Delay in plan to have all vehicles in Denmark running partly on biofuel by the start of next year

Vehicles in this country will start to run on biofuel soon but not from the start of the new year as planned. Instead, planners are pushing for the transition to be complete halfway through next year.

Oil industry executives say that the pilot programme implemented in Århus in the past couple years has shown that getting biofuel to all petrol stations nationwide will take much longer than originally believed.

The conversion of two refineries at Fredericia and Kalundborg to produce biofuel is also taking longer than expected.

Danish Petroleum Association (EOF) president Steffen Pedersen said the plan was now for all petrol to contain bio-ethanol by 1 June next year, while bio-diesel would be widely available a year after that.

‘We’re very serious in the oil industry about the introduction of biofuels, so it’s no good to force the development before all the technical aspects are in place,’ Pedersen said.

He explained that the tanks at petrol stations had to be completely cleaned and that took a lot of time.

The European Union has set a goal for 5.75 percent of all petrol and diesel sales to be biofuel. The biofuel must also conform to renewable energy requirements.

‘To reach that 5.75 percent goal we have to raise the bioethanol content up to around 8 percent, and that’s a big challenge,’ Pedersen said.

Preben Bach, a technical advisor in the Århus City Council’s traffic department, said the pilot project had gone well despite the hurdles.

‘We haven’t had any negative experiences with either our engines or the biofuel’s combustion, and that’s a plus since we naturally want to operate on environmentally friendly fuels,’ Bach said.

The second-generation biofuel being used in the programme is made from animal fat from slaughterhouses and used frying oil.

Once the biofuel plan is in full force, a state rebate will make the fuel’s wholesale price almost 2 kroner cheaper per litre than regular petrol.