The European Union should see its production of biodiesel rise to 4.5 million tonnes in 2007 as governments promote and invest more in biofuels, the European Commission said in a report today.
"Further investments are planned in almost all member states, in particular in Germany, France and Spain," the report said.
The total production capacity may reach 8.0 million tonnes in 2007 and the actual production 4.5 million tonnes, it added.
The EU's 25 member countries turned out 3.18 million tonnes of biodiesel in 2005, up by a massive 68 per cent on 2004, based on a production capacity of 6.07 million tonnes, it said, without giving an estimate for 2006.
Germany is the EU's principal biodiesel producer and turned out 1.67 million tonnes last year. Other significant producers are France with 492,000 tonnes and Italy with 396,000 tonnes.
The EU's newest joiners occupied an increasingly important position in the bloc's biodiesel sector, the commission said. Since the EU-10's accession in May 2004, their biodiesel output had risen from 80,000 tonnes for the whole of 2004 to 341,000 tonnes in 2005.
The most rapid increases were in Poland and the Czech Republic, the report said. said.
But it noted: "It will be difficult for the EU to produce enough rapeseed to supply the demand by the biodiesel sector as well as the food market. The EU will need an additional crush capacity to extract the oil from the rapeseed."