Biodiesel on death bed in Germany because of taxes

from CNet.com
by Michael Kanellos

The biodiesel industry in Germany is nearing a state of collapse because of a tax increase that kicked in at the first of the year, according to a report on Reuters.

Biodiesel refiners in Germany are only producing at 10 percent capacity, according to the Reuters story from a European biodiesel conference. That's down from 20 percent the year before. Because of the downturn, some biodiesel manufacturers are taking apart their factories and selling the equipment to manufacturers in the U.S. and Canada.

The problem? Like solar energy, biofuels still largely depend upon government support and subsidies. Biodiesel costs more than regular diesel. You don't have to dig deep wells in the ground to get at it, but making it largely requires growing crops and harvesting plant oils.

Biodiesel can be made out of waste vegetable oil and animal fat, but there's not nearly as much of that around as you might think. (In the U.S., the deep fat fryers and slaughterhouses of this great land of ours could probably only provide a billion gallons of fuel each year, far below the 62 billion-plus gallons of diesel consumed here.)

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