Faced with rising fuel prices, more and more French people are turning to E85. This fuel, which contains up to 85% bioethanol, is experiencing an 83% increase in consumption and is now found in 36% of service stations.
In a context of energy crisis and inflation, the French are turning to solutions that allow them to reduce their fuel costs. Among these solutions, superethanol-E85 is experiencing particularly strong growth. The Bioethanol Collective, a professional organization that promises the use of agricultural alcohol, shared its figures for the year 2022 on January 24 at a press conference in Paris. She is pleased with a year where all the indicators are “at their highest”.
Indeed, while E85 still constituted only 1.7% of the gasoline market in 2018 and 4% in 2021, it will rise in 2022 to 6.5% of market share. It is behind SP95-E10 (57.9%), SP98 (19.4%) and SP95 (15.3%). Growth in consumption over one year reached +83%. Fuel is now offered at more than one in three service stations, up 20% year-on-year. Nearly 90% of TotalEnergies stations and 80% of Intermarché stations offer it.
Convert your vehicle or buy a new flex-fuel vehicle
To use this fuel, you must convert your vehicle by installing an approved box called “flex fuel” in an approved garage. Nearly 85,000 approved conversion units were installed in 2022, i.e. three times more than in 2021. The French vehicle fleet now includes nearly 220,000 petrol vehicles equipped with conversion units. Four manufacturers offer these boxes: Biomotors, FlexFuel, Borel and eFlexFuel.
It is also possible to buy an original flex-E85 vehicle directly. Ford France and Jaguar Land Rover sold nearly 35,000 original flex-E85 vehicles in 2022, nearly two-thirds of them hybrids. This is six times more than in 2021. The French vehicle fleet now includes nearly 81,000 original flex-E85 vehicles.
Inflation also affects E85. As of January 20, 2023, the price per liter observed at the pump is €1.11 on average, compared to €0.74 at the beginning of 2022. Despite this increase, the liter remains 76 cents less than the liter of SP95-E10, sold for €1.87 on average. “Motorists can still make annual savings of around €440 for 13,000 km/year and €675 for 20,000 km/year” excluding investment in the housing, calculates the Collective of bioethanol. The cost of a box is on average 1,000 euros, but some regions, departments or municipalities offer subsidies, up to 50%.
A sector that will have to do without neonicotinoids
Despite these good figures, the sector will quickly find itself facing a major challenge. A good part of this bioethanol is obtained by processing sugar beets grown in France. While the next seedlings must be planted next March, the Minister of Agriculture has announced that there will therefore be no “third year of derogation on the coating of beet seeds” by neonicotinoid insecticides.
The Minister thus reacts to the decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union handed down on January 19th. It considers illegal the derogatory measure authorizing the use of these pesticides qualified as “bee killers” by environmental associations. “In the absence of effective solutions, the surfaces (of beets) are likely to drop significantly”, says the General Confederation of Beet Planters (CGB) in a press release. This decision will strengthen “the risk of massive imports of sugar or ethanol (from Brazil in particular)”she says.
