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With Canada's recent announcement of new incentives for farmers to sell their crop for biofuels rather than foodstuffs in order to meet a target of up to 5% "renewables" in transportation fuel by 2010, many of us are wondering how the government managed to get so confused about what constitutes a renewable fuel. This scheme is nothing more than a farm subsidy (which, for the record I think is much deserved, not to mention overdue) under the guise of a climate change policy. What's worse, the government has the audacity to say that intensively farmed corn or canola used as a fuel would be carbon neutral.

An Agriculture Canada study found that the ratio of energy gain to energy input (required for producing the crop and converting it to a usable fuel) for oilseed and grain ethanol is sometime less than 1. In other words, we might be burning more fossil fuels to put "renewable" fuel into our gas tanks than if we had just burned the petrol in the first place. The true value of biofuels, in terms of displacing GHG emissions lies in their ability to utilize waste products. Cellulosic ethanol (which utilizes any waste plant material, including forestry debris) or anaerobic digestors utilizing livestock manure are two examples.

By far the best idea I've heard comes from Refuel Bioproducts Corporation here in Alberta. The company is producing biodiesel (essentially vegetable oils modified to be used in diesel engines) from waste oil collected from the deep-friers of local restaurants. The benefits of this program are many. Firstly, the crop has already been grown and processed, so there's no need to fear a shortage of canola oil at the grocery store. Secondly, the oil would otherwise be discarded, destined to wallow in a landfill, so this is essentially a recycling program. The program could also translate into an economic gain for the restaurants, should the demand for biodiesel from their oil increase sufficiently. Finally, the relative ease of converting oil to biodiesel means that production can occur on a smaller scale and the product can be kept local, thereby further reducing energy input required to truck the diesel to gas stations.

In my humble opinion, if the government actually wants to incorporate biofuels into its climate change policy (and for this government I use the term policy loosely), then this is the sort of strategy they should be backing.

Learn more about this author, Krista White.
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