Singapore to support R&D in biodiesel sector

15 January 2008 08:21  [Source: ICIS news]

SINGAPORE (ICIS news)--The Economic Development Board (EDB) of Singapore plans to support the growth of the biodiesel industry by focusing on research-and-development (R&D) instead of through subsidies, a senior board official said on Tuesday.

“Technology is the key,” said Julian Ho, executive director of the EDB’s energy, chemicals & engineering services cluster, on the sidelines of a press conference organised in Singapore by Finnish refiner and biodiesel producer Neste Oils.

Ho said that with end-users already willing to pay better prices for existing higher quality automobile fuels, biofuel demand would exist as long as technologies are developed to produce good grade material at affordable prices.

He, however, ruled out any existing plans to introduce subsidies or mandates for compulsory biodiesel blending in Singapore,

“We will focus on R&D in the [biodiesel] industry,” Ho said, adding that one of the main areas which biodiesel companies were working on was the development of alternative feedstocks to palm, rapeseed or soybean oils.

Vegetable oil prices have surged in recent months, with March palm oil futures traded on the Bursa Malaysia closing at Malaysian ringgit (M$) 3,414/tonne ($1,036/tonne) on Monday evening, a record high.

Biodiesel producers continue to be pressured, and have mostly cut production rates after finding their margins squeezed by such high upstream values.

If biodiesel producers could obtain the flexibility to switch to lower-priced raw materials and increase the quality of their produce through the use of R&D, more end-users would willingly switch to biodiesel from conventional fossil fuels, Ho said.

($1 = M$ 3.25)

Bookmark Simon Robinson’s Big Biofuels Blog for some independent thinking on biofuels.

By: Jeremiah Chan
+65 6780 4359

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