Canada - Federal Tax Incentives Expected to Encourage Adoption of Manure Management Technologies

The CEO of Saskatoon based Clear-Green Environmental expects new federal tax credits being offered for the construction of anaerobic digesters to escalate the adoption of the new technology. Last month the federal government announced the creation of a one billion dollar climate fund as part of its commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Kyoto accord. Clear-Green Environmental operates a facility near Cudworth which uses anaerobic digestion to convert swine manure into a range of marketable products, including bio-gas which is burned to generate electricity. Company President Ben Voss is confident Ottawa's decision to allow an accelerated depreciation of the cost of the technology will encourage its adoption. "Because digesters are relatively new technology there's still risks in terms of its performance and the economic attractiveness so these federal tax based incentives are exactly the piece that's needed to allow people to take the risk and implement the technology. Tax incentives, of course, only really apply to situations where people have a tax liability and are looking for somewhere to offset that tax. Considering where the hog industry is today, which it's doing quite well in the past year, this type of an incentive certainly works in those situations. Combine that with the opportunity to sell the carbon credits through this new Kyoto plan and Kyoto related fund that the federal government is setting up, we should see some reasonable economic incentive to want to build more of those and that should stimulate more people to look at these projects that may have questioned the viability of them before." Voss says we're already starting to see an increased demand for the technology and he expects the level of interest to become more apparent over the next 12 months.