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Biodiesel A New Way of Turning Plants into Fuel
Biodiesel An Alternative Fuel Available Now
Biodiesel An Industry Poised for Growth
Biodiesel Facts For Kids
Biodiesel For Diesel Fuel Use
Biodiesel Keeps Home Fire Burning
Biodiesel Plan Spans Border
Biodiesel Refinery In Romania
Biofuel Cells To Replace Rechargeable Batteries
Biofuels As A Source Of Energy
Biofuels Fill Your Tank With Natures Goodness
Biofuels For Transport
Biological Ways Of Producing Ethanol
Cool Fuel Cells
Ethanol
Ethanol Based Biodiesel
Fill Er Up Full Of Beans
From Fuel To Pure Water
Fuel Alcohol From Pea Starch
Fuel Cell Benefits
Fuel Cell Cars
Fuel Cell Challenges
Fuel Cell Efficiency
Fuel Cell History
Fuel Cell Vehicle Benefits
Fuel Cell Vehicles General Information
Grass Hailed As Potential Source Of Clean Energy
How They Work Hydrogen Sources
Hybrid Electric And Fuel Cell Vehicles
Hydrogen Challenges
Hydrogen Delivery
Hydrogen Overview
Investigating The Greenness Of Biobased Products
Is There A Green Car in Your Future
Making Biodiesel Fuel at Home
RP To Mass Produce Sugar Sorghum For Bio Fuel
Running On Vegetables
Some Alcohol Fuels Facts
The Alcohols Ethanol And Methanol
Veggie Fuels Feed Bottom Line
What Is A Fuel Cell

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Running On Vegetables

Running On Vegetables

The EU has set itself the target of increasing the proportion of biofuel used in transport from the current miniscule 0.3% to an ambitious 5.75% by 2010. But does Europe have enough agricultural land to produce the necessary crops upon which our motorcars can graze without incurring economic penalties?

Running on vegetables The aims of using fuel extracted from plants – or biofuel as it has come to be know – are to cut energy imports, reduce our dependency on fossil fuels, and return to the atmosphere only the carbon dioxide that the plants have recently taken out of it.

Without modification, today’s car and truck engines will not take pure biofuels but can tolerate petrol that contains a little ethanol – derived most productively in Europe from sugar beet or potatoes – or diesel diluted with rape or sunflower oil. These biofuel cocktails are ready for the market, but it is by no means clear that the market is ready for them.

Counting the fields

The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, part of the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre, has added up the land that Europe would need to grow crops for this target and compared it with what could be made available. It has developed several scenarios to do the calculations, using the results of its previous work on the production potential of the Union’s ten new member states and the candidate countries. The modelling assumes a better use of the land and other resources of these countries under two scenarios: one with no external help, the other with assistance from the EU-15. The land needed depends on the energy per hectare that each fuel crop produces. The production of bioethanol has a higher energy yield than growing oilseeds, so less land would be needed to reach the 2010 target. The biofuel Europe now uses – representing only 0.3% of total transport fuel consumption – comes from crops grown in the 15 pre-accession member states.

An interim target of 2% biofuel in transport by the end of 2005 was thought to be reachable when data were collected for this study in 2002. This would require 6% of Europe’s arable land, which is the equivalent of the land that is currently set aside. The capacity for extracting biofuel from the crops, especially in the new member states, would have to be expanded. With just over a year to go, we should now know if this is likely to be ready in time.

In the longer term,biofuel crops must compete with food production and other land uses that may yield a higher income,such as growing flowers or wood. This report maintains that none of the EU-25 could spare enough land for viable biofuel production. Part of the solution could lie in two of the candidate countries, Bulgaria and Romania, which have expanses of unused land that could grow such crops. This argument has considerable policy implications that are not discussed in the report.

More kilometres per hectare

The crop that gives the highest energy yield per hectare is sugar beet, followed by potatoes, so bioethanol is the best option to meet the target. But current petrol engines can tolerate only 5% by volume of ethanol. As the target is 5.75%, this is not going to be good enough. Either new engine technology will be needed, which will entail development costs, or biodiesel will have to meet a part of the target, even though oilseed crops have a lower energy yield. Another problem is that beet is best grown in crop rotation, so that three times the apparent area of land would be needed.

A long-term answer would be a fuel that mixed fossil diesel and ethanol, a solution which poses some technical problems. However, it would help in meeting the 2010 target because diesel engines have a faster growing market share than petrol ones. The IPTS admits that finding the land to grow biofuel crops is only the beginning of the solution and this report is laced with caveats. The main aim of the common agricultural policy (CAP) is to produce food. By implication,some of its mechanisms would have to be modified, although this is not spelt out in the report.

Some biofuel crops also produce dry matter that could be used to generate power rather than motion. In future, biofuel could be made from wood waste and the plant material could be converted into hydrogen. However, it is unlikely that these products would be available by 2010. Since the aim is fuel use, some of the crops and biofuels could even be imported from outside the EU.

Ultimately, there is the whole question of consumer acceptance – energy efficient vehicles are already here, yet suburban streets are clogged with fuel-guzzling offroad monsters. Now that’s a serious problem.