Executive Order 449 that was signed by President Arroyo in 2006 reduced the import tariff on bioethanol from 10 percent to one percent so as to facilitate the compliance of the country to the Philippine biofuel law because local production of bioethanol was not enough to meet the country’s fuel demand.

The Biofuel Law mandates a certain percentage of bioethanol being mixed with the gasoline being sold at the pumps. In order to comply with this, oil companies are allowed to import bioethanol till the local production of bioethanol is sufficient to meet the demand. Importation of bioethanol however is to be controlled and monitored by the DOE (via the National Biofuels Board) so as to not harm the local producers of bioethanol.
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The government’s Philippine Agricultural Development and Commercial Corp announced that they would be conducting a roadshow in the United States in order to attract companies that can bring in Cellulosic Bioethanol production to the Philippines.

According to them they received word from the United States Department of Agriculture that the technology is ready for commercial applications. (This I got to see!)
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The Philippine Economic Zone Authority (PEZA) has approved last January 15th the creation of the P55 million Cavite Biofuels Ecozone applied for by the Cavite Biofuel Producers Inc (CBPI). All that’s needed now is a presidential proclamation in order to make it official as an Agro-Industrial Economic Zone.
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The Energy Regulatory Commission (ERC) approved the contract of Bioethanol producer San Carlos Bioenergy Inc (SCBI) to supply their excess electricity to VMC Rural Electric Services Cooperative Inc. (VRESCO).

The contract allows SCBI to supply VRESCO their 2.4 ~4.8 MW of excess electricity from their cogeneration plant.
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The Department of Energy (DOE) recently gave its approval to seven biofuel projects which have a combined investment of over P7 Billion. The ramp up of biofuel production in the Philippines is in compliance with the 2007 Biofuel Law that mandates for a fixed amount of bioethanol to be mixed in the gasoline and biodiesel in the petro diesel being sold at the pumps.

The Seven Biofuel Projects are:
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Was happy to see this at my local gasoline station. A few months ago they said that they put it up already but had to remove it. I asked them why and they answered that it was because they ran out. Basing from this explanation, I guess it is still a wait and see attitude for the motorists, on whether the supply is stable or not.

Since I’m using this already, I’ll have to check with my mechanic to have the timing of the car checked. Since bioethanol has a different flashpoint than gasoline it will have different ignition properties.