Europe is catching up with U.S. biofuel

On Francois-Xavier Letang’s farm, yellow-flowering canola fields hold the promise of a payoff that is changing the color of the European landscape and the future of its transportation: biodiesel.

Thanks to government subsidies and long-held concerns about climate change, European farmers are trying to match their American counterparts in the ethanol business and expecting rewards when they deliver their crops to newly built biodiesel refineries.
“It’s a very profitable outcome,” said Letang, 32, looking ahead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits on the canola beans that he will harvest this summer.

Even as they argue about benefits and costs, Europeans are leaping into a biofuels race that is well under way in the United States and has sped around the world from Brazil to Beijing.

Europe is starting to see a dividend on European Union subsidies paid to farmers — at least $25 for every acre of energy crops produced. Earlier this month, Europe’s first regular passenger train service powered by biodiesel departed London for Wales.

Still in its early stages, biofuels has the agriculture business booming in parts of Europe: Near Letang’s farm, 75 miles southwest of Paris, implement dealer Philippe Bernard said he expects to sell $650,000 worth of canola-cutters, tools put on farm machinery to harvest canola plants, this year. A few years ago, he sold none.

In Europe, where 55 percent of vehicles are diesel, biodiesel is produced by blending petroleum-based fuel with oil from any number of oilseed plants such as soybean, canola and palm — or even using old cooking oil.
Europe lags well behind Brazil and the United States, the world’s ethanol giants, as Europeans joust over the environmental consequences of biofuels, as well as more immediate impacts.

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