Canada’s renewable fuel lobby is setting aside its campaign to convince Ottawa that the five percent ethanol mandate for gasoline content should be increased to 10 percent.
Instead, the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association is concentrating on convincing the federal government to increase the content mandate for biodiesel from two percent to five percent.
It will also pressure the Ontario and Quebec governments to create the same kind of provincial biofuel content mandates that exist in western provinces.
A mandatory two percent national content mandate for biodiesel takes effect Jan. 1, including Quebec and the Maritime provinces for the first time. It is expected to add 140 million litres to the market for biodiesel.
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The retreat from an earlier lobby effort to double the ethanol mandate level is largely because the Canadian ethanol industry does not have the capacity to meet the five percent mandate now in place.
The industry is asking for more government help to expand production capacity.
Canada imports as much as 10 percent of the ethanol it needs to meet the five percent ethanol mandate in gasoline.
“We do want to see the mandate grow on the biodiesel side from two to five percent,” CRFA president Scott Thurlow said in a Nov. 4 interview during the association’s annual convention.
“As an association, we’re still talking about whether we want to move the ethanol mandate up from five to 10, but before we do anything on the ethanol side we want to be sure we can meet it all through 100 percent domestic capacity, and we’re still not there yet.”
In his speech to the annual meeting, Thurlow said the CRFA is asking the federal government to re-open the eco-energy for biofuels program to allow new plant proposals or expansions to receive help.
He also praised the federal government for its support of the biofuel sector, its establishment of the mandates that have supported industry growth and its overall greenhouse gas reduction record.
“I think the government gets a little bit of a raw deal when people say that they’re not anything on climate change because the truth is, Canada’s biofuels policy is a winner at reducing GHGs (greenhouse gases),” said Thurlow. “We have a demonstrated program that is working.”
The renewable fuel lobby has a strong connection with the Conservatives, and the group has placed advertisements throughout downtown Ottawa thanking the government for its support of the industry.
Thurlow said Canada can meet its international climate change promises in large part through the reduction in fuel emissions because of biofuel and the federal requirement that it be part of the national fuel policy.
