Researchers revise 'overestimated' biofuels subsidies

Both this report and the previous report from the Parliament on biofuels is extraordinary and it appears the whole debate is being dictated to by NGO's? The previous decision of the EP on crop based biofuels was lead by similar information from NGO's and is most disheartening especially for a Pro EU member. It is this sort of misinformation by small dominant groups that is leading to the growing disenchantment of the citizenry with the EU as a whole?

As one who succeeded in 2006/7 fuelling our Irish fleet of trucks on 90% home grown Rape Seed Oil I fail totally to see how home grown biofuel produced in this manner has anything to do with ILUC or government subsidies? Surely if European farmers are being paid to leave their fields fallow (set-aside), that is the greatest of all acts of environmental degradation?

As part of my introduction to the magic of growing "diesel" in your own fields as opposed to buying it from Saudi Arabia or elsewhere I learnt of the fact that 60,000 Bavarian trucks were running on German RSO, I don't know the Benelux or UK figures but they were numerous. Instead a group of NGO's paid for by the European taxpayer has somehow hijacked the whole issue of saving the planet whilst Europe's unemployment increases and we grow more uncompetitive, Europe will not save the planet if it first can't save itself.

The production of Irish RSO, like German RSO was grown and produced locally by farmers, it is a break-crop (like sugar beet and potatoes) it is not an ILUC crop when grown on this scale in Europe. Its growth actually enhances subsequent cereal crop yields by more than 10% by improving the soil and actually reduces the need for fertilisers. There is no waste as the seed becomes an animal food stuff enhancing the health of animals whilst the straw becomes biomass.

The worlds first "Diesel" engine ran on peanut oil. The production of Rape Seed Oil for trucks was a small industry in Europe, creating local employment building and installing conversion kits, it enhanced farmers incomes and all gone as a result of being mixed up in this debate which unfortunately appears to be led by those who say they care the most, the Environmental NGO's?

There is no doubt that RSO has some downsides like us human beings, but I challenge anyone to do the total emissions count score for home grown RSO as opposed to diesel, or 5% biodiesel, its time for these people to wake up to European realities and "Smell the Roses".

Hello Paul.

I have also gotten a copy of those documents.

We have the same Company (Applied Biofuels from Malta) starting up a project in Padua and Sicily and Sardinia and Naples. They receive no publicity which is very strange yet they are working hard. They use the gravity pressure vessel and I seem to recollect that their web site can be accessed through www.genesyst.com and then to the Regional Ambassador in the UK...this is the same group Leader that is working in Malta...correct me if I am wrong.

You are right, the manufacture of Biofuel Butanol is the way forwards and if the calculations work then a 40 tonne articulated lorry that does 160,000 kilomtres a year (which is just over 3000 kilomtres a week) we are part of a larger group of hauliers, and so we make our lorries do around 650 kilometres a day (assuming an 8 hour day) and that means your calculation is very good. Unfortunately Diesel prices made from oil are very high at the moment and are €1-80 on average....so that when we send our lorries to the UK we have to fill up with new fuel other wise we would not get back to Italy. A 40-tonne lorry is supposed to get over 3 kilometres a litre...alas this is wishful thinking as these figures are declared on flat roads with no bends or hills. We are more likely to get just 2 kilometres a litre. So on our fleet of vehicles (we have 1160 working 40-tonne articulated lorries (50 of which are food tankers and 40 fuel tankers, and 30 are "prescribed chemical tankers used for carrying acids and chemicals in liquid,) and 440 fixed bed (12 metre long)lorries. Our Fuel bill is €230 Million a year so saving €-cents 65 per litre means we would save €80+ Million fuel costs every year.

We must have this in Italy as soon as possible and we would be very happy to support this.

A Fuel at €1-15 a litre is good for all the hauliers.

Having just come back from a short holiday in Malta I have to say what a lovely place it is...spoilt by the fumes of the traffic.

Now with reading this news about the company Applied Biofuels Malta Limited nearly reaching its target funding to start its Biofuels project in Malta I cannot wait to go back and use it. For too long Biofuels to me have raised concern over using crop lands like the Rape seed Oil does in Germany or the Soya and Sugar cane does in Brazil and the Oil Palm does in the Far East, and so to process non-food based biomass to make these fuels to me is very important. Of greater interest to me though is that the company seems to have it right, targeting waste organic materials from municipal and other sources for this. After all we have to remind ourselves that we must protect the pristine flora of islands like Malta and so we must avoid using enzymes and Genetically modifies organisms here. Likewise we must ensure that the system is real and will produce a product, which here is a biofuel, at less than the current oil based fuels Diesel and gasoline. this is demonstrated here in this leaked document and had it not been for this leak i for one would not have known much about this.
Does anyone in the European Union not realise that this is really the best thing ever. a Biofuel at €1-15 per litre is a huge saving and we need it here in the Uk as much as they do everywhere else in Europe (the EU or beyond!)

