A licensing regime for biofuel makers, new fuel quality standards and mandated biodiesel sales will be pumped into a package of biofuels legislation coming back to the Manitoba legislature, the province announced today.
The Biofuels Amendment Act, which sputtered before the assembly shut down for this summer’s provincial election, proposes the licensing system, fuel standards and a framework “for a future biodiesel sales mandate” to go with its ethanol mandate, the province said in a release.
Energy Minister Jim Rondeau said “significant biodiesel production” is poised to start in the province, as Husky Energy’s newly expanded 130-million-litre ethanol plant at Minnedosa nears completion.
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The amendments also propose to revise the incentives for ethanol production in the province. Instead of a tax break for gasohol (gasoline with a 10 per cent ethanol component, or E10), the incentive will be a production grant, payable to ethanol makers such as Husky.
Husky’s ramped-up production alone is expected to meet the province’s previously set minimum requirement for Manitoba-made ethanol for the provincial sales mandate to kick in.
The amendments also propose to change the ethanol sales mandate to a requirement that 8.5 per cent of the volume of gasoline sold in Manitoba will have to be ethanol, under a pool average, but the amount of ethanol required to meet the sales mandate “would not ultimately be changed.”
Harmonizing Manitoba’s pool average with other jurisdictions’ would put the province in a “better trade position” with neighbours such as Ontario and Saskatchewan, Rondeau said.
