A proposal to make ethanol from Prince Edward Island sugar beets may go elsewhere following a report that suggests it would take up at least all the province’s non-potato cropland, according to CBC.
The broadcaster quoted Ron Coles of Atlantec BioEnergy saying the company’s $85 million proposal for the Borden area, for which it had already contracted P.E.I. farmers to produce almost 5,000 acres of sugar beets, may now go to another jurisdiction.
Coles told CBC that the company, which had already lined up investors and bought equipment, now won’t be asking farmers to plant beets.
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The company’s suggestion followed the release last week of a report from a provincial committee that recommended P.E.I. adopt public policy aimed at creating an “aggressive biofuels portfolio.”
The environmental and renewable industries committee (ERIC) noted that potato production currently takes up about two-thirds of the province’s 450,000 acres of arable cropland.
“Some energy crops, like sugar beets, cannot be easily integrated into the potato rotation and will likely
displace crops grown on the remaining 157,000 acres of cropland,” the report said.
“With respect to sugar beets, a range of 17,000 to almost 40,000 acres of production would likely be required to support commercial ethanol production. In a three-year crop rotation this would entail between 50,000 and almost 120,000 acres under cultivation, an amount close to the whole balance of available cropland on Prince Edward Island.”
ERIC’s report said ethanol facilities, unlike biodiesel plants, are “not easily scalable” and would likely need an annual production capacity of at least 50 million litres of ethanol to be viable.
Given that P.E.I.’s annual gasoline needs now sit at about 234 million litres, the island’s demand for ethanol wouldn’t be more than 23 million litres to produce E10 gasoline, ERIC wrote. Atlantic Canada’s overall gasoline needs are about 2.5 billion litres per year.
Atlantec’s Coles told CBC that the company plans to meet with ERIC this week. However, CBC also quoted him saying an announcement of a new location could come within the month.
