The Crown corporation unveiled its new biomass project Wednesday - an incentive program designed to prod about 250 of Manitoba's biggest hog farms, food processing plants, pulp mills and other polluters into producing their own electricity using waste products.

Joseph Hogue, manager of new business development at flax-fibre processor Schweitzer-Mauduit, said he'd like to see Hydro think a little bigger and use biomass to add electricity to the province's entire grid instead of just at a handful of plants and farms. That could mean building a biomass power plant or even converting the aging Brandon coal-fired power plant to biomass.

The province has a massive supply of fuel from crops alone - close to a million tons a year. Instead of burning the stubble leftover after harvest, a practice that blanketed parts of southern Manitoba in thick haze last fall, crop residue can be gathered up and used by Hydro as a fuel for a power plant.