07/12/2007 (The Statesman, India) - Bio-fuel could be part of the solution to climate change, also can be part of a strategy to limit fuel use

Bio-fuels are being touted as the new panacea for climate problems. But because this fuel from plants is being introduced without much thought about wider implications, it’s becoming a good idea practiced badly.

There are two kinds of bio-fuel: ethanol, processed from sugarcane or corn, and bio-diesel, made from biomass. Climate-savvy Europe gave the first push to bio-fuel, mandating that it should contribute 6 per cent of fuels used in vehicles by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020. Farmers were given subsidies to grow crops for fuel. The bulk of European bio-diesel comes from domestically grown rapeseed. But to meet its growing needs, Europe is looking to import soybean-based fuel from Brazil and Argentina and palm oil from Indonesia and Malaysia.

US President George Bush in 2007 called for production of 132 billion litres of bio-fuel by 2017, to cut dependence on foreign fuel. The USA’s favourite bio-fuel is ethanol, which it produces from cornstarch. Brazil, the world’s largest ethanol producer, uses sugarcane.

What does this switch of land from growing food to fuel mean for nutrition security? More important, will this strategy work against climate change? In late 2006, Mexico experienced tortilla wars, as people found the price of their staple, corn, had doubled. The hike was a result of the crop’s new market as vehicle fuel and corporate control over it—in this case, by one company, Archer Daniels Midlands, the largest ethanol processor in the region with financial stakes in a Mexican company that makes tortillas and refines wheat. So Midlands benefits when tortilla prices increase and consumers switch from corn to wheat, or when there is a switch from food to fuel.

Today oil companies are growing crops for fuel, and agribusiness is moving towards bio-fuel. For instance, Cargill, the agribusiness multinational, is now a big player in the bio-fuel market.
The poor food consumers of the world feel the impact. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says food prices will increase between 20 and 40 per cent in the next 10 years or so because of this switchover.

No impact
This “switch”, will, however, do little to avert climate change. All the bio-fuel in the world will be a blip on the world’s total fuel consumption. In the US, for instance, it’s agreed that if the entire corn crop is used to make ethanol, it will replace only 12 per cent of current gasoline— petrol—used in the country.
This is when the use of gasoline in the US and in Europe is rising due to increasing transportation needs. A recent paper in the US journal Foreign Affairs estimates that filling a 95-litre fuel tank with pure ethanol would require roughly 200 kg of corn, which has enough calories to feed one person for a year.

If we factor in fuel inputs that go into converting biomass to energy— from diesel to run tractors, natural gas to make fertilizers, fuel to run refineries— bio-fuel is not energy-efficient. It is estimated that only about 20 per cent of corn-made ethanol is ‘new’ energy. This reckoning does not account for the water it will take to grow this new crop.

There are fears that rainforest might be cut to expand bio-fuel crop cultivation; this will contribute substantially to climate change.

So how should bio-fuel be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? Any strategy must be founded on an understanding that bio-fuels aren’t substitutes for fossil fuels; they can make a difference if we limit our fuel consumption. If that’s the case, governments should not give subsidies to grow crops for bio-fuel. They should, instead, invest in public transport that will reduce the number of vehicles on roads. Bio-fuels should be just for public buses and only if cars get off the road.

For survival emissions
Bio-fuels could be a part of the climate solution but only if they are used to help the world’s poor to leapfrog to a non-fossil fuel-based energy future. The poor are today providing the world its only real opportunity to avoid emissions. For, the bulk of renewable energy - 80 per cent - is the biomass-based energy used by the poorest to meet their cooking, lighting and fuel needs.

So, the opportunity for a bio-fuel revolution is not in the rich world’s cities to run vehicles - but in the grid unconnected world of Indian or African villages, where there is a scarcity of electricity for homes, and generator sets to pump water and to run vehicles. It here that fossil fuel use will grow because there is no alternative. Instead of bringing fossil fuel long distances to feed this market, this part of the world can leapfrog to a new energy future. The bio-fuel can come from non-edible tree crops-jatropha in India, for example-grown on wasteland.

This also means that this fuel market will need to be redesigned. In today’s business model, the company will grow the crops, extract the oil, transport it first to refineries and then back to consumers. The new model needs distributed growth in which we have millions of bio-fuel growers and millions of distributors and millions of users.