The Manitoba government is not making life easy for small-scale biofuel innovators, according to Gavin Reynolds of Celtic Power.
“There are some things that just blow my mind with how difficult they can make it for us,” said Reynolds.
The firm, run by a British family, manufactures portable biodiesel production units, capable of producing 10,000 litres per day, at its facility near Rapid City, Man. Reynolds spoke at Assiniboine Community College’s Prairie Innovation Forum 2008.
Celtic is engaged in three pilot projects to supply biodiesel made from waste cooking oil to run the City of Brandon’s buses, and vehicles operated by Clear Lake golf course and Parks Canada. But continued stalling by government is threatening their success.
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“All last summer we were unable to supply fuel to those projects. On the one hand, we have a government that is promising us a testing facility to test our fuel, and it’s not happening,” said Reynolds.
“On the other hand, we are receiving letters that tell us that if we supply untested fuel we will be fined $500 every time we do it. We’re stuck in this funny situation. We have the equipment to make fuel, but there’s not a lot we can do with it.”
Now, with spring coming, all three buyers want biodiesel, but the province’s failure to set up a testing facility within a reasonable time means Celtic’s hands are still tied.
In the interim, the government has promised to pay half the cost of testing out of province, but for small batch producers like Celtic, even half of the estimated $2,500 cost is a non-starter.
“To cover that, we’d have to charge almost $2 a litre for the fuel and we just can’t do that,” he said.
The provincial biodiesel office has promised to make testing available in Manitoba this summer, but Reynolds noted that’s what it said in March 2007.
“We’re not quite clear what the holdup is.”
Other obstacles stand in the way of renewable fuel production in the province. He said small biofuel operators seeking to set up shop are required to conduct an environmental review on par with plants operating on a massive scale, such as the 130-million-litre Husky ethanol plant in Minnedosa.
“You’re handed a document the size of phone book to fill in,” he said.
“We’re getting the feeling from government that large centralized processors are more than welcome, but small producers not so much.”
Bureaucracy is hurting innovation in the province, he said, and in one case it has forced Celtic to drop a project.
The firm was working with a cutting-edge research effort based in Britain to figure out a way to chemically bond biodiesel, ethanol and proprietary fuel additives to create a renewable resource-based jet fuel that would remain liquid at -60. With a bench top jet engine in his shop rigged up for testing, he was ready to get started.
However, Reynolds required two or three drums of pure ethanol that had been denatured with methanol instead of gasoline.
Despite repeated pleas to government officials, who either failed to respond or cited obscure prohibitions under the Liquor Control Act, no help was given.
“In the end, we packed up the turbine and all the equipment, put it in a container and shipped it to the U.K. where we could get the ethanol and we finished the project there,” said Reynolds.
“That infuriated me. It was one of the few things we had done that was completely new. It would have been quite a first.”
Jeff Kraynyk, biofuel manager for the provincial government’s ethanol and biodiesel office, said the long delays in establishing a local testing facility are over.
The Selkirk, Man., testing facility, which is being run by Manitoba Hydro, is operating as of a few weeks ago, he added, although it still is unclear how much it will charge to test a sample of biodiesel.
The wait was caused by difficulties in ordering equipment and the process of receiving accreditation.
“I think there are 19 tests to do the full American or Canadian ASTM, an international standards agency, test for biodiesel. It was a matter of ordering equipment and then waiting for a few months for it to come in some cases, commissioning and training,” said Kraynyk.
“Timing-wise it’s actually worked out well for us I think, because we haven’t had a lot of production up until now.”
Three biodiesel plants are under construction in the province, and the Arborg-based, four million litre per year Bifrost Biodiesel plant is ready to start crushing seeds.
But have sky-high canola prices clipped the wings of biodiesel?
“Canola is high, no doubt about it, but diesel is also high. We’re expecting it to go up as summer draws near,” said Kraynyk. “It’s going to be a challenge for the producers to make a go, but we’ll see what happens with the diesel price.”
