Japan to Boost Local Ethanol to 6 Million Kl/Yr by 2030
Date: 23-Feb-07
Country: JAPAN
Author: Risa Maeda
The ministries on Thursday agreed a timetable for increased output of ethanol, a key renewable fuel to reduce Japan's dependence on imported gasoline, by expanding usage of sugar cane, wheat and other grains and developing the cellulose for ethanol technology, the official said.
The target, or about 38 million barrels, is equivalent to 3.6 million kl of gasoline, or about 6 percent of Japan's current gasoline demand a year.
In 2006 Japan produced only 30 kl of ethanol at government-backed pilot plants.
"We're aiming at a great expansion in ethanol production by the year 2030," the official said. "Our target is 6 million kl a year and that is, we think, achievable," he said.
The draft plan agreed will be handed to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe next week for approval, the official in charge of environmental policy said.
Abe said shortly after taking office in September that he would intensify the use of biomass in motor fuels and asked the ministries concerned to study the feasibility.
Unlike food exporters such as the United States, Japan is short of supplies of the necessary farm produce.
While ethanol can be imported for a lower cost than producing it domestically, Japan argues food security is important for a country whose self-sufficiency rate is only 40 percent on a calorie basis, one of the lowest among industrialised nations.
Japan also argues shipping ethanol a long way from abroad would undermine global efforts to reduce CO2 emissions.
LONG WAY TO GO
Under the Kyoto Protocol, Japan must cut its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases blamed for global warming by 6 percent from 1990 levels over five years from 2008.
To achieve that, the Japanese government has decided to replace about 500,000 kl a year of gasoline for auto use with biofuels by 2010, as the Kyoto pact excludes CO2 emissions from biofuels such as ethanol and biodiesel.
These targets look unrealistic, when compared with those of the United States, the world's No.1 gasoline consumer.
President George W. Bush last month called for a nearly five-fold increase in use of home-grown fuels such as ethanol to cut gasoline use by 20 percent over a decade.
Total US ethanol production was around 5 billion gallons, or about 119 million barrels, in 2006.
There are practically no users of ethanol-blended gasoline in Japan, the world's No.3 oil consumer, although the current law allows domestic oil distributors to sell gasoline blended with up to 3 percent of ethanol, or E3.
For a start, the oil industry starts selling E3 on a test basis at some retail gas stations later this year.
The industry will also later this year start a trial sale of gasoline blended with ethyl tertiary butyl ether (ETBE), a gasoline additive made from biomass ethanol.
The oil industry favours ETBE blended with gasoline, which they say is safer for car engines and easier to handle at gas stations than ethanol blended directly with gasoline.
But production and import of ETBE have been restricted in Japan. It is said to have the same risk with MTBE, a chemical banned in several states in the United States for polluting ground water.
