The largest producers are Germany (431 million litres) and Spain (402 million litres). The largest growth was seen in Germany (up 160% compared to 2005 from 165 to 431 million litres) and in Italy, where production increased 16-fold from 8 to 128 million litres in one year. The latter is almost exclusively because of wine alcohol processing.

Bioethanol was produced in 11 of the 27 Member States. The ebio association expects the number of bioethanol producing Member States to increase in 2007 and ‘certainly in 2008’. The driving force behind the increase is the EU target of 10% biofuels in transport fuel by 2010.

Currently the EU uses 13.5% more bioethanol than it produces. The total consumption is just over 1.7 billion litres. The imported ethanol (230 million litres in 2006) came from Brazil and was shipped to Sweden, the UK and Finland.

Table: ebio press release, 21 March 2007