by James Cogan (Biofuels Digest/Pannonia Ethanol) … Together with their smaller peers they produce about 6 million tonnes of the fuel commodity annually, with combined revenues of around 4 billion euro. The product gets blended into petrol accounting for 4% of the energy needs of petrol vehicle owners.
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Bioethanol is used in transport because it cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 65% compared to fossil fuel, with that 65% rising to at least 90% by 2030 due to process efficiencies, petrol engine tuning and adoption of real world emissions measurements. Ethanol is the only solution that has made any significant contribution to road transport climate mitigation worldwide: biodiesel is used only in Europe and is made under lower sustainability conditions than ethanol while other non-liquid fuel solutions (electric, hydrogen, etc) to decarbonise road transport, though tantalising in their promise, are unfortunately still decades away from large scale adoption.
The largest contributor to climate mitigation in the transport sector
Used properly in climate and energy policy (20% blends and up), bioethanol will remain the biggest contributor to petrol sector climate mitigation in the EU until hybrid electric vehicles reach 25% of the fleet on the roads – likely to be sometime around 2040. Ethanol will continue to account for more than a quarter of greenhouse gas savings until hybrid electrics reach 60% of the fleet, hopefully by 2050 (though difficult to estimate).
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Europe’s ethanol CEOs should be pleased at the prospect of spending the rest of their careers in a climate friendly, profitable and growing industry. And indeed, judging from their low participation in regulatory discussions (the only driver that really matters), they certainly appear confident of this.
The playing field tilted towards diesel
Yet, consumption of European climate ethanol is dropping despite all its qualities. European road and fuel taxes favour diesel – blind to the number of deaths diesel particulates cause through respiratory diseases – so consumers have been buying diesel cars in ever greater numbers. As a consequence petrol use is forecast to decline by 35% between now and 2030, bringing bioethanol down by the same amount.
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The climate and energy policy makers at the European Commission have decided, completely irrationally and irresponsibly in the case of bioethanol, that what they deliberately and misleading call “food-based biofuels” will have no place in climate mitigation policy.
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There are legitimate concerns about the devastating effects of biodiesel on South East Asian forests (for palm oil), but these should not be allowed to undermine all biofuels, and definitely not European bioethanol.
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In fact world food costs have come down in the period since ethanol became a source of vehicle fuel, …
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Big oil interests enthusiastically support the European Commission in its anti-biofuels stance. They love it.
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Worse still, the Commission itself knows that European conventional ethanol is good. But they feel inadequate to the challenge of devising policy capable of blocking bad biofuels and fostering good ones.
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Europe’s climate ethanol CEOs. They could do some very valuable things for their businesses and for the climate.
- Develop high profile brand for European climate ethanol, making the product known and appreciated for its values (and lack of adverse side effects) independently of other biofuels. …
- Set ambitious industry wide targets for increasing the ethanol share of the petrol market, aiming for 25% by 2030. …
- Put something like 1% of European climate ethanol revenues into a joint high calibre marketing and advocacy campaign over a 10 year period (current advocacy spending is near zero, individual company spending is fragmented and often counter-productive, 1G and 2G advocates are poorly aligned and poorly disciplined, there is no branding or marketing happening whatsoever).
- Start right now. The European Commission is busy cooking up its climate and energy policy for after 2020 and it will include intensified efforts to exclude European climate ethanol despite best available science informing them to use it for low emissions mobility. Ethanol and its unique high value qualities are completely unknown among Europe’s policy makers, influencers and journalists (though most are fuzzily aware of negatives in some other biofuels sectors).
- Don’t be afraid (Steve Jobs advice to CEO of Corning Glass in 2005, on ordering commercial quantities of gorilla glass for the first iPhones). READ MORE
