Alder BioInsights News Review: Biofuels Issue 158, May 2025

Foreword

This month, we celebrate the retirement of David Turley, Alder BioInsights’ longtime lead consultant for biofuels. However the biofuels industry is in a far from celebratory mood, as I step into David’s role and take on responsibility for this vital sector, it’s clear that difficult times may be ahead.

On the 8th of May, the UK Prime minister Sir Kier Starmer announced the signing of a much-heralded UK-US trade deal. However, under the terms of the deal existing tariffs on US bioethanol will be removed and replaced with a zero-tariff quota.

The UK bioethanol industry has faced many challenges since its inception nearly 20 years ago. After a bright start the industry was challenged over its impact on land use change and food prices, which although rebuked, damaged the legitimacy of the industry. The industry has also suffered from slow policy making. Despite industry calls to action, and a government awareness of the benefits of UK bioethanol production, policy decisions effectively restricted the UK market to petrol blends of 5% (E5). Although fuel blends containing up to 10% renewable ethanol (E10) were adopted as standard grade petrol back in 2021, the delay leading up to the implementation resulted in one of Europe’s largest bioethanol plants, the Vivergo bioethanol plant at Saltend, being mothballed from 2018 to 2021…