EMEA News
Rotterdam Rule Change Could Raise Price of Marine Biofuel
A change to incentives for producing biofuel in the Netherlands will make marine fuel more expensive to produce vis-a-vis aviation biofuel, a bunker supplier has said.
The Dutch government has halved the renewable energy unit (hernieuwbare brandstofeenheden) multiplier from 0.8 to 0.4 for marine biofuel production from January while leaving it unchanged for aviation biofuel, according to head of biofuels seller GoodFuels, Johannes Schurmann.
The emission trading scheme in the European Union should mitigate in part any price rise but Schurmann expects aviation biofuel to become a more attractive proposition.
"Where this year we did not see a lot of SAF [aviation fuel] volumes in the Netherlands, we expect from next year that SAF volumes will be roughly as big as for shipping," Schurmann told price reporting agency SP Global.
He added that bio-bunkering, until now concentrated at Rotterdam, would spread to other countries and there has been interest in Belgium and Gibraltar.
Rotterdam's sales of bio-blended bunker fuels reached 183,499 metric tonnes between July and September. Bio-fuel sales in Singapore for 2023 stood at 524,000 mt.
