World Usage

Replacing petrol and diesel fuel with bioethanol as motor fuel is by no means a new idea. Bioethanol has been used as a petrol additive to increase octane ratings (and therefore fuel potency) for almost a century, and it is by far the most widely used non-fossil motor fuel used today.

Bioethanol E85 in particular is already available in many filling stations in countries such as The United States, Brazil and Sweden. The distribution network is expanding rapidly: In Sweden, close to 60% of all filling stations are projected to offer E85 by 2009. Additionally, the EU biofuel directive is likely to substantially increase the number of filling stations supplying bioethanol in many other European countries.

No other renewable fuel has even come close to realising the widespread, fully commercial use that bioethanol has achieved in Latin America. Economic reasons led Brazil to start the world's largest bioethanol programme in the mid-1970s, and now millions of cars in Brazil run on the renewable fuel. At times, bioethanol has surpassed petrol as the most widely used fuel in Brazil.

To reduce oil imports and increase the general take-up of biofuels, the use of ethanol as a fuel additive is also increasing. Currently, 5% bioethanol is mixed into standard petrol in Sweden, and EU countries are beginning to do the same. In the US, the bioethanol content of standard petrol is often 10%. Many people advocate increasing the standard bioethanol content in petrol to 10% throughout the EU in order to make it easier to comply with the EU biofuel directive stating that 5.75% of all road vehicle fuels used in 2010 should be renewable.