Biofuel co-products as livestock feed - Opportunities and challenges

14Biofuel co-products as livestock feed – Opportunities and challengesMAIN MESSAGES• Since 1990, while all other sectors have seen a significantreduction in GHG emissions, the GHG emissionsfrom transport have increased by more than 25 percent.This shows the vital need to reduce the GHGemissions from road transport.• There is a loss of only 1 to 2.5 percent in the overallenergy efficiency from biorefining food crops forbiofuel and animal feed. The non-extracted oil andfermentation by-products are all conserved to providemetabolizable energy in the animal feed co-products,while all the other plant components, such as proteinand minerals are concentrated in the animal feed.• The blending of animal feed co-products in the EUcompound feed market will directly or indirectly displacea mixture of EU cereals and imported soybeanmeal, mainly from South America.• The use of cereal crops and oilseed rape for additionalbiofuel production will reduce the rate of abandonmentof arable land in temperate regions, while theuse of other oil seeds and sugar cane for biofuels willincrease the demand for arable land in South Americaand SE Asia.• Biofuel production from EU crops will give substantialGHG savings and animal feed co-products will providesubstantial additional GHG savings from ILUC, due tosoybean meal displacement.• The yields of biofuel crops grown in the EU aresubstantially higher than those of soybean in SouthAmerica, so the overall balance of biofuel productionfrom EU crops is a net biofuel output of 12 milliontonne oil equivalent annually, with a net reduction inglobal land area of about 3 million hectare.Otherenergy14%FIGURE 1EU15 total GHG emissions by sector, 2009Industrialprocesses7%Agriculture10%Manufacturingindustries11%Source: EEA, 2011.Waste3%Residentialenergyproduction10%Roadtransport18%Commercialenergyproduction4%Publicenergyproduction23%able future is the use of transport biofuels to replace fossilfuels. While there are other options for non-carbon transport,based on plug-in electricity or hydrogen fuel cells,these vehicles would use marginal base load power, whichfor many EU countries will be provided by coal-fuelledpower stations. Plug-in electric vehicles also incur substantialadditional GHG emissions in the production of thebattery pack (Patterson, Alexander and Gurr, 2011). Thesevehicles will therefore not provide worthwhile GHG savingsuntil coal power stations are shut down and the base loadpower generation sector is substantially decarbonized.EU BIOFUEL PRODUCTIONBiofuel legislation and outlookBiofuels are required to meet two pieces of legally bindingEU legislation:• The EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) (EC, 2009),which mandates Member States to meet 10 percentof surface transport energy from renewable sources by2020. Rail electrification and electric vehicles may makea contribution to the RED, but biofuels are expected tomake up the majority of the effort. Biofuels will onlycount towards the RED targets if they meet specifiedsustainability criteria. These include meeting a minimumthreshold in GHG savings compared with fossil fuels of35 percent by 2013, and 50 or 60 percent by 2017.• The EU Fuel Quality Directive (FQD), which mandatestransport fuel suppliers to meet a 6 percent reductionin the carbon intensity of road transport fuels by 2020.The minimum obligation is expected to be met throughimproved industrial practices in the extraction and refiningof fossil fuels (reductions in flaring and venting) andthe use of lower GHG-emitting biofuels and alternativefuels. Analysis by fuel suppliers has suggested that littleif any of the target can be met by improvements in theproduction of fossil fuels. If it is assumed that there is noimprovement in the refining GHG intensity, then biofuelswill have to provide the full 6 percent of the GHG emissionreduction. While some biofuels, such as those fromlignocellulosic feedstocks and from wastes and residues,