The “Biofuels’ Time of Transition: Achieving high performance in a world of increasing fuel diversity”, report shows that despite the fact that biofuels could make up 10% to 15% of the future fuel in the coming ten to twenty years, it will be much difficult to reach that level than it was thought earlier.
The study brings out three areas that have to be developed to make the biofuel market a global industry:
• Environment: The biofuels’ growth is highly dependent on the environmental benefits it provides.
• Distribution: There are a number of distribution challenges related to biofuels. It is difficult to integrate biofuels into the usual fuel form. The process involves difficult situations wherein tough decision has to be made regarding accommodating, blending and storing different from of biofuels.
• Investment In Infrastructure: The development of the biofuel market involves huge investment in infrastructure which would help in the huge scale trading and dealing of biofuels. It is really hard to assess the investment amount where the return and the market size are so uncertain.
The study also pointed to other key factors which have an impact on bio fuels future:
• Biofuel technologies in the first grade, such as ethanol from sugar cane can be fixed over the next few years by the next grade technologies like cellulosic ethanol and ones which use waste from first-generation technologies. So the first and the second generation technologies will be used interchangeably over a number of years in this case.
• The first generation market has to be as much efficient and global as possible within the next ten years much before technologies such as plug-in hybrid vehicles or the non agriculture alternatives like biotechnology or algae become conventional.
• Biofuels signifies the arrival of much more diverse transport fuels marketplace. As a result, it may involve a slight shift from diesel and gasoline. Finally there may also be a range of non-fossil fuel providers.
• The “patchwork” of the different rules in the local market across the world acts as an resistance to move away from the petroleum market which includes two essential products: diesel and gasoline.
Melissa Stark, a senior executive in Accenture’s Energy industry group says in this context, “Our research shows that government policy and technology developments are the biggest uncertainties."
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