydrogen freight trucks and a refuelling network in Canada tied to a Hanwha‑led submarine bid.
- The proposal outlines phased work starting with a liquefied hydrogen plant in British Columbia from about 2030, 32 refuelling stations in B.C. and Alberta, a likely Ontario manufacturing plant, and about 160 more stations after 2035.
- Kang Hoon‑sik said the plan could create roughly 9,000 jobs, but Hyundai Motor has said it is only exploring opportunities and has made no final commitments.
- Project Beaver is one element of roughly 75 Korea‑Canada memorandums covering energy, minerals and supply chains and is backed publicly by a KPMG estimate that a Hanwha win would add about C$93.6 billion in value and support hundreds of thousands of jobs, while Germany’s TKMS has offered its own larger impact figures.
- Ottawa must now verify which promises are binding contracts versus MOUs, judge corporate readiness and enforceability, and then pick a preferred bidder by the end of June for the program that could buy up to 12 submarines and reshape Canadian shipbuilding and energy supply chains.