Green fuels thrust

By 2020, all road transport fuel in Europe must include 10% from renewable sources, be it from biofuels, hydrogen or green electricity. The European Parliament's decision, reached last December, is a step down from the original aim of sourcing 10% of transport fuels from biofuels alone. Across the Atlantic, the US Department of Energy announced $200 million in funding from 2009 to 2014 for pilot and demonstration-scale biorefineries to develop cost-effective biofuels such as bio-butanol, 'green gasoline' and advanced biofuels technologies, such as algal biomass. But first-generation biofuels manufacturers have been trading at an all-time low. In January, Pacific Ethanol, of Sacramento, California, suspended operations at one of its sites, and last November, the world's largest corn-based ethanol producer, VeraSun Energy Corporation, of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, filed for bankruptcy citing huge losses and a $1.5 billion debt. The situation for corn ethanol producers could arguably improve as the US gears up to accommodate the 36 billion gallons per year of annual domestic renewable-fuel production stipulated in the Energy Policy Act. “Corn ethanol is not going away anytime soon,” says Pavel Molchanov, analyst at Raymond James in St. Petersburg, Florida. “With the current costs and low rates of return, I see no real investment going into the sector apart from VC [venture capital] and public money, so it will take some time to figure out the economics of second-generation technologies.”