Biofuel boosters are applauding last week’s unveiling of the Conservative government’s Clean Air Act that will for the first time give Ottawa the ability to set regulations requiring that Canadian fuel contain a prescribed biofuel content.
Details still are being worked out, which include tax and investment incentives to encourage construction of ethanol and biodiesel plants.
But Kory Teneycke, executive director of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, said the Conservative environmental plan is crucial for a farmer-friendly biofuel policy that will create a market for grain and oilseed crops.
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“Today, cleaner fuels for your car are one step closer,” he told a Parliament Hill news conference Oct. 19, shortly after environment minister Rona Ambrose tabled the government’s centrepiece environmental legislation in the House of Commons.
The bill includes proposals to control emission of greenhouse gases and common pollutants and was attacked by opposition parties and environmental groups for moving the deadlines for mandatory reductions years into the future.
Teneycke said that is not an issue for ethanol and biodiesel rules. The legislation lets the government regulate the five percent renewable fuel content requirement by 2010, a promise that the Conservatives made in the January election.
“This really sets the necessary groundwork for the policy that is coming,” he said. “This is a huge step forward for the renewable fuels industry, for agriculture producers, for citizens concerned about global warming and the environment.”
Promoters of grain and oilseeds-based biofuels say a national ethanol program will provide new markets for hundreds of millions of dollars worth of crops, while helping reduce production of environment-damaging carbon dioxide from carbon-based fuels.
“We’re hoping some decisions can be made and a policy announced before Christmas,” said Teneycke.
Agriculture minister Chuck Strahl said a federal-provincial meeting of environment, energy and agriculture ministers will be needed before a specific industry support policy can be announced.
“I can’t predict when all this will come out because regulations have a comment period and because this involves the provinces, I don’t want to prejudge the outcome of that meeting, but the quicker the better,” he said in an interview. “But with the notice of intent we published today, this is the writing on the wall so you can argue if the regulations will look like this or that but it will let people to begin more precisely their planning because they know what’s coming.”
The renewable fuels sector was one of the few to speak favourably about the Conservative plan that proposes mandatory cuts in emissions of smog-creating pollutants by 2010.
But the government set aside definitive greenhouse gas emission targets for 2025 -50 and then makes them far less stringent than existing Kyoto targets of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by more than 30 percent within the next six years.
The Conservative plan also will allow reductions in the intensity of greenhouse gas emissions per unit of production rather than require an absolute reduction, leading to allowance for increased pollution from an expanding industry such as Alberta’s tar sands sector.
In the Commons, opposition MPs denounced the bill as a pro-industry setback for environmental regulation. Liberal, Bloc Québecois and New Democratic Party MPs vowed to defeat the bill.
Environmental groups also criticized the proposals, although several within the environmental movement accused the lobbyists of having a double standard by praising Liberal promises despite a lack of delivery and criticizing Conservative plans despite some concrete deadlines.
Green party leader Elizabeth May, formerly with the Sierra Club, called the Conservative announcement “nothing more than a PR campaign designed to confuse the public about their reneging on Canada’s legally binding commitment to the world community to meet our Kyoto targets.”
The Kyoto target, agreed to by the Liberals, would require a greenhouse gas reduction by 2012 to levels below 1990 emission levels. Under successive Liberal governments, greenhouse gas emissions actually rose by more than 25 percent.
Ambrose has said this means the Kyoto targets cannot be met.
