Bulgaria will nearly triple its installed capacity for biofuel production to some 450,000 tonnes a year by 2011, an industry official said on Tuesday.
"Currently in Bulgaria there are installed capacities for 140,000 tonnes of biodiesel and 20,000 tonnes of bio ethanol," the chairman of Bulgaria's National Biofuels Association, Dimitar Zamfirov, told SeeNews on the sidelines of a round table discussion on the biofuels market in the EU newcomer.
Asked how much biofuels were produced in Bulgaria in 2007, Zamfirov said: "Zero. For us the 3,000 tonnes that were produced in 2007 are equal to zero, compared to the installed capacity."
"In 2006 the output of Bulgarian biofuel producers was about 20,000 tonnes," Zamfirov said and added that production and sales of biofuels in Bulgaria had been hit by the lack of a certifying authority for the biofuel content in the mix of oil-derived and green fuels, following the adoption of new legislation introducing lower excise duties for biofuels.
Bulgaria, a member of the European Union since January 2007, has to increase the use of biofuels to 5.0% of its total fuel consumption by 2010 and to 10% by 2020 to meet ecological requirements of the bloc. In order to enhance green fuel production, the Bulgarian government has introduced an excise duty on diesel and petrol containing four to five percent of biofuels that is 3.0% lower than excise duty levied on oil-derived fuels.
Biofuel producers in Bulgaria are blaming the Economy and Energy Ministry for its failure to nominate an authority that will monitor the biofuel content in the fuel mix, said Zamfirov. For that reason, currently no fuel traders in Bulgaria are mixing oil-derived fuels with biofuels, he added.
Economy and Energy Ministry officials were not immediately available to comment.
Last year the government said that the consumption of biofuels in Bulgaria will gradually increase to 44,000 tonnes in 2008, 133,000 tonnes in 2010 and 314,000 tonnes in 2020. The consumption of petrol should decrease in parallel to 485,000 tonnes in 2008, 426,000 tonnes in 2010 and 370,000 tonnes in 2020.
Some 53% of the motor vehicles in the country of 7.7 million people ran on diesel in 2007, 22% on petrol and 16.6% on propane gas, under official statistics.
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