A study
released Tuesday by Canada's Ecofiscal Commission finds that ethanol and
biodiesel policies cost consumers and governments about $640 million a year,
but only reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about three million tonnes.
That works out
to at least $180 per tonne for ethanol and least $128 per tonne for biodiesel.
And even those estimates
may severely under-represent the true cost per tonne of carbon dioxide
reductions when the full life cycle emissions of biofuels are taken into
account, the report says.
The report
comes a day after the federal Liberal government announced it would impose on
provinces and territories a mandatory carbon price of $10 a tonne starting in
2018, increasing to $50 a tonne in 2022, if those jurisdictions refuse to adopt
their own carbon price or cap-and-trade plan.
The cross-partisan,
privately funded Ecofiscal Commission has been making the case for two years
that broad-based carbon taxes are the most efficient and least economically
damaging way to reduce Canada's carbon footprint.
