Maxol withdraws Bioethanol E85 from Irish market

mikep

Hi

Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but Maxol are withdrawing the E85 (ethanol) due to the end of the excise duty derogation Link: derogation.http://www.maxol.ie/maxol-bioethanol-e85.html
Is a derogation for biofuel justified?

Macha

Just a point of information that this isn't the Politics Forum or AH but a forum for discussing policy, issues and ideas. As such, discussion of this topic should avoid political point scoring and name calling, ie na glasrai.

gizmo555

mikep wrote: »

Is a derogation for biofuel justified?

No, IMHO. There is a good argument for a carbon tax to properly price the environmental cost of burning fossil fuels. Beyond that, it should be left to the market to sort out the most cost-effective renewable energy sources.

As James Lovelock of Gaia theory renown put it:

Subsidies almost always breed scams and this is true of most forms of renewable energy now proposed and used.

I would put tax reliefs under the heading of subsidies.

Birdnuts

http://www.birdlife.org/community/2010/11/europe%e2%80%99s-biofuels-plans-driving-social-and-environmental-destruction/

Beware false prophets:(

Ghost Estate

gizmo555 wrote: »

As James Lovelock of Gaia theory renown put it

James Lovelock can take a long walk off a short pier, he never brings anything new to the table except of more doom and his Gaia horse**** has long been dismissed. I suppose the stuff was locally produced and not nearly as polluting as regular petrol so not much need for excise duty on it.

I suppose all petrol has 5% ethanol in it now which wasn't the case before the last budget so maybe all Irish made ethanol fuel is still being used up, so no loss for the producers possibly? After all it's easier to get 100% of cars running on 5% ethanol than to get 5% running on 85% ethanol.

Still its sad to see it go as I have a lot of petrol powered machines that will run on the stuff and there isn't nearly as bad a smell off it as with regular petrol. With a bit of choke older petrol stuff seems no problem running on it. Even if i could get it at the new expensive price i'd get a few litres every year for this reason

mikep

I reckon this will take the wind out of the sails of anyone looking to produce ethanol here, the sugar beet proposers spring to mind.

I always wondered about the posibility of going for cellulosic EtOh here.

Removal of the derogation will discourage any developement of the "green economy" for ethanol production..:(