John Howell
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British Bioethanol Industry
John Howell Excerpts(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Nic Dakin
I am drawing on the expertise in that “File on 4” programme. Obviously, any serious issues need to be looked at properly. Nobody wants the introduction of a new fuel to have disadvantages for people. It is very important that E5 remains available, as the right hon. Gentleman indicated.
The British bioethanol industry is perhaps not as widely known as it should be, but it is something of a British success story. Over £1 billion has been invested in the past decade, allowing British workers using British-grown produce to produce British bioethanol to help fuel British vehicles and feed British livestock, while reducing the UK’s carbon footprint and putting fewer pollutants into the atmosphere.
Until very recently, the UK had two of Europe’s biggest bioethanol plants: Ensus created a state-of-the-art facility on Teesside with an initial £250 investment in 2010, and Vivergo Fuels created a £400 million plant in Hull in 2013. Both distilled locally grown wheat to produce bioethanol, with protein-rich animal feed created as a by-product. The Ensus plant could produce 400 million litres of ethanol a year, and Vivergo Fuels 420 million litres. Each employed over 100 people directly as well as supporting a further 6,000 supply-chain jobs, including farmers and hauliers. The UK also has a further plant in Norfolk owned by British Sugar, which can produce 70 million litres a year.
As the Minister is well aware, Vivergo announced in September that it was closing its plant in Hull, and Ensus announced that it was pausing production at its plant on Teesside in November. It is not an overstatement to say the industry has collapsed in only a matter of months, and its future is dependent on the Government taking urgent action on the introduction of E10.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I want to know—the hon. Gentleman might be coming on to this—whether he has done a calculation of the effect on the savings on air pollution that these fuels will have. Maybe he could tell us what that is.