Cars filled up at British supermarket forecourts are unknowingly using a greener fuel than a few years ago. The giant chain Tesco is now pumping a blend of petrol that contains 5% bio-ethanol, a type of alcohol made by fermenting sugars from plants.
Modern cars run perfectly well on the mix and, because bioethanol is almost always greener to make than petrol, the admixture helps rein in soaring greenhouse gas emissions. And there’s another effect: the United Kingdom’s dependence on oil is beginning to fall away.
The spread of bioethanol to supermarkets, chiefly across the south-east of England, precedes government moves to press companies into producing such a fuel. According to the renewable transport fuels obligation — the details of which are to be described in this year’s budget, expected in March — 5% of all motor fuel must come from renewable sources by 2010. Government figures suggest that if bioethanol replaced 5% of petrol in the UK, it would have the environmental impact of taking a million cars off the road.
According to some researchers, the slow but steady influx of bio-ethanol is the beginning of the end for petrol. They want to see bioethanol all but replace petrol, with vehicles running on an 85% bioethanol mix. But the hurdles are immense. Could enough crops be farmed to power the country’s cars on alcohol? Is it technologically possible? And what do the oil companies make of it?
As with other European countries, the emergence of bioethanol in the UK has been down to a carrot-and-stick approach by the government. Last year, Finance Minister Gordon Brown confirmed a 20p-per-litre (about R2,10) reduction in duty on bioethanol. The pledge meant the sums at last began to make sense to the manufacturers, although most held back because the reduction wasn’t guaranteed for long enough. The renewable transport fuels obligation changed that, by ensuring a need for bioethanol beyond 2010.
Cheap and cheerful
The spread of bioethanol across supermarket garages is being driven by Greenergy, a company with a base on the Thames in London. Greenergy buys in cheap ethanol produced from sugar cane in Brazil and blends it with petrol, before selling it on to Tesco. The fuel is better for the environment and allows Tesco to compete with other petrol stations, simply because the ethanol is so cheap.
While the efforts of Greenergy and Tesco have brought bioethanol to the south-east, others are now angling for a share of the market. British Sugar has started building a R212million plant in Wissington, Norfolk, that will see low-grade sugar from sugar beet converted into 70million litres of bioethanol a year. The company has signed a contract that will see a substantial proportion of that fuel go to Greenergy from April next year. Meanwhile, Green Spirit Fuels, a company based in Henstridge, Somerset, has been granted planning permission to build a bioethanol plant to convert 340 000 tonnes of wheat into 131million litres of bioethanol, equivalent to one-tenth of the potential market.
But this is just the beginning, according to Andy Taylor, director of sustainability at Ford. ”It’s a good start, but it’s a small start. There’s so much more mileage that needs to be played out, and I don’t see why we can’t go significantly beyond 5%,” he says.
Car manufacturers are cautious about bioethanol. The warranties of today’s standard cars state that no more than 5% bioethanol should be used. Bioethanol is more acidic than petrol, so can cause damage to aluminium components and rubber seals. Despite the warranty restriction, most experts agree that modern cars could withstand a 10% mix of bioethanol without causing damage to engines.
Above a 10% mix of bioethanol, cars have to be modified to make sure they can withstand the more abrasive fuel and ensure it flows properly. The so-called flex-fuel cars built by Ford and Saab can run on anything from 100% petrol to an 85% mix of bioethanol, thanks to hardened engine components, zero rubber and wider fuel lines. But the modifications required do not stop at cars — tankers, fuel pumps and underground storage tanks also need to be relined and updated to handle bioethanol safely.
The bigger problem lies with the oil companies, which, in order to keep costs down, continuously supply each other’s garage forecourts. ”It’s a problem because, if one company decides to start blending bioethanol into its petrol, they all have to,” says Taylor. And the only way some experts believe oil companies will move en masse is if the government mandates it.
Volatile blend
The oil companies face another problem. Adding ethanol to petrol does strange things to its vapour pressure, a measure of how volatile and potentially explosive it is. At small concentrations, ethanol makes petrol more volatile. The danger comes if a batch of petrol is mixed with a bioethanol blend, radically altering the fuel’s volatility.
Moreover, adding bioethanol to petrol means oil companies will have to, for the first time, start worrying about water getting into their equipment. ”Normally, water from condensation or wherever collects at the bottom of tanks and you can remove it. But alcohol and water mix exceptionally well, which leaves you in the uncomfortable situation of having gasoline with a mixture of water and alcohol sloshing around,” says one industry expert who preferred to remain anonymous.
It isn’t only the oil companies that face a huge challenge. While the government’s 5% bioethanol target could be achieved overnight by fermenting all of the country’s 3,5million tonnes of surplus wheat grain, moving beyond that, to 10% and more, will be no mean feat.
”In the long term, if we want to be self-sufficient and carbon-dioxide neutral, we have to find plants that will produce far more ethanol per hectare,” says Bruce Tofield, a bio-fuels expert at the University of East Anglia. ”We have to be focusing on fast-growing grasses and so on that have sugars locked up in them, sugars that are normally inaccessible. The problem is we’ve known for thousands of years how to ferment using yeast, but for these new plants, we’ll need different bugs, new enzymes and technology. But no one has even looked at how you enhance yields like this.”
The hurdles blocking bioethanol’s path to success are not likely to fall because of increased environmental concerns. While the UK has made biofuels primarily an environmental issue, others are pursuing the technology for different reasons. In his recent State of the Union address, United States President George W Bush declared a need to break the country’s ”addiction” to oil by investing in new cellulosic ethanol, such as that described by Tofield. The reasons were largely to ensure fuel security and protect against oil prices, which are unlikely to fall anytime in the near future.
Patriotic petrol
In Brazil, which makes close to half of the world’s bioethanol, the number of flex-fuel cars recently outsold conventional cars. The country’s military leadership decided to produce bioethanol from domestic sugar cane as a patriotic step, and years of honing the process have given the country the most efficient ethanol production on the planet. In the US, bioethanol production was encouraged to keep farmers in jobs, so little emphasis has been placed on ensuring the fuel is green.
The different forces for change mean the benefits of bioethanol vary dramatically between countries. Bioethanol is greener only because its fermentation process usually uses up less fossil fuels than petroleum refineries. Plants suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow, but burn bioethanol and that carbon dioxide is released, so the greenhouse gases emitted from a car running on bioethanol are very similar to a car running on petrol. ”There have been examples in the US where they’ve had coal-fired plants making ethanol and they have added carbon dioxide to the atmosphere instead of reducing it,” says Tofield. In general, US bioethanol production is so inefficient, it only cuts greenhouse gas emissions by 10% compared to petrol.
The Brazilians have made bio-ethanol a success story by building sugar fermentation plants powered by the remnants of the harvested sugar cane, ensuring it reduces greenhouse gas emissions by around 80%. According to Woods, bioethanol produced in the UK will probably lead to a 60% reduction in greenhouse gases, equivalent to two million tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.
According to Tofield, a bioethanol revolution is just one radical change the UK’s transport sector must face. He believes that our ultimate goal should be to go 10 times as far on the same amount of fuel we use today. That means doubling the yields of biofuel crops, drastically reducing the weight of cars, restricting their speed and switching to alcohol-burning fuel cells.
”In the long term, we don’t necessarily want cars that go 96kph for driving around cities,” he says. Cars with smaller engines burn fuel more efficiently: ”You can go 10 times as far for the same amount of energy, so you’ll need only 10% the fuel we need now. We have to rethink what society is going to look like and, without that vision, you’re never going to get to it.” — Â