Ensus | Greener food + fuel

What is the Ensus plant going to produce?
Why is it being built?
What exactly is bioethanol, and what are biofuels?
How do biofuels help combat climate change?
Why is Ensus using wheat as the source of its bioethanol?
Where will the Ensus wheat be sourced from?
Do biofuels really deliver savings on greenhouse gas emissions?
Aren’t you forcing up the price of food by using crops for biofuels?
Don’t biofuels cause deforestation?
What Greenhouse Gas savings will Ensus deliver?
How does Ensus calculate the greenhouse gas savings given that it uses a lot of energy in its process, wheat requires fertilisers etc and there are big transport costs ?
Can I be sure that the biofuels used in the UK as a whole will deliver Greenhouse Gas savings?
New biofuels made from agricultural waste materials and non-food crops are forecast to be available soon. Why don’t we just wait for those?
What is the advantage of using wheat for biofuels rather than other sources such as maize or sugar cane or sugar beet?
Wouldn’t be better to use British and European wheat for food rather than biofuel?
Is rainforest destroyed in the making of biofuels?
Ultimately, is there enough land for biofuels and production of food?
Loss of set-aside is being resisted by NGOs. What are Ensus’ views on this?

Q. What is the Ensus plant going to produce?

A. The Ensus plant is the largest wheat refinery in Europe. It produces 400 million litres of bioethanol a year and about 350 thousand tonnes of high protein wheat derivative for use in animal feed. The CO₂ generated by the plant is captured and used primarily in the food industry and also for plant growing.

The bioethanol is used for blending with petrol to reduce its global warming effect, as now required by law, and will produce green house gas savings equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road.

The high protein feed co-product goes into feed for chickens, pigs and cattle, replacing imported soy meal.

Q. Why is it being built?

A. The plant was planned as a result of demands to replace a proportion of fossil fuel use by biofuels in order to reduce global warming. This is actively being promoted by governments around the world. In the UK, the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) which came into force in April 2008 initially required all petrol sold to contain 2.5 percent of bioethanol. This will rise anually to 5 percent in 2013. Currently the UK is unable to meet this requirement from its own resources. It is anticipated that the Ensus plant will provide for about one third of the UK’s needs until 2013.

Q. What exactly is bioethanol, and what are biofuels?

A.Biofuels are liquid fuels made from plant materials. They can be used in transport fuel instead of conventional fossil fuels. Because the plants they are made from are renewable and absorb carbon dioxide as they grow biofuels make a contribution to cutting carbon emissions.

Ensus makes bioethanol from wheat grown in the UK and the EU. Bioethanol is an alcohol, produced in a similar way to those used in spirits. It requires crops such as wheat, maize, sugar beet, and sugar cane that contain starch or sugar which can be converted into alcohol. It is blended with petrol to meet the new government requirement (the RTFO) that all transport fuel should include at least 5 percent of biofuels by 2013.

It differs from Biodiesel which is made from crops that produce oils such as oilseed rape, palm, and soy beans. biodiesel is generally blended with diesel to be sold at the pump.

Q. How do biofuels help combat climate change?

A. Climate change is caused by emissions of greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide. Biofuels help to combat climate change because the crops from which they are produced absorb carbon dioxide as they grow. Carbon dioxide is released as they are burned, but absorbed by new crops again, making a complete cycle. This is why they are better than fossil fuels like coal and oil which release greenhouse gases without any off-setting effects.

Q. Why is Ensus using wheat as the source of its bioethanol?

Wheat is widely available in Europe.
The UK is one of the world’s most efficient wheat producers.
It is currently in surplus, with the EU exporting some 15 million tonnes and the UK about three million.
There is significant potential to grow more wheat to meet our food needs as well as achieving the biofuel targets by continuing to increase yields and by bringing land which has been set aside or taken out of production back into use.

Additionally, it is expected that European production will increase substantially as Western European farming practices are extended to the new EU members in Eastern Europe

Q. Where will the Ensus wheat be sourced from?

A. Ensus expects that the majority of wheat used in its plant will be sourced directly from within the UK. There are likely to be some imports from other parts of the EU from time to time.

The type of wheat required for the process is a soft, high starch, low protein wheat, widely grown in Northern England. These are not the high protein milling wheats associated with food production. These low protein wheats tend to have higher productivity, and to be somewhat easier to grow – they can use less good land than top quality bread wheats, and generally use less added nitrogen based fertilizers.

