Biofuel thematic paper – Biofuel potential

Nov 2007

The potential for biofuel production/usage is assessed in this study.
The assessments cover mainly the EU, the U.S., China, Brazil, Denmark with references also to the remaining parts of the world; they are focused on the years 2010, 2020 and 2030.
The assessments are made on the basis of the following assumptions:
That there are no effect on food, feed and export demands;
That second generation technologies are not utilized in large scale until after 2010.

It refers to two types of potentials:
Maximum: the potential to produce biofuels if all the biomass which can be removed without harming the environment is used to produce biofuels.
Realistic: the potential to produce biofuels while taking into account the fact that the available biomass can also be used for other purposes (e.g. food and “heat and power”). It requires active government support to realize these levels of biofuel production.

Issues related to the discussion of “food versus fuel”, environmental impacts, socioeconomic impacts and developing countries are covered in other thematic papers.
The potentials are referred to in Mtoe (million tons of oil equivalent, 1 Mtoe = 41.87 PJ = ~ 0.5 billion gallons of ethanol) – on an energy content basis.

By: Novozymes

 
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