German biodiesel industry investment dries up, plants well under capacity.

[NNadir]

HAMBURG - The European Union biodiesel industry is working well under capacity despite top-level political moves to increase biofuels use to combat global warming, industry executives said.

Many new biodiesel plants have been built but many hardly have a market as several countries have been slow to implement promises to increase biofuel use.

"We have been promised a market but it is not yet there," said Raffaello Garofalo, secretary general of industry association the European Biofuels Board (EBB). "It will come but in the short term we have to go through a desert."

Much of Europe's biodiesel industry is working under capacity, Garofalo said, although no precise figures are available.

Biodiesel sales in the biggest consuming country Germany have fallen dramatically this year after Berlin actually started taxing biofuels at a time when the EU wants to promote green fuel consumption.

Medium-term prospects were excellent following the decision by EU leaders on March 9 for a strategic cut in greenhouse gases by using more renewable energy.

But several key countries including Britain, Italy and Spain had not fully implemented past promises to raise biofuel use, Garofalo said. Germany's biofuel tax showed the country was putting financial considerations above the environment...

...High prices for rapeseed oil, the main component of biodiesel in Germany, meant biodiesel was being produced at a loss...

Bold is mine.

http://www.planetark.com/avantgo/dailynewsstory.cfm?newsid=41032

The main factor was eliminating the tax exemption of biodiesel. The German gov't couldn't afford it.

[phantom power]

1. I have been assured this cannot be happening.

Because if it were happening, it would imply that subsidies favor the biofuel and renewable industry. As opposed to getting in the way of the righteous success that they really deserve.
:eyes:

[NNadir]

2. Well in defense of the biofuels industry, I'd rather they just raised

the tax on fossil fuels to cover the difference.

Biodiesel, I think, is good stuff within limits.

[phantom power]

3. I suppose it would be ideal if...

all energy were taxed according to externalized costs. Then any energy source that exceeded sustainability would see rapid increases in taxation.

If, if, if... Somehow, it seems like a waste of time to talk about "ideal." I'd settle for anything in the same solar system as "ideal" at this point.

[NNadir]

4. Taxes based on external costs are simply the best idea there is.

Not one coal fired plant would ever be built again. It would also be the immediate end of all this Fischer-Tropsch talk.

It might even make solar energy competitive, although that's something of a long shot.