Bioethanol
Why you should be interested in fuel ethanol market in Russia?
Please note that Russian version of the web site has much more information about biofuels production & markets. We expect that you already know a lot about bioethanol and biodiesel, and are interested in production of biofuels in Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhtsan & other CIS countries, as well as marketing your service or products there.
Please contact us at info@biofuels.ru if you have any questions.
Russia and the former Soviet Union has a wealth of agricultural resources needed to produce alternative fuels and some governments are already promoting the use of alternative fuels, but there is more that can be done.
The reason why you should be interested in Russia & other CIS countries - vast arable land, 20 mln ha of this land was abandoned since Soviet Union era (please see information below).
Russia is ready to cooperate with the EU in the field of bioenergetics. "Considering the rise in the consumption of bioethanol in Europe we are ready to offer additional resources and implement joint projects in this field, using common capital for this purpose," Russian Agriculture Minister Aleksey Gordeyev said at the East-West Agricultural Forum in Berlin today on the subject of "agriculture and bioenergy - the light will go out without agriculture".
He said that demand on the European market for energy resources from biomass is rising by 20-25 per cent every year. "We are ready to offer our help to the European community as a supplier of biomass, and in the not too distant future as a producer of biofuel," he said.
He added that there is currently around 20m hectares of unused productive arable land in Russia which could be used to grow energy crops, for instance rape. He said that "Russia is a partner of the European Union and a country which is pursing common aims in terms of protecting the environment, fighting global climate change and ensuring energy security". He also said that Europe is currently interested in Russia as a supplier of raw biomass for the production of biodiesel.
Speaking about the prospects for the development of bioenergy in Russia, he said "they are very good". "We have to be more active in attracting private investment to this sector," he said. "Russia's potential in the production of biofuel is enormous, it is comparable with the potential of the USA - about 1bn metric tonnes of biomass," he said, adding that "Russian specialists are currently working on a programme for the development of bioenergetics in our country".
He stressed in particular that "the question of energy security and economic access to energy resources is very much on the agenda for Russia, which lives under a so-called "resource curse". It would appear that Russia has a surplus of hydrocarbons and other sources of energy, and so there is no need to think about alternative sources, he said, but "we can see that the demand for biofuel on the Western energy resources market is growing every year".
He said, however, that in developing bioenergetics "it has to be done in such a way that it is not just commercial interests that are paramount but also the question of how to feed people on our planet, considering that there are about 800m people in the world who are starving".
