The first Sigma plant to be built could be located at Schwedt in the state of Brandenburg. Provided the decision on this investment is made in 2009, fuel production could start in 2013. To allow this, economic policy needs to establish a stable long-term legislative framework.

The problem then gets into high capital costs per barrel of product. As someone once said to me, there is no reason you couldn’t build a one barrel per day Choren plant — provided you were willing to pay an extremely high cost per daily barrel with no hope of recouping your investment. It is only at large scale that many of these biofuel ventures work, and of course at scale you start to run into logistical issues. So it is — as I have been saying for years — a tough nut to crack. The same is true of cellulosic ethanol; small facilities mean an extremely high cost per daily barrel.