Russians build Eurasia's largest ethanol plant, exports to EU, Asia
Quicknote bioenergy investments
Energy super-power Russia has started building one of the world's largest bioethanol factories in the South-Western Siberian region of Omsk. The aim of the €166 million (US$ 218 million) project is the production of green fuel for exports to the EU and Asia.
According to Itar-Tass [*Russian - or German sources: here, here and here], a Russian-Czech consortium is building the ethanol plant which will have an annual capacity of 150,000 tonnes, making it the largest in Eurasia. Leonid Poleschajew, governor of the Omsk region, said the project is financed by a local agrobusiness group called Titan and by Czech company Alta. The factory is planned to be operational in 2008 and will produce up to a fifth of the total national capacity of Europe's main producer, Germany. It is unclear which feedstocks will be used for the production of the gasoline substitute.
Omsk is centrally located in Russia, indicating a strategic choice by the ethanol producers who have explicitly stated that both the EU and East Asia are the targeted markets.
Russia is the world's largest energy exporter with the European Union and East Asia becoming ever more dependent on its oil and gas. But this doesn't prevent the giant from investing in alternative energy sources. Recently, Europe was a bit startled when it learned that Russia's state-owned gas company Gazprom is thinking of buying Germany's Lurgi AG, the world's leading firm in the sector of engineering and building ethanol plants.
According to research by the International Energy Agency's Bioenergy taskforces, the Russian Federation and the Baltic States have a total combined bioenergy production potential of 199 Exajoules per year by 2050, under an optimal scenario. This technical potential is roughly equal to 79 million barrels of oil equivalent per day - slightly less than all the oil consumed in the world today [entry ends here].
ethanol :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: geopolitics :: bioethanol :: EU ::China :: Russia ::
Energy super-power Russia has started building one of the world's largest bioethanol factories in the South-Western Siberian region of Omsk. The aim of the €166 million (US$ 218 million) project is the production of green fuel for exports to the EU and Asia.
According to Itar-Tass [*Russian - or German sources: here, here and here], a Russian-Czech consortium is building the ethanol plant which will have an annual capacity of 150,000 tonnes, making it the largest in Eurasia. Leonid Poleschajew, governor of the Omsk region, said the project is financed by a local agrobusiness group called Titan and by Czech company Alta. The factory is planned to be operational in 2008 and will produce up to a fifth of the total national capacity of Europe's main producer, Germany. It is unclear which feedstocks will be used for the production of the gasoline substitute.
Omsk is centrally located in Russia, indicating a strategic choice by the ethanol producers who have explicitly stated that both the EU and East Asia are the targeted markets.
Russia is the world's largest energy exporter with the European Union and East Asia becoming ever more dependent on its oil and gas. But this doesn't prevent the giant from investing in alternative energy sources. Recently, Europe was a bit startled when it learned that Russia's state-owned gas company Gazprom is thinking of buying Germany's Lurgi AG, the world's leading firm in the sector of engineering and building ethanol plants.
According to research by the International Energy Agency's Bioenergy taskforces, the Russian Federation and the Baltic States have a total combined bioenergy production potential of 199 Exajoules per year by 2050, under an optimal scenario. This technical potential is roughly equal to 79 million barrels of oil equivalent per day - slightly less than all the oil consumed in the world today [entry ends here].
ethanol :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: geopolitics :: bioethanol :: EU ::China :: Russia ::
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