Today, as crude oil prices continue to stimulate people's nerves, using biofuels as alternative energy seems to have become a general trend. When people are immersed in the joy of solving the shortage of fossil fuels, different voices have been heard from all corners of the world. Some environmentalists have questioned the sustainability of biofuels in succession.
Following opposition from the European Union’s biofuels program, the European Parliament and EU member states requested that the biofuel sustainability standard be included in the newly revised Fuel Quality Directive. Professor Tian Hengshui, a deputy director of the Fine Chemicals Committee of the China Chemical Society and a professor at the East China University of Science and Technology, also clearly stated that "bioethanol fuel is not clean and unsustainable." The United States has always vigorously advocated the use of biofuels such as ethanol, but once the booming ethanol industry met with resistance from the local population in many states in the Midwestern United States.
Under these circumstances, countries have successively formulated regulations related to biofuels, with a view to guiding biofuels in a healthier direction. The government is increasingly looking to reward those biofuels that can provide higher carbon reductions, which means that future subsidies will be directly linked to carbon reductions. The new regulations on transportation fuel to be implemented by the UK next month, and the submission of similar legal frameworks in Germany and the EU, are already in place. However, there is a great deal of disagreement in these regulations as to how to determine whether biofuels meet environmental requirements without a uniform standard.
Erick Johnson, editor-in-chief of the Environmental Impact Assessment magazine, gave an example in an article published recently: According to German standards, the U.S. route for extracting bioethanol from corn can achieve carbon emission reductions of more than 40%; According to government calculations, this figure is only about 22%; according to British standards, it is only 20%. Therefore, this kind of bioethanol fuel produced from the corn line in the United States can be sold in the German market without restrictions. It is only barely qualified according to the US regulations, but it cannot receive subsidies in the United Kingdom. Eric said that this is very likely to cause confusion in the biofuel market.
First of all, these differences will give producers a series of problems. What kind of biofuel route does it meet? Biofuels that are encouraged in some countries and regions may be difficult to expand in other countries. However, if they are all implemented in accordance with higher standards, they will increase production costs, which may make biofuels less competitive in the international market.
There is no doubt that the differences in these standards will also cause confusion for those countries that have not yet formulated regulations related to biofuels: the standards that can be referenced vary, and to which level should the standards be aligned? There will inevitably be different positions of lobbyists involved in the formulation of the standard, so that the government of these countries is difficult to determine.
In addition, both manufacturers and end users are actively responding to global warming issues and advancing the use of biofuels in fossil fuels. Whether blindly increasing the use of biofuels will effectively achieve the goal of carbon emission reduction, it is difficult to harmonize national standards, which will surely dampen their enthusiasm for the production and use of biofuels.
Differences in EIA standards plagued biofuel development
The UK's Renewable Transportation Fuel Obligation Act, which will take effect on April 15 this year, stipulates that biofuels used in the United Kingdom will receive government subsidies only if they achieve a far lower carbon footprint than existing fossil fuels. The promulgation and implementation of this regulation has provided a useful reference for resolving the controversy over the sustainability of the biofuels issue in the global chemical industry. However, due to differences in the evaluation of the impact of biofuels on the environment by the governments of the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States, there may be confusion in the biofuel market.