about building the business products community biofuels opportunities contact

about biofuels

Why this industry - why Vivergo?

Vivergo brings together a unique partnership that covers expertise across all aspects of the biofuels supply chain and the opportunity for taking advantage of further technology developments as they become viable.

Biofuels have been around for a very long time with the 1908 Ford Model T being designed to use ethanol as a readily available fuel in the agricultural regions of the USA. A diesel engine was run on pure peanut oil at the 1900 World Expo in Paris. When oil became cheap and readily available this became the preferred feedstock for fuel production. In the 1970s energy crisis Brazil re-introduced cars that ran on ethanol made from sugar cane. Ethanol became a core government policy tool in Brazil to reduce oil imports and to support the rural economy. In the mid 1990s the USA started to develop biofuel policies to start reducing the reliance on oil imported from countries where political stability may be a significant risk to supplies. Europe set into place a Directive for the introduction of biofuels in 2003 as part of the challenge to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector. Efforts to reduce the number of vehicles on the road and the efficiency of vehicles take time to have an impact whereas biofuels have the potential to make a positive contribution much sooner - "biofuels are the most immediately feasible way of significantly slowing the growth of carbon emissions from transport, which are wiping out the greenhouse reductions in other sectors " - Ferren Tarredellas, Energy spokesman for EU Commission, 28 March 2008.

The UK introduced legislation to create the Road Transport Fuel Obligation in 2005 setting out targets for use of biofuels up to 2010. BP, British Sugar and DuPont came together in 2006 with a joint project team investigating opportunities to be part of the developing industry where agriculture and oil come together in a big way and where the need for innovation will determine business success.

Within Europe wheat was selected as the lowest cost, most abundant and flexible feedstock. The UK has a climate that produces consistently high yields, and there is a surplus production of lower grade wheat that is exported onto the world market - ideal for fermentation due to its high starch content. Most of the wheat export is from the Humber region and the Saltend chemical complex offers energy for processing of the wheat and good access to many of the ethanol supply points both in the UK coastal refineries and into Europe via ship.

Vivergo Fuels Ltd was formed as a Joint Venture between the 3 businesses in June 2007 to formally create the bioethanol business at the Saltend site creating a platform for large scale biofuel production and implementation of the advanced technologies of the future.

Since the formation of Vivergo Europe has underlined its commitment to biofuels with the agreement of the Renewable Energy Directive in December 2008 requiring a 10% by energy contribution from renewable transport fuels by 2020. Also the Fuels Quality Directive has been reviewed to include a target for 6% reduced emissions from each litre of fuel by 2020, much of which is expected to be as a result of using biofuels.