Nearly two years ago, an LA-based company called Rentech Inc. announced plans to build a biofuels plant four hours north of Sault St. Marie, Ontario. It would use forest waste and “unmerchantable” tree species for making renewable jet fuel and naphtha, a chemical feedstock used to make all sorts of products. That plant was supposed to be operational in 2015. It was supposed to employ up to 1,000 people during peak construction, and keep 83 people directly employed full time in a region of the province that could really use those jobs.
Ain’t gonna happen, it seems.
Rentech is working closely with Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC), whose C$500 million NextGen Biofuels Fund (NGBF) offers a significant potential funding source for the Olympiad Project. After a year of discussions with SDTC, Rentech has recently submitted an application for funding to the NGBF, which funds up to 40 per cent to a maximum of C$200 million of eligible project development and construction costs, which would be repaid from a percentage of the project’s cash flows.
h/t Paul K
You could easily have an entire blog devoted to reporting “green technology” fiascoes and scandals. Maybe it could be a sort of sub-blog inside this one with a green-colored roadkill animal on the header :^) It could have sections for Canada, the U.S., and around the world. You’d never run short of material.
Someone must have pointed out that government boondoggles are normally
announced before one election, ground is broken just before the second
election, and completion/startup occurs before the third election. Wa$
there $ome $ort of problem no one had anticipated $topping reaction$ in
the fully $caled up primary power $ynthetic Unicorn Fart$ Generator?
One comment on that popular blog, bemoaning the “subsidies” given to fossil fuel producers. Well, you know, there are a few tax breaks and/or incentives given out to those industries, mainly to guide the producers to explore where the government wants them to explore, but the reason governments do it is because they know they will repaid several times over in new taxes and royalties.
Whereas money doled out to “green energy” startups is gone for good, other than the kickbacks to campaign funds, which they can’t show on the books and brag about.
Green theocracy is the twenty-first Century version of the military industrial complex. Fears of the cold war has been replaced with green hysteria pimping. As long as the correct deities are referenced, governments will fund it. Among the deities, there are: sustainable development, climate change, anti-carbon in all its iterations, biodiversity, bio-fuels, endangered species, etc.
Taking short positions in these scams after the initial run-up from taxpayer loot should prove profitable. The insiders running them all know that they are scams but rent seeking is now an art-form. Most politicians, particularly Conservatives know that they are all scams too, but pimping the mindless works for all parties.
I was clearly writing for the wrong RFP’s…
Well said John, and we get taken to the cleaners in our taxes to fund these scams and to pay for the bureaucracy.
This reminds me of what the first environment minister of Saskatchewan in Brad Wall’s first government said. She said at a mayor and reeve’s January breakfast that there were 1,000 people in the department and she did not know what half of them were doing and neither did they.
Yes Gord that sums it up nicely. And how about this. Rentech was going after $200 million to help set this project up from the Feds. Apparently, like most greenies, the commenter has no idea how much government money is wasted in this type of pie-in-the-sky schemes with little or no benefit to the taxpayer – mainly because the project actually costs us money forever.
Perhaps he might want to find out how much gov’t money was already spent on the project that isn’t going to happen.
You know the commenter is ignorant when he mentions our extinction and how we are running out of fossil fuels.
Overall this is too bad as the town of White River needs jobs in a bad way. These type of gov’t sponsored boondoggles just gives them false hope…and subsequent disappointment. At least the people I speak with in the town are realists and don’t get too pumped up about such things.
Ken
U could fire 50% of all gov’t “employees” and the remaineders would still struggle to stay busy
Making wood waste into anything useful, economically, is not so easy. About fifteen years ago “we” (I’m not going to define exactly who) were interested in making acetic acid from wood waste, to combine with dolomite to make calcium magnesium acetate, a good deicer. Well, we found that the Feds were already funding a small project along the same lines. It never saw light of day.
Back then, one would typically look at $50,000 from the Feds as a good first tranche of funding. If that worked out, then one might perhaps ask for and even get say $100,000, but serious questions would be asked about serious partners in private industry. Beyond that, while some Federal funding might be available, it was contingent on serious private industry involvement, with serious commitment of private money. This idea of $200 million of Gov’t money is insane. If the idea is demonstrably good, non-gov’t money will follow.
So this project had no pilot plant. Just straight to full-scale production. Right. Well, kiddies, people build pilot plants for a reason.
