Biofuel imports – a costly trade in bunkum

UK – Forget electric cars, you won’t be driving one for decades, perhaps you never will. What matters is the liquid that fills the tank in the Mondeo and that liquid is becoming more peculiar every year. You may think that your car’s diesel engine is burning brown sludge pumped out of a North Sea well and processed in a stinking jungle of pipes and pots on some blighted estuary in the North of England. That is only part of the story: what goes into your tank may be a cocktail of fossil-based fuels from Russia or the Gulf laced with vegetable oils imported from as far afield as Brazil and Malaysia. Making road fuel and delivering it to your car is a business that is becoming more complicated, costly and wasteful every year.

Fleets of ships, belching emissions of sulphur and carbon, are moving ethanol and other biofuels to Britain to ensure that the petrol and diesel sold at filling stations complies with the low-carbon diktat. A nightmarish transglobal web of logistics and manufacturing is required to meet the increasing biofuel obligation. In Britain, road fuel is currently 2.7 per cent ethanol or biodiesel (sourced from grains, such as wheat, rape or soya as well as palm oil and animal fat). The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation will increase that to 3.5 per cent next year and an EU directive requires that it rise to 10 per cent by 2020.

It is a trade in bunkum: more ships burning more fossil fuel to move more biofuel in order to burn less fossil fuel. About 70 per cent of Britain’s petrol and diesel is sourced from crude pumped from the UK and Norwegian North Sea, according to the UK Petroleum Industry Association, whose members run Britain’s refineries.

Times Online