Abstract This work deals with the production of fuel ethanol from olive tree pruning. This raw material is a renewable, low cost, largely available, and lacking of economic alternatives agricultural residue. Olive tree pruning was submitted to steam explosion pre-treatment in the temperature range 190–240 °C, with or without previous impregnation by water or sulphuric acid solutions. The influence of both pre-treatment temperature and impregnation conditions on sugar and ethanol yields was investigated by enzymatic hydrolysis and simultaneous saccharification and fermentation on the pretreated solids. Results show that the maximum ethanol yield (7.2 g ethanol/100 g raw material) is obtained from water impregnated, steam pretreated residue at 240 °C. Nevertheless if all sugars solubilized during pre-treatment are taken into account, up to 15.9 g ethanol/100 g raw material may be obtained (pre-treatment conditions: 230 °C and impregnation with 1% w/w sulphuric acid concentration), assuming theoretical conversion of these sugars to ethanol.