Improving interest in sweet sorghum for bioethanol production (3 posts)

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  • Alessia Vecchiet said 1 year, 4 months ago:

    It seems that the interest in sweet sorghum crop for bioethanol production is increasing in U.S. (new plant of Abengoa Bioenergy in New Mexico) and also in India, China, Philippines, Tanzania and other Sub-Saharian countries, and also Australia.
    Dear members, what do you think about this? do you know something about the start-up of new realities with sweet sorghum? What do you think about the EU situation?

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  • Irene Tsakiridou said 1 year, 4 months ago:

    The construction of bioethanol plants using sweet sorghum seems to be picking up momentum internationally. If we are to compare these trends to the present situation in Europe, there would be two important factors to focus on. It is known that Europe has put its biofuel attention on the production of biodiesel rather than bioethanol. Few countries (Sweden, Spain, Germany, France, Austria, U.K, Portugal, and Belgium) have bioethanol plants; none of them however uses sweet sorghum as feedstock.
    On the other hand, it is reasonable to say that labor costs in developing sub-Saharan countries and China are considerably lower than the ones in Europe.
    Another crucial factor which may delay the sweet sorghum crops in Europe is land availability. Countries like the U.S and Australia have much large crop areas available than European countries. Nevertheless, once the potential of bioethanol production from sweet sorghum is warranted, it is certain that similar plants will soon appear in the E.U, given that related policies will keep favoring bioethanol usage in vehicles.

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  • Oscar Leòn said 1 year, 4 months ago:

    One of the most important problems that we have here in Europe, is our concept of the politically correct. Everything must be politically correct, the bioenergy, the research on OMG, transgenics, etc… At the end, this problem has sent us to the end of the chain on research and development on important sectors, like biotechnology and bioenergy (mainly if we compare the invesment on research made by Europe, USA or China). This concept, mixed with the lack of fields and farmers, has originated the actual situation and the perspectives for the future. What do you think??, well, althought we want to stop the entry of bioenergy products from third countries (bioethanol or biodiesel) with the new directive, at the end, we stop our own development…. maybe we need to review our own politic

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