EU to impose tariff on US biodiesel in 2008, industry exec says

In England, chief executive officer of Argent Energy told the Reuters Global Agriculture and Biofuel Summit said that the EU is likely to impose an import duty on US biodiesel this year. The move comes after imports of biodiesel from the US rose to 1 million tonnes in 2007, up from 80,000 tonnes in 2006. The US subsidizes biodiesel exports by $1 per gallon, making European biodiesel uncompetitive. The European Biodiesel Board is expected to file a dumping and subsidy complaint by February with the European Commission.

The Wall Street Journal provides coverage of problems in the European biodiesel industry, including a production glut, soaring costs, loss of support from green groups over the use of Malaysian and Indonesian palm oil, the cancellation of tax breaks by national governments, competition from subsidized US biodiesel, and a B5 blend wall.

Last November, the new Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), which met in Washington to develop definitive standards for biofuels trade. Recently, numerous European biodiesel producers have reduced capacity or shut down due to competition from subsidized soybean-based biodiesel from the United States. The European Biodiesel Board points out that biodiesel producers in the US receive a subsidy of up to $300 per ton, and that as a result, US producers can export to Europe for less than the cost that Europeans pay for raw materials.

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