Biofuel ‘needs to be more profitable’

NATIVE production must become more profitable if the Irish biofuel industry is to achieve significant scale and avoid replacing imported mineral fuel with imported biofuels, the national bio-energy conference was told in Clonmel, Co Tipperary, yesterday.

Teagasc researcher Bernard Rice said while biofuel production may not have increased by much in the past year, discussion and debate has reached a new level. But it now appears from the list of excise relief allocation that the vast bulk of biofuel will be imported.

Mr Rice said Ireland can produce sufficient native feedstocks to meet the initial 2% substitution target, but supplying the 5.75% or a 10% target would cause serious difficulties. To substitute 5.75% of diesel fuel in Ireland, about 180,000 hectares of rape would be needed — a doubling of the tillage area.

Mr Rice predicted that the 10% target will cost several hundred millions of euro per annum, either in excise relief or in increased fuel prices. He questioned whether there were better ways to support native biofuel development.

Minister of State Mary Wallace said it was fair to say that some level of imports will be necessary for Ireland to meet the 10% substitution target by 2020.

“However, it would make no sense from a fuel security viewpoint to replace our dependence on imported fossil fuels with a similar dependency on imported biofuels.

“Therefore, biofuels produced within Ireland and the EU should be an important element in energy supply.”