Advanced BioFuels USA

by  Susanne Retka Schill (Ethanol Producer Magazine)  The U.S. Grains Council is teaming up with Growth Energy, the Renewable Fuels Association and the USDA Foreign Agriculture Service on a new four-way partnership in ethanol export market development.

There’s a big difference between trade and market development, says Tom Sleight, CEO of the U.S. Grains Council. “Marketing is seizing on current activity. There are some curious markets that have developed in the current ethanol scheme that are quite good, but somewhat built on curiosities in market access. For instance, the Philippines brings in ethanol and sends some of that blended fuel up to China, which actually has a current ban on the importation of ethanol as ethanol. The United Arab Emirates is a big, strong importer of ethanol right now, mainly because of octane reasons. Norway is a fairly good market right now, because of some of the curiosities of biofuel policies in the European Union. All these current markets are very important. We want to maintain them. But we want to get after those core constraints that exist in markets that prohibit them from growing.”  Those may be trade barriers, internal policies or other market constraints, he explains.

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“We started in April,” says Ashley Kongs, manager of ethanol export programs at USGC, “putting together a list of countries and creating profiles as to where they currently stand with biofuels policies, if they’re exporting, if they have a mandate, what the environment for renewable energy is there, how focused they are on looking for alternative sources of energy. We created this map of the ethanol markets that we wanted to look at and, from there, we decided to highlight some of the countries that most interested us in the initial stage of exploring the markets.”

The three trade missions were planned for the end of the year, plus USGC was able to add an ethanol component to a USDA market development mission to China conducted in May. The trade teams have been quite small, just five or six people. The list includes Kongs, a USGC regional or country director, an ethanol producer or two, and a staff member from an ethanol organization partner. The groups have met with academics, government officials and potential buyers in each of the countries.

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The key to introducing ethanol more successfully will be education of the general public and government officials on the benefits of ethanol and what it can do, he (Alex Marquis, logistics manager at Marquis Energy LLC) says, benefits such as clean emissions, high octane, the potential price benefits and the boost it gives to transportation fuels.

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“The benefits might be seen for the refiners and also for the consumers more on the octane rating,” he (Marquis) says. “We learned the refiners are blending their gasoline to a 95 octane rating before blending in the ethanol.”

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The Philippines has an enforced E10 mandate that its four ethanol producers fall short of meeting. Last year, the country imported 51 million gallons of U.S. ethanol, making it the second largest market after Canada. …  The USGC reports the Philippine Department of Energy has ambitious plans to continue to ramp up the ethanol blend rate which has moved from E5 to E10 over the past two years and is set to reach E20 by 2020.  READ MORE