Renewable fuels are creating new markets for agriculture producers, revitalizing communities, reducing harmful green house gases and offering consumers new fuel options. New advances in renewable fuel technologies are opening up more opportunities and offering even more economic and social benefits.
Next generation biofuels are rapidly coming to market, and thanks to the hard work of many members and parties in the House of Commons, Canada stands to benefit even further.
Renewable fuels in Canada, including current and planned projects will help create some 14,000 new jobs and generate $1.5 billion in new economic investment. Renewable fuels will also be responsible for 10,000 direct and indirect permanent jobs and roughly $600 million in annual economic activity, much of which is rooted in rural Canada.
The demand our plants create will amount to a 240 million bushel, new domestic market for Canadian grown oilseeds and grains, which will help keep commodity prices at a fair level, lowering government support payments and assisting in making more farms across Canada financially viable.
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New markets and value-added processing is especially important on the Prairies, where wheat growers have seen the price of wheat drop yet still rely overwhelmingly on export markets. The biofuels option offers some choice.
The renewable fuels sector is in the infancy of a transformation—a biorevolution—that will be every bit as far-reaching as the information revolution of the 1980s. It is most apparent in our industry —in the creation of renewable fuels—that draw on what is harvested rather than extracted.
It is only the beginning in which this vast new opportunity is being built however, the full potential of the bioeconomy will soon be apparent as biomass sources become the feedstock for plastics, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and many other materials. New jobs will be created, industrial policy will adapt and agriculture can again become a flourishing industry.
The bioeconomy will not wipe away the need for other resources. Renewable fuels will not supplant oil, but rather supplement it, moderating the price. Renewable fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel are the only real, viable, and accessible alternative to oil for transportation fuels today and in the foreseeable future.
Canadian agricultural producers and rural communities will also see specific benefits as well. Canadian growers and communities will become suppliers to food, fuel and a variety of other sectors, but will also gain from rising farm incomes and major investments in infrastructure.
Perhaps the best gauge of the future is the considerable advances we have made in the recent past. Yields are increasing dramatically with fewer inputs. In the 1980s for example, farmers could generate roughly 70 bushels per acre of corn. Today, farmers generate up to 150 bushels per acre and recent predictions see yields growing within five to 10 years to 300 bushels per acre.
Advances in all areas of crop science are also occurring. Canadian growers are world leaders in keeping direct soil emissions low, outstripping nearly every major European and Eurasian competitor by as much as 500 per cent. Canadian agriculture also leads in improving agricultural efficiencies and using new technologies in farming, such as no-till usage.
Canada, and rural Canada in particular, is uniquely positioned to grow and prosper from the further development of renewable fuels and next generation renewable fuels. We are only beginning to realize the true value of this new and promising industry.
Gordon Quaiattini is the president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association. For more information please visit www.greenfuels.org