I guess our big neighbour to the south is pretty aggressive with respect to its renewable fuels mandate and targets. The so-called revised renewable fuel standard, the RFS2, from 2007, I believe it was, established a 36-billion-gallon target for renewable fuels by 2022. Thirty-six billion gallons, just to put that in perspective, is about three and a half times Canada's total gasoline consumption. It's about 30% of U.S. gasoline consumption. So it's an aggressive target. To achieve that target, a number of policy instruments have been put in place.
I should say that right now there are approximately 14 billion gallons of grain-based ethanol--between 12 billion and 14 billion gallons--produced in the U.S. That's in excess of Canada's total gasoline consumption. We consume about 10 billion gallons of gasoline in this country.
To achieve that goal of 36 billion gallons, they have put in place a host of policies. There is a production tax credit. There are grants. There is, of course, long-term support for research, development, and demonstration. There are loan guarantee programs. There are a host of policy initiatives.
I think through the passage of the renewable fuel standard and the regs and this 5%, on average, mandate that's coming into effect in September 2010, Canada has really caught up, not only to the U.S. but to the rest of the world. The whole world is going towards biofuels. Brussels has targets as well for 10% renewable fuels by 2020.
So this is a good step Canada has taken to require 5% by September 2010. I think it puts us on the world stage.