Abandon this top-down, decentralized, think-big view and instead do everything to encourage small-scale, local production, from backyards up, including coops and on-farm operations, and I think the picture would be rather a different one.
Keith http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/19036/story.htm Canada ethanol plants need federal help-industry CANADA: December 13, 2002 WINNIPEG, Manitoba - Lack of startup capital and marginal returns could put the brakes on plans to expand Canada's ethanol industry, despite an optimistic outlook announced in one Prairie province. The Manitoba government said it will consider fostering the industry by mandating the use of cleaner ethanol-blended gasoline in the province. But unless the federal government creates more appealing tax incentives, similar to those available for U.S. ethanol producers, plans in Manitoba and other parts of Canada will stall, said Bliss Baker, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association. "Without these additional incentives, I suspect we will not have much of an ethanol industry - period - in the future," Baker told Reuters. The lobby group met with federal finance officials this week to plead for Ottawa to double tax incentives to 20 Canadian cents (13 U.S. cents) a litre in the next federal budget, due in February. U.S. incentives equal to 23 Canadian cents a litre have helped boost that market enough to spur the opening of one new ethanol plant each month this year, Baker said. Five Canadian plants currently produce about 235 million litres (62 million U.S. gallons) a year of the high-octane, water-free alcohol made from grain, and import another 100 million litres annually from the United States. Ethanol-blended gasoline emits lower levels of greenhouse gases. By 2010, Ottawa wants a third of Canadian gasoline to contain ethanol as part of its plan to implement the Kyoto protocol. That would create an annual market for 1.33 billion litres of ethanol, Baker said. But current returns on ethanol production are "marginal, at best," Baker said, meaning investors and banks are reluctant to sink money into plants that cost C$100 million ($64 million) on average. "Our view is we can't get there without some type of initial incentives to help finance plants," Baker said. MANITOBA SAYS WANTS TO BECOME LEADER Manitoba, the province that was home to the country's first ethanol plant 20 years ago, could produce up to 140 million litres a year, according to a government-commission study released this week. "We've intentionally focused on an approach that would maximize local investment and economic benefits for rural Manitoba," said Garth Manness, head of Credit Union Central, who led the study. But it will cost more to produce ethanol in Manitoba than in the neighboring province of Saskatchewan, or nearby states like Minnesota and South Dakota, a prominent agricultural economist told Reuters. That's because Manitoba farmers don't grow enough wheat and would have to import feed to supply both hog farms and ethanol plants, said Daryl Kraft of the University of Manitoba. "The only caution I have is to the investors who are going to put their money into these processing facilities: they better proceed with due diligence," Kraft said. Manness said farmers would grow more feed wheat if they could access higher-yielding varieties, currently unavailable in Canada. Story by Roberta Rampton REUTERS NEWS SERVICE Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Biofuels list archives: http://archive.nnytech.net/ Please do NOT send Unsubscribe messages to the list address. To unsubscribe, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
