Or so this article here believes;

"The EU biofuels policy currently relies on an assumption that the heavily-subsidised cultivation of rapeseed will meet its biodiesel targets. However, this is a very large assumption. Already some 3 million hectares of agricultural land across the EU, an area roughly the size of Belgium, grows 10 millon tonnes of rapeseed. But since just 20% of this is ultimately used for biodiesel as opposed to food oil, another whole Belgium would have to be covered in the yellow rapeseed blanket to meet the targets."

. . . which seems realistic to me. The piece then goes on to extol the virtues of D1 Oils plc, who are betting that Europe will need to buy in biodiesel at low cost from abroad and so they have put their faith in the Jatropha tree; a hardy, fast-growing plant, whose beans can yield a lot of oil which can be refined into biodiesel.

The flip side is that Europe, i.e. the EU, has a history of missing its targets on all sorts of issues. It's a big assumption to think that Europe will do everything to meet a given target. Cynics and Optimists could both argue that targets are sometimes believed to be more effective, when they are set far beyond what is actually possible. This achieves the optimum outcome although the poicy is deemed to be a failure.

One of the emerging realities of biofuels, is that the best place to grow them economically, tends to be in the developing world - not in the Midwest, let alone in Western Europe.

So the news that Golden Hope Plantations expects to produce 400,000 tonnes of biodiesel by 2008, delivered as it were in a no big deal way, says a lot. That the company expects to start shipping biodiesel this August to Japan says a lot more. And the Chief Executive, Datuk Sabri Ahmad, is certainly confident about GHD's prospects. Said the CEO;

"We see the opportunity in biodiesel. We have the opportunity to develop the new industry to become the world leader in terms of supplying biodiesel".