European Bioethanol Offers 15% CO2 Reductions in Transport – Blocking It Is a Form of Climate Crime

by James Cogan (Biofuels Digest/Ethanol Europe Renewables Ltd.) ... The European Commission in Brussels is right now putting the finishing touches to a Communication on Transport Decarbonisation, due out this summer. ... There is a risk the Communication may support fossil friendly caps on sustainable European made bioethanol.

Bioethanol made by Europe’s bioeconomy, when blended to a fifth the volume of normal petrol, reduces greenhouse gas emissions by at least 15% in the petrol sector. That’s a giant step towards the 40% target. It’s already being done in parts of Europe at ethanol blend rates between 1% and 85%, averaging out overall at about 4%. We need to get that average up to 20% during the 13 years to 2030. Farms, filling stations, biorefineries and cars are ready and able to do it. With the right policy will, it can be delivered.

10% or maybe 15% will be got if we incentivise a third or more of new car purchases to be hybrid electric or electric – up from about 1% now – so that by 2030 around 20% of cars on the road would be all or partially electric (remember, it takes 20 years for 1% of new car sales of a certain car type to become 1% of the total fleet on the road). This assumes that most of the electricity they’ll use will come from wind and sun, etc. Our electricity companies are already stretched in the effort to convert existing power demand to renewables, so adding a big chunk of cars and trucks to their to-do list for 2030 is a big ask.

The last 15% will come from a combination of less traffic, smarter traffic (things like group Uber), gas powered cars and a transition from dirty diesel to cleaner, smaller, more efficient petrol engines. This last point is a real opportunity because ethanol blend petrol is high in octane, so leaner.

Clearly in the dozen years to 2030 the hardest 15% to achieve of the three approaches above will be the electric vehicles, so the first and third options will be making up the shortfalls. Then by 2040-2050 the electrics should be largely taking over. Unfortunately we can’t put our carbon reductions efforts on hold until electric vehicles with green electricity are fully viable because the climate won’t wait.

This protein-bioethanol mix is an wonderful example of bioeconomy symbiosis. We won’t need so much South American soya if we make more ethanol, nor the forest clearance and awful labour conditions brought about by soya demand. For every patch of land used to make food protein and ethanol in Europe an equivalent patch of forest somewhere in a developing country is not needed for soya meal, while coachloads of fossil carbon stay in the ground where they’ve been for millions of years and where they belong forever.

The roughly 20% of European ethanol not made from wheat and corn comes from sugar beet which is a soil enhancing rotation crop, i.e. grown in between the growing cycles of other crops on the same land, and from residues of field and forest agriculture, known as advanced cellulosic ethanol. The emergence of advanced bioethanol is the equivalent of having discovered vast new reserves of clean oil in our own home state. It’s all good.

Bear in mind too, that as petrol consumption drops due to electric vehicle take-up and smarter traffic, so too drops the demand for ethanol. Relatively soon the higher ethanol volumes in the petrol blend will be offset by dropping demand for petrol overall and in the longer term – as electric vehicles take over – ethanol fuel will go the way of fossil fuel, becoming virtually extinct (and by which time those biorefineries will be churning out high value biomaterials for non-energy uses).

Those of us dedicated to fighting for the climate and the environment – and that includes the EC, WWF, T&E and Birdlife Europe – should direct our fire squarely at the real villains. Stop palm oil, all of it, until deforestation is put under control. Two thousand five hundred football pitches of forest land are cleared every single day to make room for palm oil and the insatiable demand for it in processed food, cosmetics, soaps, chemicals and, for 5% of it, unacceptable palm oil diesel. Fight fossil oil. Break the link between oil companies and car companies and fight the dirty diesel that ruins the air of Europe’s cities, killing hundreds of thousands of us in the process.

To those who say renewable energy should stand on its own two feet in price competition with fossil energy the answer is no, it should not, so long as the fossil people are not made to collect and safely dispose of that coachload of fossil CO₂ that gets dumped into the sky by each of us every week. The ‘level playing field’ with fossil energy is irresponsible nonsense. It’s a dangerous form of climate change denial.

State aids for bioethanol should be allowed, as it is for fossil energy in many states. Governments should prioritise bioethanol in their public procurement for captive vehicle fleets. Car and fuel makers should specify high octane fuel which will foster ethanol use and more fuel efficient engines. Infrastructure for high blend fuels should be incentivised.

Failing to give adquate policy support to European bioethanol will only strengthen fossil oil, amounting to a form of crime against the climate.