CTO Assessment - European Commission

Biomass for liquid biofuels
The market: after the twentieth century
has seen other fuels, especially
petrol and diesel, developing more
widely that biofuels (despite known
for a long time), due to the large and
cheap supply of their main feedstock,
crude oil, nowadays liquid biofuels
applications are expanding again.
This is partly due to European and
national environmental, energy and
agricultural policies.
The Commission Green Paper for the
security of energy supply (November
2000) introduced the objective of 20%
of traditional fuels substituted by alternative
fuels for toad transport by
2020.
As mentioned above the White Paper
on RES mentions a target of 18 Mtoe
for 2010.
A Directive for promoting liquid biofuels
(2003/30/CE) has been adopted
in May 2003 with indicative objectives
for members states. The minimum
level of biofuels as an energy
proportion of all gasoline and diesel
sold on the market is 2% by the end
of the year 2005 and 5.75% by 2010
(corresponding to about 18-20 Mtoe).
Member States should also be able
to apply reduced rate on excices duties
for pure or blended biofuels with
the directive on fuels taxation.
The liquid biofuels market has developed
significantly since 1995 (Table
4) but major efforts have to be invested
in order to reach the White Paper
goals.
Table 4
Liquid biofuels in the EU (Mtoe)
Biodiesel
Bioethanol
1995 2000
0.28
0.08
0.36
0.70
0.20
0.90
Source: Kopetz H., 2003, “Bioenergy in
Europe”, in: proceeding of Bioenergy 2003
conference, 2-5 September 2003, Jyvälkylä,
Finland, p 21-24.
References
1
Gasification is a thermal treatment of biomass
with an oxydation agent (air for example)
with a limited amount of oxygen,
that results in mixtures of gases (containing
CO and H 2
) that can be used for energy
purposes.
2
Pyrolysis is a thermal degradation of wood
in absence of oxygen (dry wood is heated
up to 500-600 °C in a very short time in
flash pyrolysis) resulting into a liquid, or
bio-oil.
3
Anaerobic digestion is a biological process
that converts biomass into biogas in absence
of oxygen. The gas consists mainly of
methane and carbon dioxide.
4
Hoogwijk M;, Faaij A., van den Broek R.,
Bernedes G., 2002, “The global potential
of biomass energy”, in : proceeding of the
12 th conference on Biomass for Energy, Industry
and Climate Protection, 17-21 June
2002, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, p 27-
30.
5
Kopetz H. gives other figures : 17,3%
bioenergy for Sweden and 10,8% for Austria.
(in : Kopetz H., 2003, “Bioenergy in
Europe”, in : proceeding of Bioenergy 2003
conference, 2-5 September 2003,
Jyvälkylä, Finland).
6
AEBIOM, 1999, “The European heat market
and the Kyoto protocol”, position paper
by the European Biomass Association
(AEBIOM), available on : www.ecop.ucl.ac.be/
aebiom, 19 p.
7
Alakangas E., Vesterinen P., 2003, “Trade
of solid biofuels in Europe”, in : proceeding
of Bioenergy 2003 conference, 2-5 September
2003, Jyvälkylä, Finland, p 129 – 134.
Market Development
21