GreenField Ethanol receives big boost
Chatham-Kent’s ethanol plant will be receiving a big boost from the Canadian government.
Dave Van Kesteren, MP for Chatham-Kent-Essex announced on Friday morning (April 17) that GreenField Ethanol’s Chatham plant will receive up to $72.8 million from the Government of Canada’s ecoENERGY for Biofuels program.
“These funds will help GreenField Ethanol in our committed vision to help broaden Canadian’s fuel choices through the use of innovative technologies and disciplined leadership,” said Robert Gallant, president and CEO of GreenField, in a release. “They will also result in an important investment that contributes to greater workplace opportunity for the Chatham community.”
Van Kesteren was joined at today’s announcement by Marty Cormier, Vice President of Bulk Manufacturing, GreenField Ethanol.
The ecoENERGY for Biofuels program supports the production of renewable alternatives to gasoline and diesel, encourages the development of a competitive domestic industry for renewable fuels and provides an operating incentive to facilities that produce renewable alternatives to gasoline and diesel in Canada.
Compared to gasoline, grain-based ethanol can reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by up to 40 per cent on a lifecycle basis. For biodiesel, the emissions reduction can be as much as 60 per cent.
Through the ecoENERGY for Biofuels program, the Government of Canada will invest a total of $1.5 billion over nine years to encourage the development of
a strong, competitive renewable fuels industry in Canada.
GreenField Ethanol Inc. (www.greenfieldethanol.com) is Canada’s leading ethanol producer. The company produces 550 million litres a year of ethanol at its plants in Johnstown, Chatham and Tiverton, Ontario and Varennes, Quebec. Another plant is in development in Hensall, Ontario as well.
GreenField is actively involved in the development of biochemical process technology to produce cellulosic ethanol at its research facilities in Chatham, Ontario.
The company is also working with Enerkem Inc. to build thermochemical cellulosic ethanol plants. GreenField’s ethanol is available at more than 1,300 gas stations
across Canada.
Lance
June 26, 2010 at 4:02 pm
This isn’t a popular thing to say in corn country but ethanol is a net energy loser. It takes more energy in diesel, oil in pesticides and natural gas in fertilizer to create ethanol than is returned. It has a negative energy returned on energy invested profile. That is if you put in one unit of energy you get less than one back, compared to oil which is about 10 to 1 or even 20 to 1 depending on the field. Tar sands is about 2 to 3, wind about 20 to 1 and so on. As diesel fuel and ammonia based fertilizer become too expensive to use in agricultural production, which is likely to occur over the next 5 years, will we continue to use ethanol as a fuel or convert the factories into distilleries for the production of corn whiskey?
There was an objective by the last US administration to have 15% of US fuel be ethanol by 2015, the unfortunate fact in that equation is it would require all of the continental United States to be one giant corn field achieve that coal, not likely.
The only way for ethanol to not be a negative in terms of energy invested is for the grower to step off the tractor, forego commercial biocides and fertilizer and do it all by hand and with animal traction. I can’t see too many farmers working that hard so others can drive past them on the road.
Any process dependent upon fossil fuels is going to get a whole lot more expensive. Fertilizers that costs thousands of dollars a tonne, diesel fuel over a buck and a half a litre. Not many farmers can make money growing corn on that scale.
One other piece of good news, the world grain bank is below a sub critical level in terms of grain on hand, less than 50 days (they try to keep it over 120 days,) burning food to drive when millions are starving to death makes one wonder where our priorities are. There is no free lunch and our love affair with the automobile is drawing to a close, facing that and planning for it is a far better strategy than clinging to a past that is no longer viable. This party is over, time to start a new day.
Joel
June 26, 2010 at 7:39 pm
You are 100% correct…but if you apply the same of level of scrutinty and intelligence to wind and solar, you will find they are simply the new ethanol…a political agenda aimed at gaining support from the voting public as opposed to being any real solution to actual problems.
David Lebrocq
June 27, 2010 at 8:18 am
Now they have more money coming to them it is time to get rid of the smell coming from the plant.
I can’t believe the people of Chatham have put up with the horrible smell from a Company that has received tens of millions of dollars from government and NOT MET THEIR OWN STATED TIME LINE OF 2008 to put an end to a very big negative for Chatham.
realitycheck
June 29, 2010 at 9:10 am
Ah….. the smell of money