Supply crunch: sugar cane harvested for ethanol production in Brazil
EU plays biofuels catch-up
EU ethanol production rose 71% last year but still lags far behind the United States, Robert Vierhout, secretary general of the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, said this week.
Vierhout said in a presentation at a conference in Seville that output had risen in 2006 to 1.56 billion litres, or 1.24 million tonnes.
"That looks impressive but the Americans are now producing more every month than what we produced in 2006," he said.
The US and Brazil are the two largest producers of ethanol.
EU biodiesel production jumped to 4.5 million tonnes from 3.1 million in 2005.
The European Commission has embraced biofuels as a means of reducing carbon dioxide emissions from vehicles and has set a goal of 5.75% usage in motor fuel for 2010.
Bioethanol is produced from crops such as grains and sugar while biodiesel can be made from vegetable oils.
In most EU countries, cars and trucks are predominantly diesel so can only use oilseed-based biodiesel.
Both Spain and Italy produced more bioethanol than they used last year, according to the association's figures, given at a biofuel conference hosted by Abengoa in Seville this week, Reuters reported. Germany and Spain were by far the biggest producers.
The EU's installed capacity for bioethanol production is now 2.8 billion litres, with another 3.4 billion litres of capacity under construction, according to the presentation.
Another 11.5 billion litres of capacity has been announced EU wide.