Dutch firm showcases new ethanol process; says government support of biofuels in Europe is lacking

In the Netherlands, Nedalco launched a new process for fermenting sugar, a yeast extracted from elephant dung. The project received a $16 million grant from the Dutch government, but the project developers say that the grant, which represents less than 10 percent of the project cost, is not enough, and is symbolic of the EU’s lack of aggression in developing biofuels.

The crown price of the Netherlands has been an active global campaigner against biofuels, recently claiming at a global water supply conference that the amount of biofuel in an SUV tank uses as much water as it takes to produce enough grain to support one person for a year.

The European Union has set a target of 10 percent conversion to biofuels by 2020, or 15 billion gallons, and 5.75 percent by 2010. Currently the EU produces less than 2 billion gallons of biofuels, of which more than 1.4 billion gallons are biodiesel.

Biodiesel has been helped by an EU requirement that farmers take 10 percent of their land out of food production, but are able to use the land for biofuel production and also receive a $25 per acre subsidy to grow rapeseed, the primary feedstock for canola oil-based biodiesel.

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