I suppose that all of the controls which are usual when the Canadian gov’t is involved in developmental projects have simply been waived for SDTC. I mean really, that “business plan” is BS – just BS. The federal bureaucrats I had dealings with would have thrown us out of their offices if we had suggested such nonsense.
They were, BTW, pretty straight people, honest and fairly intelligent albeit lazy. They were head and shoulders above provincial bureaucrats. We won’t talk about city gov’t.
Even with the free public “crown timber” Dolton was generous enough to toss into this sweet deal, it seems the green tech subsidies are drying up in Dolton’s green-tech depleted coffers.
Without massive public subsidy most green tech is just another white elephant that market forces and ven-cap ignores as ROI untenable. I am constantly amazed at the naivete of green tech true believers – they really think that a technology which is not cost or energy efficient at concept level, will somehow magically become profitable or self sustaining at full scale mode. Of course these same true believers are challenged by simple math and logic – perhaps this self destructive technological utopianism is why the new left is so economically dysfunctional.
Here in Onscarrio, I hear “new” initiatives and plans with green themes every week. The frikkin entitlement/subsidy system is alive and doing well here. Up here in the Northwest, there is a coal fired power plant that is idle because Southern Ontario has a surplus of subsidized “eco-power” and doesn’t want the plant here to produce the needed power for the mining boom that is happening here. The original plan to upgrade the plant from relatively clean Canadian coal to cheap, clean and abundant natural gas, has been put on indefinite hold while the powers-to-be down south try to make the greenies happy by floating the idea of conversion to bio-mass. All the while solar farms and new windmill projects are springing up all over, fertilized by the eco subsidy business and my tax dollars.
All this from a province that makes you buy your beer from a separate (government)store.
Two hundred million for 83 full-time jobs in an industry with virtually a 100% rate of failure and virtually 0% history of profitability. Fifteen years ago I would have called this a gamble, today, the words criminal and fraud come to mind.
This stuff just burns my @rse.
Government waste is like an iceberg and all you see is the bit that appears above the surface.
The worst offenders in my view are the provincial governments that use billions of dollars channeled into efforts that are often such transparent frauds that it boggles the mind.
Between technical and fiscal incompetence combined with bureaucratic meddling there is almost zero chance of any government sponsored initiative ever being a measurable success.
BTW …. six for six failures by captcha today.
The beast will continue to consume resources at will, continue to wreak carnage on our production until it is either;
1 Confined
2 Destroyed
3 Starved.
Name of the beast Bureaucratic expertise, otherwise known as we are from the government, we are here to help you.
When the deliberately and voluntarily Non productive, assume that they are best fit to control all production.
Then regulate that all production must answer to their authority
What production do you see?
“After a year of discussions with SDTC, Rentech has recently submitted an application for funding to the NGBF, which funds up to 40 per cent to a maximum of C$200 million of eligible project development and construction costs, which would be repaid from a percentage of the project’s cash flows.”
Just how the f87k do they plan to be repaid from a project that produces cash flow one-way only? That being from tax-payers to these scam artists and their scummy buds,the politicians?
“As Carol Leonnig reported in The Washington Post last week, Gore left public office in 2001 worth less than $2 million. Today his wealth is estimated to be around $100 million.
Leonnig reports that 14 green tech firms that Gore invested in received or directly benefited from more than $2.5 billion in federal loans, grants and tax breaks. Suddenly, green tech looks less like a gleaming beacon of virtue and more like corporate welfare, further enriching already affluent investors.”
This is a 2012 report, big Al is now worth a quarter of a billion!but
Re-read both news items after seeing the comments here. Nowhere is it actually stated how much federal or provincial money was actually given to Rentech. The 2011 story says that STDC can fund eligible projects at a rate of 40% of their costs up to a maximum of $200 million, but at that time, it appears, nothing had actually been spent. John Lewis, in an otherwise intelligent comment (which BTW reflects my own experience with federal officials) seems to infer that millions of dollars have indeed been spent. I don’t think that’s the case, although I could be wrong (about both the money spent and JL’s meaning).
Just to be clear, I don’t think any serious money should be spent on stuff like this. We surely have a lot of wood waste and lots of smart people have already thought hard about making money with it.
People have forgotten how to make money but know how to cause a scene.Any “green” project is a scam but people will still fall for it.