RICanada responds to biofuels Op-Ed
October 28, 2016
By Renewable Industries Canada
Oct. 28, 2016 - Re Canada's biofuels program is too expensive: To say Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission’s report on biofuels is disappointing is generous. To say it is full of factual errors and misinformation is fair.
Suggesting the phase out of biofuel mandates shows how little Ecofiscal understands about the fuel market and what it takes to lower GHG emissions in the transportation sector. Recommending biofuel subsidies be canceled is equally troubling given most subsidies ended 18 months ago, and the industry is not asking for new ones.
To be clear, carbon pricing is a step in the right direction but there is no “one size fits all” approach to reducing GHG emissions, especially in terms of the transportation sector. As other jurisdictions around the world have shown, carbon pricing and biofuels mandates work better together.
Ecofiscal went to great lengths to dismiss the benefits of biofuels and call for the repeal of biofuels mandates, which are the single largest guaranteed source of transportation sector emission reductions we have in Canada today. At the same time, Ecofiscal is silent on fossil fuel subsidies. Some would call that an issue of transparency, not economics.
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