Bioethanol is BEST

Supported by the European Union and coordinated by the city of Stockholm, in Sweden, BEST is a joint effort between ten strategically chosen sites in Europe and the rest of the world (Stockholm, Rotterdam, Somerset, Madrid, La Spezia, Sao Paolo, Nanyang, Basque Country, Dublin and Biofuel region, Sweden), as well as a number of important market participants, to stimulate an extensive substitution of petrol and diesel by bioethanol.

The broad aim of BEST is to help the participating markets to develop, so that a market breakthrough occurs and the market becomes self-supporting.

The overall goal was to help put 160 ethanol buses and 10,000 ethanol cars in to operation. These targets are already well on the way to being achieved. Ethanol buses are now in operation in three of the BEST cities. La Spezia set three buses rolling in early 2007. Madrid’s five ethanol buses have been in regular use since spring 2007, while Stockholm estimates that 380 ethanol buses will be in use in the city by summer 2007.

Notwithstanding BEST’s apparent success, however, remove Sweden’s mammoth effort from the equation and the results are a little less convincing. Let’s see what the next eighteen months bring for BEST before we make a final judgment on its success or failure.