The government of Canada is putting some more cash into a previously-announced green energy project.
Today, Jonathan Wilkinson, Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and Premier Wab Kinew announced a combined total of $12.3 million towards a sustainable aviation fuel facility planned to be built in Portage la Prairie, Man.
Wilkinson said $6.2 million from the feds would specifically go towards a front-end engineering and design study for the project.
Not only will the facility create 1,500 construction jobs, but about 150 “direct, permanent, highly specialized jobs once in production, and its construction is projected to potentially bring $2 billion to Manitoba’s economy,” he said, adding it’s a step in the right direction.
“It is up to us as a country to make smart choices. We can choose to lead by recognizing where the world is heading and aggressively pursuing major areas of economic opportunity. Or we can choose to bury our heads in the sand, pretend the world is not moving towards a cleaner, greener future, eroding our long-term competitiveness and our long-term prosperity,” Wilkinson said.
Kinew said this is a good investment for Manitoba.
“We’re going to be able to connect the ag industry with sustainable aviation fuel opportunity and that there’ll be a cyclical opportunity there as well to feed back into future ag development, to do regional development, workforce development,” he said.