Q. Do biofuels really deliver savings on greenhouse gas emissions?

A. If crops are grown and processed in an environmentally sensitive way biofuels will deliver substantial savings on greenhouse gas emissions. Published figures suggest there is a wide range of performance in practice, depending on the crop and the process used for biofuel production, and whether there are any co-products from the process for which credit can be taken.

The specific process Ensus is using enables greenhouse gas savings of around 70% to be made compared with regular petrol (This excludes any benefits from reducing the imports of soy meal as result of selling the protein rich co product as animal feed). In other words greenhouse gas emissions from Ensus bioethanol run at less than a third of those from regular petrol. This figure is considerably better than is sometimes quoted for bioethanol from wheat, for several reasons:

Ensus uses energy from an efficient combined heat and power gas turbine, which reduces steam and power import requirements for the plant.
The process Ensus uses allow it to export a significant amount of electric power from the plant to other industrial concerns, effectively displacing coal fired power.
Co-product animal feed is produced which also has considerable benefits that are often understated.

This is just the start. Ensus believes there is considerable potential for further improvement by working with farmers on how they grow wheat and improving the efficiency of the plant operation over time.

In addition there is an important indirect effect. The high protein feed produced by the plant goes into animal feed, reducing imports of soya meal which are often grown on previously carbon-rich land like rainforests or the Cerrado grasslands in South America. If these factors are also taken into account then the greenhouse gas savings savings are considerably greater and are over 100%.

Q. Aren’t you forcing up the price of food by using crops for biofuels?

A. Additional demand or reduced supply of any crop can put up prices. Rises in prices of cereals and oilseeds from 2005-2008 were the result of poor weather (like prolonged drought in Australia and flooding in the UK in 2007), poor harvests, and changing diets in emerging economies like China and India.

Most of the UK’s cereal crop goes into animal feed where the protein provides an essential part of the diet. The Ensus refinery only uses the starch from the wheat and concentrates the protein up and sells it into the animal feed market. Ensus sells more animal feed than biofuel. The Ensus refinery meets food as well as fuel needs – it is wrong to suggest that crops such as wheat for biofuels are in direct competition with food; you need to consider all the products from the refining process.

Q. Don’t biofuels cause deforestation?

A. Ensus draws its feedstock entirely from wheat produced in the EU, most of it from the UK. These crops are not grown in tropical areas and have nothing to do with deforestation.

More importantly, the high protein feed it produces alongside bioethanol actually reduces the need for imports of soya meal for animal feed. As soy beans are often grown on deforested land, this makes a positive contribution. To give an idea of the scale of the demand for soy beans and soy meal for animal feed – EU imports of soy require almost as much land as the entire EU production of wheat, about 19 million hectares.

In addition the UK biofuels industry as a whole recognises the danger of encouraging deforestation and that is why the RTFO is underpinned by sustainability criteria. These cover deforestation, air, water and soil quality as well as social effects like the treatment of workers and respect for the rights of local people. The industry hopes that in this way UK biofuels will provide a major driver for sustainable development in the future.

Q. What Greenhouse Gas savings will Ensus deliver?

A. Across the whole supply chain the Greenhouse gas savings are equivalent to taking 300,000 cars off the road. When the benefits of the protein rich animal feed are taken into account along with the reduction in soy meal imports and the consequential benefits of reduced pressure on deforestation the greenhouse gas savings across the chain are greater than 100%

Q. How does Ensus calculate the greenhouse gas savings given that it uses a lot of energy in its process, wheat requires fertilisers etc and there are big transport costs ?

A. It takes all these factors into account. It offsets them with a variety of positives. These include –

• A calculation of the C02 absorbed by the wheat during its growth.
• The impact of the efficient combined heat and power gas turbine which Ensus is installing which reduces steam and power import requirements for the plant and allows it to export electricity to other users.
• A credit for the high protein animal feed co-product

Q. Can I be sure that the biofuels used in the UK as a whole will deliver Greenhouse Gas savings?

A. The story is different for different biofuels. But fuel companies are required to submit reports to the Government on the biofuels they supply. This includes information on levels of greenhouse gas savings, as well as their environmental and social impacts, and this information is published online by the RFA. The UK biofuels industry is committed to the production of biofuels that deliver genuine greenhouse gas savings.

Q. New biofuels made from agricultural waste materials and non-food crops are forecast to be available soon. Why don’t we just wait for those?

