Fossil fuels shaped the modern world, and finding a suitable replacement will not only mean replacing the current storage infrastructure of tanks with safety valves, but also considering how the fuel is transported, supplied and acquired in the first place.
Biofuels will be a huge part of this change, as they can slot into most of the roles that fossil fuels currently inhabit, and will be invaluable for industries which cannot make an easy transition to battery power or other forms of sustainable energy.
The push for sustainable aviation fuels and more substantial blends of heavy fuel oils for shipping means that the COP30 proposal to quadruple the production and use of sustainable fuels will primarily involve these particular sectors trying to decarbonise.
However, the question of personal transportation is more of a debate, with two very different visions for the future that are not entirely compatible with each other.
A particularly interesting example of this, as covered in an opinion piece for Bloomberg by David Finkling, is seen in Indonesia, where an ambitious plan to scale up biofuel in the country might be upended by an even more ambitious push towards battery electric vehicles.
Will Indonesia Continue Their Ambitious Biofuel Plans?
Last year, Indonesia ramped up plans to establish B50, a 50 per cent biofuel blend that would be the most ambitious of its kind in the world since the peak of the use of pure ethanol cars in Brazil in the 1980s, and the highest mandated diesel/biofuel blend ever undertaken.
Indonesia, which already has a mandate of B40 (40 per cent biofuel), intends to do this to reduce the reliance on imported crude oil, benefiting from being the world’s leading producer of palm oil. Additionally, they also planned to increase ethanol production to allow for an E10 mandate for petrol.
To achieve this, the plan from President Prabowo Subianto included a vast deforestation campaign, converting 20m hectares of forest into cultivable plantations for producing palm oil for biofuel.
These plans are currently up in the air according to Reuters, as the reality of the plans has sparked a multifaceted debate with regards to its viability, whether the economic cost of deforestation is worth the decarbonisation benefits, and also whether it is the best way to reduce reliance on petrol and diesel imported from overseas.
Is Biofuel The Only Option For Low-Carbon Transport?
Biofuel is an option, and one that Indonesia has both established and rapidly upscaled for two decades, but what has complicated the decision to be even bolder with biofuels in 2026 is the huge surge in electric vehicle sales in Southeast Asia.
Whilst China has become the driving force in this, selling more battery electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid cars than the United States sold cars in general in 2025, with a very similar state of affairs in countries such as Thailand (where EVs made up 20 per cent of the market), Singapore (45 per cent) and Vietnam (32 per cent).
In Indonesia, 37 per cent of cars sold were EVs, with a roughly even split between BEVs and PHEVs, but what gives biofuel policymakers pause is the sheer scale of this increase; for comparison’s sake, in 2020, less than one per cent of cars sold in Indonesia were EVs.
Part of this is the result of tax incentives and discounts that are part of government subsidies linked to local production, which are set to run out in 2026. However, given that both biofuel and fossil fuels are also subsidised by the government, it might not have skewed demand as much as expected.
What Can We Learn From The Biofuel Situation In Indonesia?
As EVs become cheaper and more capable, with some models comparable to similarly sized and performing petrol or diesel cars, the future may be less reliant on a direct drop-in replacement for fossil fuels but instead a package of solutions that help meet different needs.
At present, the future appears to be a mixture of battery electric cars reliant on increasingly efficient battery packs alongside plug-in hybrids, which would use sustainable fuels to charge the petrol or diesel generator.
The latter, unlike traditional hybrids, only uses the engine and whatever fuel it is powered by as a generator, which eliminates concerns about missing charging infrastructure and range anxiety; as long as a petrol station is within range, it can continue to run.
This could reduce the need for fuel for personal transportation and thus the need for biofuel generation, but time will tell whether there will be a single solution that will prove to be the most popular.
