Biofuels

Core Messages

• The many different influencing factors of biofuels, such as technical, economical and ecological/political factors, complicate the identification of interesting technological opportunities.
• Reducing the complex coherences to the most important influencing factors enabled a quantitative comparison of the different biofuels with regard to interesting technologies.
• At present, BTL fuel cannot be produced competitively.
• Only bioethanol and biobutanol produced on a large scale from lignocellulose-containing raw materials have the potential to be produced competitively.
• It can be concluded that in Europe biobutanol produced from straw is mid term the most cost-effective biofuel, which can be produced with a reasonable profit margin also without tax exemption.
• An analysis of customer acceptance and attitude towards biofuels showed that important to customers are prices no higher than those of fossil fuel, no engine modification costs or loss of power, high availability and easy handling.
• Therefore, biofuels need to meet the following criteria: competitive production costs, no additional distribution/infrastructure costs, problem-free blending with existing fuel types as well as similar chemical/physical properties.