Biofuels in Perspective

78 Biofuels
Table 5.1 Biodiesel production 2006 in
Europe in 1000 tons 3
Germany 2,662
France 743
Italy 447
UK 192
Austria 123
Poland 116
Czech Rep. 107
Spain 99
Portugal 91
Slovakia 82
Denmark 80
Greece 42
Belgium 25
The Netherlands 18
Sweden 13
Slovenia 11
Romania 10
Lithuania 10
Latvia 7
Bulgaria 4
Ireland 4
Malta 2
Cyprus 1
Estonia 1
Finland 0
Hungary 0
Luxemburg 0
TOTAL 4,890
Silberberg, resulting from several years of research at the Institute of Chemistry of the
University of Graz. 1 The possibility of using pure biodiesel without paying mineral tax has
led to the installation of several industrial scale plants in 1991 in Austria and Germany, but
very soon countries like Italy, France and the Czech Republic followed. The period of slow
but constant development of biodiesel activities in Europe for several years ended with the
European directive for the promotion of biodiesel in the year 2003, 2 demanding a market
share of biodiesel of 5.75 % for the transport fuel in 2010. Since then the development of
biodiesel production almost exploded in all 27 countries of the European Union, leading
to a total production of biodiesel of 5.6 million tons in the year 2006 and a production
capacity of almost 10 million tons. An overview of the European biodiesel production is
given in Table 5.1.
The production has been increased by approx. 50 % from the year 2005 until 2006; the
production capacity in 2007 will exceed 10 million tons per year. 3 The almost exploding
development of biodiesel production in Europe will be cooled down by the lack of
feedstocks and raw material, which partly even today has to be imported.
Almost in every country worldwide biodiesel activities have been initiated; the leading
countries are also those with the largest production of vegetable oils. In 2006 in the US the
production of biodiesel exceeded 1 million tons per year; however, biodiesel plants have