Further to yesterday's article on biomass fuels as a renewable energy source, today's Times reports that Shell will be launching a new road fuel along similar lines:
A new road fuel made from wood chips and straw will be launched in Europe later this year from a pilot plant developed by Shell and Choren Industries, the German biofuel company.
The synthetic diesel, made using a novel biomass-to-liquids (BTL) process, will shift the biodiesel industry into a higher gear by using waste plant material instead of valuable food crops.
The pilot plant, near Freiberg, will produce 15,000 tonnes per year of synthetic diesel, which Choren has dubbed Sunfuel. Construction of a much bigger plant in Schleswig-Holstein, costing €500 million (£336 million) and capable of producing 200,000 tonnes of BTL, will begin next year in an effort to quickly bring the product up to commercial scale.
None of these things will be without teething problems, of course, and a number of people have already emailed in to question whether biomass is really carbon neutral (since the manufacturing process must have an impact). But is this a step in the right direction?
