Bioenergies
It is long-known that the use of biomass within stationary areas results in lower GHG reduction costs than the use in the fuel sector, since complex conversion processes are not applied.
Due to market incentives a worldwide increase of the biofuel demand is expected. Bioethanol is by far the leading biofuel. The largest market share will be reached in Brazil and the second largest in the European Union. In the USA, because of the size of the petrol market, the market share remains certainly under 10%. The demand does not only grow in Brazil, in the European Union and the USA. In Canada, China, India, Japan, Korea and many other countries the market introduction of biofuels is imminent and/or is already in the implementation phase. However, in these countries the sustainability discussion is also intense.
The European Union commission specified in its "Renewable Energy Road Map" that up 2020, 10% of the fuel consumption in the European Union must come from renewable sources, in order to increase supply security: "Changing the fuel mix in transport is important because the European Union’s transport system is almost entirely dependent on oil. Most of this oil is imported, much of it from politically unstable parts of the world.” German Federal Government, in order to improve, climate protection even aims at a 20% proportion in gasoline and diesel consumption in its "Roadmap bio fuels". Given that the present proportion of biofuels in European fuel consumption is approximately 1%, this is a very high goal, whose advantages for the climate protection are controversial.
Without imported biofuels the ambitious political environmental goals of the European Union and Germany cannot be reached. An increase in the biofuels quota to 10% in the European Union and to 20% in Germany can hardly be reached only with local production. The necessary biomass would have to be gained either by a drastic productivity increase or by the development of new cultivated areas. Various studies make it clear, that this land potential can only be reached with great abdication of the feedstocks exports. However, due to high world market prices, for weed and oil seeds, this will hardly obtain the approval of farmers.