Many people will assume from this original statement made within the European Union that the DGs and Commissioners do not know what they are doing! In effect though it is the Advisors who are meddling up with these figures and giving the wrong impression.

We are all very much aware that some of the Renewable Fuels (Biofuels) including the Organic trans-esterefied oils are more carbon dioxide intensive than others. However let this not be too much of a concern as in the end it is the sales price of these commodities which matter most to the general end-user. I have to say that there are vastly different claims over the greenhouse gas effects of lots of source materials and the estimates for Petro-Diesel and Petro-gasoline are always under-estimating their net evoluativeness of such gases. These contain sulphur as well as benzene rings and occasionally other products which are not often assessed properly or included.

So then within the context of these reportings where are we standing?

Firstly the Carbon Dioxide equivalents should be addressed and importantly so. But they are just one part of this whole issue of Renewable Fuels (Biofuels). Secondly it is the issue of their costs. It is nonsense to produce such fuels for transport which carry costs higher than Diesel derived from oil or gasoline/petrol derived from oil. That is the issue of the day and it is the issue that clouds all other areas for to make them acceptable to the Public they must be available at the right price and that “right price” must be lower than their oil based originals without subsidies. The correspondents here have indicated from these leaked memoranda that it is possible to make and sell these Biofuel “Alternatives” to their oil based originals at a rate that is cheaper than those they replace.

The utmost folly and the stupidity of the “mad-dash” incepted across the EU (and also elsewhere in the World) to produce biofuels after the 2003 EU Directive was that it was not thought out properly.

It was inevitable that in this “mad dash” the industry would follow the Brazilian course of business and use Food Crops, such as sugar cane and soya, and the USA would follow suit, using corn and corn-sugar and sugar cane, with the EU following using sugar beet and wheat, and the other countries jumping in to capitalise on the subsidies. Thus we have Renewable Diesels coming in from S E Asia derived from oil palm.

This reckless abandonment of logic meant that this resulted in a dual call on crops for food and fuels and thus it was always going to be an issue.

Thus the consequential effects in food prices with the riots across Mexico, North Africa, Italy and to Pakistan and the PRC were inevitable and had to happen: we all saw the prices for staple durum wheat rocket and when the subsequent changes in local climates took place (as they do seasonally) and thus when the droughts (in Southern Europe) and Floods in Pakistan and un-seasonal events in the Mississippi Basin and failed crop yields in Brazil (repeated again even this year!) and yet more un-seasonal floods following the yearly monsoons in India occurred (it always amazes me to read about the “un-seasonal floods following the monsoons!” who are they kidding? It has always been thus!) and the various other interruptions including wheat rust and the likes as well as frosts and poor harvests that prices that were already suspect to change would change more dramatically. Then to add insults to injury, Governments (including the Brazilian, USA, Canada and the biggest bloc of them all the EU) intercede by placing huge subsidies on the production and quotas so that the need for the Biofuels is dictated not by logic but by costs to use at the place of use. Coupled with this the various assertions about having to use a mandatory blend – in the EU – set at a minimum of 5.75% Renewable Fuel with Oil-based Diesel or with gasoline/petrol by 2010 and a further enhancement to 10% by 2020 (which is almost certainly agreed now to be 20% drives the needs to produce even more Biofuels putting a further future potential strain on an already susceptible food commodity a staple world food.

Then – belatedly – the EU and other Countries accept that the issue about the Food Versus Fuel debate was in fact a reality rather than a conjecture and they wake up to the call to redress the production of Biofuels away from Food Crops to Non-Food based sources of Biomass that does not affect the food chain or the use of lands for the proper use of growing foods, with the reduction of subsidies away from food crops to biomass sources and waste sources of Biomass. This was long overdue and was wanted right from the start. However the legacy of this issue is still here for us all to see.

One is the fact that many of these grain to ethanol plants across the USA and in the EU which were already out-priced in the manufacture of the biofuels are now wanting ever more subsidies to ensure that they remain solvent. In the USA this is being done by direct intervention with the price of sugar being upheld to the farmers but then being reduced in sales price to the biofuel-ethanol producers. This is blatant subsidising and is wholly unacceptable. The same is in part happening with the corn prices. But the USA is not alone at this it happens in Brazil and the EU. One of the consequences of this is the fact that the nurturing alternatives to make the biofuels from Biomass are being starved of investment because those resources of subsidisng or loans are still being directed to the food to fuel plants: this must stop!

