Europe Lagging U.S., China on Biofuels Use, Novozymes CEO Says

Bloomberg
By Alex Morales - Jul 29, 2010 6:01 PM CDT Thu Jul 29 23:01:00 UTC 2010

Europe is lagging the U.S., China and Brazil in developing biofuels for transportation because of a lack of political direction, Novozymes A/S Chief Executive Officer Steen Riisgaard said.

Brazil aims to displace 10 percent of global gasoline use with ethanol by 2020; China is testing corn-based ethanol in nine provinces; and the U.S. has set fuel standards requiring ethanol use, said Riisgaard, whose companies is the world’s biggest maker of enzymes used to refine biofuels.

“Brazil knows what it wants to do,” Riisgaard said in an interview at Bloomberg’s office in London. “In the United States, similarly, they have a renewable fuels standard -- they know what they want to do. You go to China: the government knows what it wants to do. They have a plan. You come to Europe and there’s not this kind of political direction. We don’t know what we want to do.”

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