Cut carbon — and confusion

Few doubt that biofuels can deliver more sustainable motoring. However, some of the basic facts are not widely understood. Biofuels need to be fully integrated into a sustainable motoring strategy, and an understanding of the key issues should be the starting point for all.

The

believes that biofuels have an important part to play as part of an integrated approach to reducing real-world carbon dioxide emissions from road transport as they are refined from a renewable resource and can already be integrated into the fuel supply. Today's road vehicles are able to operate a five per cent blend of biofuels in petrol and diesel, creating immediate CO2 savings across not only new cars but also all vehicles, using the existing refuelling infrastructure.

Biofuels offer the potential to reduce a vehicle's well-to-wheel emissions by up to 80 per cent. However, the carbon savings and cost can vary significantly between different fuel options, depending on feedstock, the production and conversion process and use efficiency. Conventional biofuels such as ethanol from wheat are now capable of reducing well-to-wheel emissions by between 7-77 per cent. Second-generation biofuels — expected post-2010 — promise to optimise these saving potentials further.