Returning to the issues that were raised here though earlier the one fundamental need is a stimulus to promote the Biomass to Biofuels Facilities within the EU. Up until now the emphasis has been to support those developments that use GMO and Enzymatic and GTL plants rather than to address the obvious and surely the most understood system of all time that was developed through Biomass Dilute-Acid Hydrolysis. Such is the system which is inferred here by the correspondents referencing the issue in Malta and Holland etc. For this system does not use anything out-of-the-ordinary other than traditional processing with conventional materials and fungi/yeasts that will not detract from their fundamental purpose and not interfere with the potential rupture of flora. It has been drawn to my attention that enzymes used to turn biomass to cellulose are very expensive and have to be tailor-made to suit specific sources of raw biomass. To use them therefore increases the costs of producing the biofuels and because many of these are GMO (Genetically Modified Organisms) they have been banned from use in many countries. The potential for severe interference with existing flora cannot be over-ruled as particularly after the intense trials of these in the Viet Nam War it is evident that any leak or mal-use of such products can have devastating effects. This is the reason that it is known that the PRC and India as well as many of the Island States are so concerned about using them and it is known that this remains a major consideration across the EU. Also manufacturing the biofuels by the GTL (Gas to Liquid) route has also become something of a concern. Here the issue of the fundamentals of total energy in to available energy out is a serious concern and the pure economics of the procedure remains a real problem. It is pointless spending €1-10 per litre of processing costs through both the enzymatic route and the GTL route to provide the end product which has a market price of €0-65 per litre. This is ruination of any business and has to be thought out more seriously.

It has been noted recently that the EU and the Commissioners have begun again to look at the way under which subsidies and/or loans to businesses are being arranged. In these EU journals various Commissioners Oettinger, Rhein (for example) and others have made it become known that giving grants to big businesses that do not need them is an anathema to logic. All that this does is provide such businesses with a mechanism to make their share-holders and Statements of Accounts more and more healthy. Such irresponsibility from the core of the EU is very very wanting.

We read also that the EU says with one breath that it wishes to support small to medium enterprise businesses and it encourages banks to support them but then nothing happens. Whenever we read about such attempts being made to garner development funds from the EU for very worthy projects (such as those here mentioned in the correspondents before mine) the applicants are put off before they even apply because of the rigmaroles of the application procedures. The need is to have the funding fully agreed to 100% before making any application and then a consideration will be made. This is nonsense for these funds are given out so readily to huge companies that do not need them for similar purposes and there is very little control over their usage. What we would suggest is that in these cases the EU behaves more as a First Bank of Lending and in for example the projects and programmes discussed here they become the sole bank. It is logical and it would work.

I have followed intently this debate under this item and I would trust that the projected programme for Malta and those in Holland Sicily Sardinia and Naples as well as in Holland which the EU seems to be totally ambivalent about gets off the ground within the next few weeks. It would help though that – even though I am a Tax Payer in the Greece (an expatriot UK national) that to me the EU should be supporting this style of project more readily than it does. It seems that currently the EU Energy Directorate would sooner throw money at the existing poorly accountable Wind Energy sector rather than this very important biofuels sector. It is important for us all in the EU to be able buy a Biofuel made from Non-Food Based Biomass at a price such as €1-10 per litre when it can surely be made for that using this processing system. Not everything that is Green or Environmentally Friendly should or has to cost more and here there is one example that can be built now and deliver for us within 18 months.

The comments by Eurocrat are absolutely right.

Providing Bio-Disel to 80,000 trucks is miniscule. The larger supply is to all the other Diesel vehicles.

Rape Seed is too expensive to grow and make without huge subsidies.

What I have read here is the fact that by using any biomass (and that includes the straw from Rape Seed as well as the Oils) the production of a Diesel substitute made and sold for €uro 1-10 per litre is now available. How does that compare with Rape seed Oil? If it is like that in the UK this price (in GBP £0-93 per litre) complete with Taxation Revenues for Fuels means i suggest a better sale than the RSO.

Making Renewable Diesels from Biomass and selling it at €1-10 per litre seems correct. By being so priced (and again I have also seen this leaked document here in Greece) I can advise you that this is a very tight and profitable means to make such a fuel. We all need a replacement for Petro-Diesel (I like the term, I had not come across this until recently) as a Butanol fuel made form general Biomass is so right. The Fuel (oil) companies may baulk at the price but as it will take time to steam up supplies to even reach 20% substitution and that means by 2018/2022 it is not goiung to impact these companies. Better still is the fact that Butanol can also replace gasoline, however to me if I think that they are using the right process then their by-products will include some of the lower alcohol fuels like Propanol.

Is Mr Oettinger in the EU aware of this company working in the Mediterranean. The impression I get reading thiese notes is that the Company working in the area (Malta Siciliy Sardinia Holland and Scotland etc is working without any support from the EU. This cannot be right and the Commissioners must give them a hand to help. They give (as Geraldine says huge freebie funds to the oil companies and ill-gotten projects using food crops to make Biofuels so they should help thios company.

The reason of course is simple...a Diesel sold from Renewable sources at €1-10 a litre is what we need all across EU.