« Pile o WVO/Biodiesel links | Main | New biodiesel pump in Central Oregon »
May 31, 2005
The Economist has great Biofuels article
Many of you may have already seen this: Economist.com | Biofuels. Some interesting excerpts:
Germany, the big producer of biodiesel, is raising output 40-50% a year.
The reason is simple. Forget greenery or energy security, the grounds on which governments justify subsidising biofuels. Just take the past year's soaring price of mineral fuels, subtract the biofuel subsidy, and the answer is plain: for the user, biofuels are currently cheaper.
American output of biodiesel is still trivial: last year 30m gallons, in a total on-road diesel consumption of 36 billion. A year ago, biodiesel cost about 20-30 cents a gallon more than petro-diesel. But in October a new law gave it too a federal tax credit: one cent for every 1% of biodiesel in the mix. Oil prices are higher now. And new rules requiring diesel in 2006 to be all-but free of sulphur will help. Taking the sulphur out makes the fuel less slippery; adding biodiesel can make it more so.
As in America, there is also political pressure, though the politics, so far, is more that of the green lobby than the farmers. The European Union, unlike the United States, has ratified the Kyoto treaty on emissions and the environment, and the EU authorities in 2003 issued indicative targets for translation into national law: 2% of motor-fuel consumption should be biofuel by 2005, and 5.75% by 2010.
Posted by Martin at May 31, 2005 12:57 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.b100fuel.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/1953
Comments
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)