Mike Muston gave us a brief recap of his career, mostly in the agricultural industry and on the business or commercial side. The company he currently works for, Otoka Energy, is not developing new biofuels technology but is commercializing existing technology.
Mr Muston provided a general description of the process involved in setting up a biofuels plant. He explained that it takes anywhere from 4 to 6 years to design the plant, complete all the legal work, find funding from grants, get permits, and then actually build the plant. He stressed that in the biofuels industry, finding grants is extremely important because you need a significant amount of money in order to start being competitive.
While Mr Muston used to work for a biofuels company that made ethanol (from corn), Otoka Energy is looking to use other sources of Biomass such as forestry products, remains from orchards, vineyards, etc.
Mr Muston also addressed to food vs. fuel debate explaining that in the United states, farmers were actually being paid NOT to grow corn by the government in order to keep the price of corn high enough which indicates that there isn't a panic about fuel products taking over the land designated for food. Also, the remaining part of the corn for example, that is not used in biofuels can be fed to livestock so corn could serve a dual use. Mr Muston also explained that the food vs fuel debate was a marketing scheme, popularized by oil companies in the states in order to create an aversion to biofuels when oil prices were quite low. Another point that was brought up is the role of Carbon in the energy cycle. In biofuels, the plants take up some of the carbon from the atmosphere where as with other sources such as coal and oil, carbon is simply released.
Overall, Mr Muston stressed that setting up a plant in the biofuels industry is expensive and requires a lot negotiating with the government, however Alberta is a good place resource-wise for setting up a plant because our forestry sector is an underutilized industry.
Recep of 'Next Generation Biofuels in North America'