TORONTO — The Ontario Tories’ plan to introduce a provincial biodiesel mandate is not only modeled on largely failed program, but would be a waste of taxpayers money, the Ontario Trucking Association (OTA) said in a statement today.

OTA president David Bradley says he plans to personally urge Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak not to move forward with the proposal.

Last week, Hudak and Rural Affairs critic Ernie Hardeman pitched a biodiesel initiative that would require a 2-percent biodiesel (B2) average be sold in the province.

While the OTA said they actively support the introduction of alternative fuels and environmental technologies, “A mandatory biodiesel policy, however, is not the answer,” said OTA president David Bradley.

In the Tory policy paper on agriculture and rural communities, Hardeman insisted that the biodiesel requirement would benefit farmers and the environment. “There are not many large trucking companies going down Hwy 401 that are running on other types of fuel. They are almost exclusively diesel, and we think they should be biodiesel.”

But that biodiesel mandate would only add to the heap of problems already associated with the federal government’s two-year-old B2 policy, OTA countered. The feds’ program was hyped as a way to spark a new market for Canadian farmers and improve the environment. “Instead, the government’s own regulatory impact analysis estimated a net cost of $2.4 billion over the next 25 years with only incremental GHG reductions,” OTA said.

At the time, the Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) raised numerous industry concerns, including the lack of testing on the reliability of biofuel and the potential impact on new generation smog-free truck engines; limited production in Canada and increased costs of biodiesel; and the lack of regulated fuel quality standards.

Those concerns went unaddressed, CTA said.

The CTA also sought an overall biodiesel content cap of B5 “since refiners indicated they were meeting the 2-per cent average requirement by selling higher bio-content diesel in the warmer months and, conversely, lower or no biofuel content at colder temperature regions.”

The Alliance also said it learned that the biodiesel preferred by refiners is “largely not available in Canada and the vast majority of biodiesel is imported from overseas at an increased cost to the end user.”

“In the end, the economic interests of big agriculture and biofuel feedstock producers prevailed over those of the consumer,” Bradley wrote recently in a letter to Hudak.

The OTA also cited a 2010 study prepared for Environment Canada, as well as a recent review of the biodiesel mandate by Natural Resources Canada (NRCAN), that they said echo many of the concerns surrounding biodiesel.

The NRCAN study found that after receiving over $537 million in funding, the renewal fuels industry still cannot sustain operations without the subsidies and producers continue to push for even more funding. There are still questions about the biofuels as a cost-effective means to reduce GHG emissions, the study noted, adding there is also uncertainty as to future export potential for biofuels.

“The biodiesel program is not an environmental initiative; it has not created a new market for farmers or a new biofuels industry in Canada, which is what the program was intended for,” Bradley said.

“Introducing a provincial mandate — which would take away the ability of refiners to average out the biodiesel content across the country over the course of the year and remain below the 5 per cent threshold — would only serve to put truck engine performance and warranties at risk, with no net benefit to Ontarians.”