A. It is actually likely to be a long time before economic technology for converting waste materials and non-food (cellulosic) crops to bioethanol is available commercially. More importantly, the current wheat to ethanol process which Ensus is using is actually more advanced than ‘second generation’ processes, since it provides food AND bioethanol (unlike cellulosics), and has a better carbon footprint when indirect effects are considered. There is therefore no need to wait.

In fact, it is more eco-friendly to burn cellulosic crops for energy, than use them for (expensive) conversion to biofuels.

Q. What is the advantage of using wheat for biofuels rather than other sources such as maize or sugar cane or sugar beet?

A. The advantage of using wheat is very clear. Europe is more suited to growing wheat than anywhere else. Europe consistently produces the world’s best wheat yields, and Europe has a regular wheat surplus, which is usually exported. Moreover, as explained above, biorefining wheat produces both food and fuel, so does not detract from the global food production capacity, and has such a good carbon footprint that CO₂ is actually removed from the atmosphere, overall.

Sugar cane requires a warm moist climate for growth. The major proportion of the world’s cane is grown in Brazil. Sugar cane can provide a very efficient environmentally friendly process for making bioethanol if produced from a modern large scale power integrated plant. However, there is a danger that sugar cane may be grown on high carbon stock ‘Cerrado’ grassland, or push soy production and ranching onto recently deforested land in which case its environmental credentials are obviously compromised. Additionally, sugar cane does not contribute any protein in parallel with the biofuel, unlike wheat.

Sugar beet has some of the same advantages as wheat and is making a contribution to the UK’s bioethanol production. But there is substantially less of it grown than wheat, and neither does it contribute the high level of protein for animal feed which a wheat refinery does.

Q. Wouldn’t it be better to use British and European wheat for food rather than biofuel?

A. Using wheat in a biorefinery does use it for food. Biofuels made from wheat do not compete with food, rather they enable it to continue to be used. The supply of animal feed, which is the main use for wheat grown in the UK and mainland Europe, is fully maintained by biorefining wheat, since only the starch/sugar component is used, leaving the protein untouched and thus still available for animal feed. Indeed, this process actually makes better use of the wheat, by enabling its protein content to be upgraded, and thus used as a protein concentrate, thereby reducing the amount of soy protein concentrate that has to be imported into Europe.

Q. Is rainforest destroyed in the making of biofuels?

A. Not in the case of wheat based fuel, but it can be with other feedstocks. In particular, soy beans are often grown on cleared rain forest or native grassland, and sugar cane may be. Even more often, palm oil is grown on cleared rainforest in SE Asia. This palm oil can be used for sourcing the food industry, or it can be used for sourcing bio diesel production. Of concern is the situation where palm oil is used in place of rape oil, which is grown in Europe, and is also used in bio diesel production as well as in the food industry. Care needs to be taken therefore in the case of bio diesel production that it is not sourced by swapped out oils from rain forest clearance.

Ensus can be confident that wheat sourcing for its bioethanol does not involve any rain forest destruction through any supply swap arrangements.

Q. Ultimately, is there enough land for biofuels and production of food?

A. We believe that the world is capable of producing substantially more food than currently, as well as supplying the energy components for biofuel production. There are large land areas still not yet harnessed for food production without the need to touch any sensitive high carbon stock land, as well as a huge potential for increasing the yields of land already in production.

As far as Ensus’ own requirements are concerned; by using wheat grown in Northern Europe we can replace some imported soya meal from outside Europe and so free up land. We believe Europe has the capacity to increase its output of wheat by returning set aside land to production, developing better crop varieties and by the considerable improvements already underway in farming productivity in East European countries which have recently joined the EC.

To meet the proposed European target of ten percent of bioethanol in petrol by 2020, we estimate that there will be about a 3 percent increase in land under cultivation in Europe. However, the soy bean meal displaced from feed diets would release an equivalent amount of land from growing soy. Thus there need be NO NET INCREASE in land to meet the 10% bioethanol obligation.

Q. Loss of set-aside is being resisted by NGOs. What are Ensus’s views on this?

A. Set-aside was introduced in order to cut production and reduce surplus food stocks. It was not done for environmental reasons but appears to have resulted in some environmental benefits. Ensus also understands that several agri-environmental schemes have been very successful.

Ensus fully supports total sustainability from its feedstock suppliers, and encourages them to continue the range of agri-environmental schemes and other husbandry practices that have become demonstrably successful in raising awareness and creating wildlife and biodiversity benefits.