Three German biodiesel production plants were
recently sold to the United States and Canada and more are up for sale
after biodiesel sales collapsed, a German renewable fuels industry
leader said this week.
"I estimate that 30 percent of Germany's
biodiesel plants are now up for sale," said Peter Schrum, president of
the German renewable fuels industry association BBK. "Germany's
biodiesel industry is currently being dismantled and sold abroad," he
said.
The country's five million tonnes biodiesel industry is
only producing at about 10 percent of capacity largely because a
biofuels tax increase on Jan 1 has sharply cut sales, he said.
Although
the European Union wants to increase biofuel use to stop global
warming, Germany has started taxing biodiesel as the government said it
cannot afford to lose the large tax revenue from fossil diesel.
"The
tax means that biodiesel is now more expensive than fossil diesel,"
said Schrum. "As biodiesel has eight percent less energy content, this
means no-one is buying biodiesel."
He said that trucking companies have turned their backs on biodiesel.
"The market for biodiesel at petrol stations is dead. The industry is basically producing a small amount for blending."
To
reduce the impact of biodiesel taxes, Germany introduced compulsory
blending of biodiesel with fossil diesel at oil refineries in January
2007.
The BBK says the 4.8 percent biodiesel blended content in
fossil diesel would create demand for about 1.5 million tonnes of
biodiesel annually.
But a high proportion of the biodiesel used
for blending is coming from the United States and is being sold cheaply
in Europe with the help of US subsidies.
Under a scheme dubbed
"splash and dash", biodiesel can be imported into the US blended with a
small volume of mineral diesel to gain the subsidy and then re-exported
to the European Union to be re-sold at low prices.
Schrum said
the decline of Germany's biodiesel industry could also create serious
problems for the country's animal feeds sector.
German biodiesel
is largely made from rapeseed oil and huge volumes of high-protein
rapeseed meal, a key animal feed, are produced as a by-product.
"If
oil is not produced for biodiesel then protein feed will not be
produced either," he said. "This requirement will have to be met by
more expensive imports, probably of soymeal."
He estimated 60 percent of German feed meal production was generated as a by-product of biodiesel production.
"This
will have to be replaced by more expensive imports in coming months as
the biodiesel industry closes," he said. "Large volumes of German
rapeseed will also have to be sold abroad."
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