By December, the federal government will announce the first winners in the ethanol sweepstakes when it indicates the recipients of the first $60 million in federal funding to expand Canada’s ethanol industry.
On Oct. 20, agriculture minister Lyle Vanclief announced that Ottawa is making available 60 percent of its $100 million climate change policy commitment to ethanol production expansion.
He said the immediate goal is to fund enough production to replace the 100 million litres of ethanol now imported annually from the United States.
“It’s a historic step in the advancement of the Canadian bio-fuel sector,” he told a Parliament Hill news conference.
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Bliss Baker, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, said Canada’s nascent ethanol industry now buys as much as 20 million bushels of grain from farmers as feed stock.
“That could easily double because of the announcement today,” he said. “We have waited for this day for 10 years and to say I’m overjoyed would be an understatement.”
The government is moving quickly. On Oct. 20 it published a call for proposals on ethanol industry expansion from industry players. After 30 days, the application period closes and officials from Natural Resources Canada will begin assessments.
“We will be announcing the recipients of support in December,” said Neil MacLeod, director general of NRC’s office of energy efficiency. “We will move quickly on this.”
Bliss said the number of projects helped by the federal program will depend on the size of the applications received and approved.
One clear winner will be the cellulose-based ethanol proposal being made by Ottawa-based Iogen Corp. with plans to build plants on the Prairies or elsewhere using straw or wood as its source of cellulose raw material.
The announcement was part of a broader federal commitment to meet its Kyoto Accord climate change commitments by expanding the ethanol industry enough to see 35 percent of gasoline sold in Canada by 2010 contain 10 percent ethanol.
The federal government says reaching that goal would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 1.8 million tonnes per year, “which is the equivalent of removing more than 400,000 vehicles from the road.”
Vanclief and Bliss praised the Liberal rural caucus for making ethanol expansion a priority and rural caucus chair Andy Savoie from New Brunswick called the ethanol announcement an important economic development prospect for rural Canada. Farmers will sell millions of dollars worth of crop and plants will be located in rural areas, creating jobs.
“I believe the ethanol industry will be a new season for our rural areas,” he said. “Today, we are planting the seed.”
