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Wednesday, 08 April 2009 17:11 |
Bloomberg.com
April 1, 2009
By Fred Pals and Eduard Gismatullin
April 1 (Bloomberg) -- Royal Dutch Shell Plc, Europe’s largest oil company, said biofuels may account for as much as 10 percent of global transport fuel in the coming decades.
“We believe biofuels could grow from just 1 percent of the world’s transport-fuel mix today to as much as 7-10 percent over the next few decades,” Chief Executive Officer Jeroen van der Veer said in a speech published on Shell’s Web site today, which he will deliver tomorrow at the Paris International Oil Summit.
Shell, based in The Hague, said last month it will focus on biofuels instead of solar, hydrogen and wind energy for the next few years. The company expanded a research agreement with the U.S.’s Codexis Inc. in March to accelerate the commercialization of the next generation of biofuels, made from non-food crops.
Energy producers around the world are investing in new fuels as governments push companies to trim greenhouse-gas output, blamed for global warming. The European Union ruled last year that at least 10 percent of land-transport energy in each member country must come from renewable sources, led by biofuels, in 2020. That’s part of a broader goal to more than double the overall share of renewables in the EU to an average 20 percent.
“We think commercial volumes of next-generation biofuels could be on the market in 5 to 10 years,” Van der Veer said. Shell distributed 6 billion liters of so-called first-generation biofuels last year, according to the CEO.
First-generation biofuels are made from sugar, starch, vegetable oil or animal fats using conventional technologies, while second-generation biofuels are made from lignocellulosic biomass feedstocks using advanced technical processes, according to a definition from the Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
To contact the reporters on this story: Fred Pals in Amsterdam at fpals@bloomberg.net; Eduard Gismatullin in London at egismatullin@bloomberg.net
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