First of all, what was announced yesterday in Washington was an invitation to commence negotiations with the U.S. Department of Energy. It was not an award of funds. It was an announcement that they intend to start discussions for an award of up to $80 million U.S. That whole process will unfold as it will over the next few months.
It does not guarantee that we would build a plant in the U.S. The grant money that is being proposed is going towards the project that we are proposing to build there, but you still need to cover the debt financing component of the facility. In that case, the instrument that the U.S. government has chosen to use is a loan guarantee.
To the extent that we are talking here about tax policy, the federal government doesn't have a lot of levers at its disposal, but one of the strongest levers it has is tax policy. We've had discussions for many years with the Canadian government, looking at a combination of economic instruments. They could be loans, they could be grants, they could be loan guarantees, they could be any combination of the above. Certainly we've had a lot of support from the Canadian government with respect to cost-shared R and D and repayable contributions through the Technology Partnerships Canada program, but the Department of Finance has decided, in their wisdom, that loan guarantees are not an economic instrument that this government wishes to use. At least, that's been their position so far.
Another country where we're looking at building a facility is Germany. For the German government, loan guarantees are just a common way of doing business to encourage emerging technologies. In fact, it's such a common way of doing business in Germany that PricewaterhouseCoopers has a standing contract with the Government of Germany to manage their loan guarantee program for emerging technologies.
The U.S. government is kind of halfway in between Canada and Germany. It does not have a standing program, but it instituted in legislation in August 2005 a loan guarantee program to cover the technology risks associated with emerging technologies--not just cellulose ethanol, but the next generation of nuclear, something called coal to liquids, and so on.
We continue to have discussions, quite positive ones, with the Canadian government. With respect to the coming budget, we hope to see some initiatives put in place for the commercialization of cellulose ethanol in Canada.