German ministry must act on biodiesel turmoil

14 November 2008 17:29  [Source: ICIS news]

(Recasts with comment from environment ministry in paragraphs 9-11)

 

TORONTO (ICIS news)--Germany’s environment ministry must act quickly to ensure power stations running on palm and soy oil-based fuels and biodiesel do not go bankrupt after a legal change which created considerable market uncertainty, politicians within Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU party said on Friday.

 

Under the law, palm and soy-based fuels will no longer count towards biofuels quotas and the plants will no longer receive a bonus for using renewable energy from 1 January.

 

The onus was on the environment ministry, led by the SPD’s Sigmar Gabriel, to avoid a catastrophe on markets, said Joachim Pfeiffer and Georg Nusslein, energy coordinators of the CDU/CSU.

 

Merkel’s CDU/CSU is governing the country in a so-called "grand coalition" with the SPD since a federal election in 2005.

 

The law was changed by parliament in June to ensure that the plants use only biomass that is proven to be environmentally sustainable.

 

However, even though the law was changed in June, the government had yet to decide on new regulations for sustainability requirements and proofs, Pfeiffer and Nusslein said.

 

The delays in producing the new sustainability requirements had been entirely foreseeable and the CDU/CSU had therefore put forward an initiative to enable the continued operation of plants after 1 January, the two parliamentarians said.  

 

This, however, had been rejected by the SPD party. It was therefore up to the environment ministry to take quick action to restore confidence in the market, they said.

 

The environment ministry said in a statement it was particularly concerned about the rising use of palm oil in so-called direct heating power stations – known as “Blockheizkraftwerke.“

 

Studies showed that palm oil plantations in tropical countries involved the loss of precious rain forests.

 

There were alternative feedstocks to power the heating stations, including rapeseed or biogas, it said.

 

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

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