Japan: Industry opposition sinks ‘biofuel island’

The government has been forced to abandon plans to replace the use of regular gasoline with a biofuel on Miyakojima island in Okinawa Prefecture, government sources said Saturday.

The decision to give up on the plan to turn Miyakojima into a “biofuel island” stems from the government’s failure to win support from the oil industry for the E3 fuel variant, a biofuel that is essentially gasoline with a 3 percent element of ethanol. This is not the combination favored by the industry.
As the government initially hoped to showcase the E3 plan as an approach for combating global warming at the Group of Eight major nations summit meeting to be held at the Lake Toya hot-spring resort area in Toyakocho, Hokkaido, in July, the scrapping of the plan will deal a blow to the government.

Six ministries, including the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry and the Environment Ministry, had been pushing for adoption of the plan, which envisioned exclusive sales of E3 fuel for vehicles at the 19 gasoline stations on the island in 2008.

Daily Yomiuri