Afew, you knew quite a lot about the EU's sugar regime. Can you redo the maize calculation with sugar beet instead? Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
http://www.fao.org/docrep/007/j3877e/j3877e12.htm
Europe sugar production 2004/5 was 21.8 million tons You can't be me, I'm taken
I understood the first question and will try to reply.
If the EU were to do this, however, this is the ethanol reckoning:
Total sugar beet area 2005-6 = 2.1m ha (so about a third of maize)
2.1m x 5000 l = 10.5 bn litres ethanol
10.5 bn x 10 (10%) = 105bn litres E10.
To be compared to above calculation of 164bn litres petrol used in EU-25.
Sven's FAO figure above gives a rough idea of sugar exports, 21 - 15 = 6 million tonnes. About 28%. Supposing 28% were turned into ethanol:
105 x 28% = 29.4bn litres E10 (out of approx consumption of 164bn l)
So sugar beet isn't a magic bullet either.
Also, from a sustainability point of view, it's as bad or worse than maize. Irrigation, pollution, soil destruction, etc. And beets can't be grown just anywhere -- they need good quality alluvial soils.
Conclusion: EU petrol consumption: 164 Gl (gigalitre: billion litres) per year. EU sugarbeet ethanol: up to 10.5 Gl EU maize ethanol: up to 19 Gl EU wheat ethanol: up to 33.5 Gl EU barley ethanol: up to 23 Gl
Total bioethanol at current land use: 86 Gl (58 Gl petrol energy equivalent) Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
Until second-generation biofuels are fully researched, confirmed, and brought on-stream, it doesn't look as if first-generation fuels are going to be able to make a contribution. As far as ethanol goes, anyway.
An equal volume of E6 has (94% petrol, 6% ethanol) has 98% the energy of petrol. 164 Gl energy equivalent petrol corresponds to 157 Gl petrol and 10 Gl ethanol. This is the entire sugarbeet ethanol potential, or 12% of the total (sugarbeet, maize, wheat, barley) ethanol potential. Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
The total petrol consumption of the EU-25 is given by Eurostat (for 2002) as 5,242,160 terajoules Taking the energy content of a litre of petrol at 32 megajoules, we get approx. 164, 000 M litres of petrol consumed in the EU-25.
This page gives energy densities of 10.9KWh/l for diesel and 9.7Kwh/l for gasoline, that is 39 MJ/l for diesel and 34.9 MJ/l for gasoline [10% off your 32 MJ/l]. The EU's transportation fuel consumption in 2002 was, therefore, 150 Gl petrol and 170 Gl diesel. Biodiesel has, according to Worldwatch, a much lower yield than bioethanol: 1000 l/ha for rapeseed is about the same as the yield for barley. It seems that to reach a 6% share of biofuels, it is most efficient in terms of land use to concentrate on bioethanol. 6% of the 2002 consumption is 715074 TJ or 32 Gl ethanol (@ 6.1KWh/ = 22 MJ/l). This is about the entire EU25 wheat ethanol potential, or 37% of the total ethanol potential.
The transportation fuel problem needs to be tackled on the demand side. Nothing is 'mere'. — Richard P. Feynman
I took 32 Mj/l from Wikipedia. It corresponds to ethanol at 21 Mj/l, or approx 66% of petrol, which is the proportion given pretty much everywhere.
I don't think a few % matter anyway. The EU doesn't have the spare capacity to produce enough ethanol. (See my soon-to-come comment below). (Some useful biodiesel mainly for farming and maybe public vehicle fleets is possible). So I agree with your conclusion.
I don't think, btw, that it is useful or necessary to show our reckonings in a submission to the Consultation. We need to thresh things out enough to be sure of what we think, and that we have a solid basis.
From the link I found on energy density:
The numbers compiled here varied a bit - the definition of gasoline and diesel is not precise; Gasoline and diesel fuel are a mixture of about 100 different molecules who's ratios vary from batch to batch. Diesel fuel should be very similar to gasoline.
(And Eurostat keeps giving me problems with its design your own tables software, it tells me it's downloading when it isn't, or it sends empty pages, or it does test redirects that go nowhere... :{ )
