Province wont rush into new facility

After a meeting with the Council of Canadians on Thursday (February 29), premier Robert Ghiz said he will be putting the matter to public consultation before any decisions are made on the issue of biofuel production on PEI.

The province is working on a strategy for biofuels and renewable energy, Ghiz said. Were going to issue a paper on it sometime in the early spring or early summer and then well go out and do public consultation.

But the position of government right now is were definitely not jumping into anything to do with ethanol.

That has taken the directors of Atlantic Bioenergy Corporation by surprise. They want to build and $85 million ethanol plant near Borden-Carleton using Island-grown sugar beets for ethanol production.

They were hoping to get sugar beet crops in the ground for test crops in early May, and already have 40 growers on standby for sugar beet production.

Ron Coles, a spokesperson for the company, said they were ready to provide growers with equipment, seed and fertilizers they needed for a spring planting of the new crop.

But they needed approval from the province to go ahead with their plan to grow genetically-modified sugar beets on a plot of land near a wharf.

They also want the government to enact a renewable fuel strategy that would say all Island gasoline retailers provide at least a 10 per cent mix of ethanol and gasoline.

Coles said he plans to meet with the province today (March 7) to figure out what they need to do to keep this going.

I think we can come to some sort of resolution with them. Well kind of source out what kind of timelines they need.

(This article was originally published in The Guardian.)