Poll: 69% of Europeans in favour of encouraging biofuel use

More than two thirds of citizens in EU Member States have a positive attitude towards plant-based biofuels, a Europe-wide opinion poll has revealed.

According to the poll, commissioned by the European Renewable Ethanol Association (ePure), 69% of the consumers surveyed in the 28 EU Member States think the use of biofuels should be encouraged, with 15% opposed and 16% with no opinion on the topic.

In a similar vein, 68% of the total 11,283 participants were in favour of an EU policy to promote biofuels, with only 13% in opposition.

In Germany, the majority of poll participants (61%) supports the use of biofuels, 23% are opposed and 16% have no opinion on the topic, while in France 73% of consumers are in favour of biofuels and 13% are against.

Dietrich Klein, Secretary General of the German Bioethanol Industry Association (BDBe), commented that the more positive consumer attitude to biofuels in France as compared with Germany reflects an information shortfall in the latter country.

“The results of the survey show that consumers in France are better informed than consumers in Germany about the positive contribution bioethanol makes to combatting climate change. German consumers do not realise how much bioethanol reduces CO₂ emissions,” he said.

In total, 46% of respondents found lower carbon emissions to be the most important advantage of biofuels, while 57% said lower pollution and improved air quality were the most important feature.

“As noted in the 2015 Evaluation Report from the German Federal Agency for Agriculture and Food (BLE), thanks to the aggregate effect of bioethanol contained in various petrol types, greenhouse gas emissions were reduced by 70% in 2015 compared with the levels from use of the same amount of energy from fossil petrol. Consumers are not aware either that this enabled total savings of 1.8 million tonnes of climate-damaging CO₂ emissions in the transport sector," Klein said.

He points out that this information shortfall has a pronounced negative impact on climate protection.

“The market share of Super E10, which is by far the most environmentally friendly and climate-friendly fuel, is currently 12.6% in Germany, which is considerably lower than the 40% share it has achieved in France. By adopting Super E10 as the standard petrol type, along with Super Plus, an additional 1.2 million tonnes of CO₂ emissions could have been avoided in the transport sector in 2015,” he concluded.

This article was written by Ilari Kauppila, deputy editor at Biofuels International