by Tim Hirsch
As delegates gather for the fifth World Biofuels Conference in the Spanish city of Seville this week (9 May), there is bound to be a feeling that this is a form of energy production whose time has arrived. Until recently, the idea of powering modern economies from the oils, starches and sugar of plant material seemed a rather marginal activity hyped up by agricultural interests and green enthusiasts for any alternative to fossil fuels. Now it is high on the agenda of meetings of international finance ministers, attracting growing interest in commodity markets and from multinational energy corporations, and even at the heart of the current rhetoric of a United States presidency in which the oil lobby has often appeared to be in the driving seat of energy policy.
In part, this increased interest reflects a growing concern about the impact of fossil fuel combustion on the Earth’s climate. With atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations now apparently on an accelerating upward curve, energy generated through the recycling of carbon absorbed by living plant material has obvious advantages over the continued release of CO2 locked in geological hydrocarbon formations for millions of years.
The political reality, however, is that enthusiasm for biofuels has far more to do with the spiralling price of oil, and the geopolitical risks associated with an ever-greater reliance on energy supplies from regions such as the Middle East and Central Asia. This is abundantly clear from the recent speeches by President Bush talking up the prospects for ethanol - the anger of American voters at the growing cost of filling up their thirsty SUVs is a much more potent political driver than concern about global warming.
From the Corn Belt of the American Midwest to the sugar beet fields of East Anglia, farming fuel as well as food has clear attractions.
Compared to other alternative transport fuels such as hydrogen, biofuel has two clear advantages. The first is that it is a far more mature technology; whereas the infrastructure for the affordable deployment of hydrogen fuel cells is still a distant prospect, products such as biodiesel (diesel-equivalent processed fuel derived from biological sources) and anhydrous ethanol are already being added to the fuel mix of conventional engines around the world. One country in particular, Brazil, has shown that running cars entirely on biofuels is perfectly feasible - although as we shall see, the experience has been far from problem-free.
The other significant advantage is that at a time when farm subsidies in developed countries are coming under increasing pressure through the World Trade Organisation, biofuels offer the prospect of enabling farmers to diversify into energy production. From the Corn Belt of the American Midwest to the sugar beet fields of East Anglia, farming fuel as well as food has clear attractions.
At the same time, the use of large tracts of land to provide fuel brings with it a host of issues ranging from the further pressure this could place on ecosystems already stressed by the unprecedented conversion to cropland witnessed in the past fifty years, to the consequences of creating new fuel cartels in the global agri-business market. Here, too, Brazil offers some instructive insights.
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