Are biofuels the answer to ever-rising fuel prices, or are they a part of a greater problem of land and food? Paddy Comynwent to Gothenburg to hear the arguments
IF WE were to believe everything we read about biofuels, then you would think that perhaps we're starting to get a little desperate about what we use to fuel our vehicles. Praised by some as an obvious solution to a worsening problem, others blast it as another irresponsible way for us to satisfy our need for fuel.
Biofuels can be a solid, liquid or gas fuel derived from biological material - usually plants. In Brazil, sugar cane provides the raw materials for ethanol production and has done so for about the past 35 years. The US uses corn, which has been criticised for its relatively low return. Just last week, the World Bank noted that US use of corn for ethanol has consumed more than 75 per cent of the global increase in corn production in the past three years.
The UN's food agency has blamed biofuels for using up grain that could otherwise feed people or livestock. The same body has projected global ethanol production to reach about 125 billion litres in 2017, twice the quantity produced last year and this is expected to increase agricultural commodities prices and reduce their availability for food and feed.
A seminar, organised by Baff, the Bio-Alcohol Fuel Foundation, brought some of the world's leading biofuel experts to Gothenburg to discuss if ethanol is indeed sustainable. Kjell Aleklett, a professor from Uppsala University, and the founder of Studies of Peak Oil, seemed a fitting choice to start the ball rolling. As the president of Aspo, the Association for the study of Peak Oil Gas, Aleklett was in a good position to tell us just how much oil we have left. The term "peak oil", according to Aspo's founder Colin Campbell, is "the maximum rate of the production of oil in any are under consideration, recognising that it is a finite natural resource, subject to depletion".
Put another way, the rate of oil production is close to reaching its peak and after that, it will slow down and this finite resource will become scarcer and more expensive. Peak oil, now or in the near future, will cause shortages of vehicle fuel. The world currently gets through around 30 billion barrels a year, which is about 82 million barrels every day. Currently, oil prices are closing in on $135 per barrel, and some commentators are predicting that it won't be long before it costs $200.
"There is a 4 per cent decline in production in the major oilfields and this translates into 30 million fewer barrels per day over the next 10 years," says Aleklett. He predicts that overall production could decline as early as 2012, with emerging countries such as China requiring more oil and being forced to look for imports.
Johan Rockström, associate professor in natural resource management at Stockholm University and executive director of the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) spoke about the potential for bioethanol to be "among many 'wedges' in the social, economic and physical transition to zero carbon societies." He pointed out that fuelling all average cars would require at least three times the current cropland available in the world.
Per Carstedt, chairman of Baff and CEO of the Sekab Group, a company that delivers 90 per cent of Swedish ethanol, acknowledged the need to reduce oil dependency but pointed out that like electricity production, the production of biofuels can be done a right way and a wrong way. With the world's vehicle stocks set to rise and with countries such as India gaining greater access to vehicles, the demand for crude oil in these emerging countries would become even greater.
Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Sunday that he would this week be defending ethanol at the UN summit on food security. But it was Marcos S Jank, president of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association, who fought for Brazilian ethanol's cause in Gothenburg.
He called on countries such as the US to lift tariffs imposed on imports of Brazilian bioethanol and enthusiastically defended its track record. Jank's argument is that Brazil has replaced nearly 50 per cent of its petrol consumption with just 1 per cent of its arable land. They also argue that the production of sugar cane ethanol yields nine times that of corn ethanol.
Defending the US policy on biofuels was Paul Dickerson, COO of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy from the US Department of Energy. "Biofuels are the best short-term option to alleviate gasoline prices and heating oil costs," said Dickerson.
The biofuel industry has done well under the Bush administration - the outgoing president no doubt keen to cut US dependence on foreign oil imports, and it would appear that both Republican presidential candidate John McCain and his likely Democrat rival, Barack Obama will support biofuels in their race to the White House. The US's new energy bill calls for the production of 9 billion gallons of biofuel in 2008 and 10.5 billion gallons next year.
The requirement would rise to 36 billion gallons in 2022 - with ethanol supply from corn capped at 15 billion gallons. The Department of Energy official was keen to point out that they were investing heavily in the development of so-called second-generation biofuels, such as cellulosic ethanol.
Dickerson pointed to a total of five, cost-shared, integrated biorefinery demonstration projects set to produce 130 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol in five years, at a cost of $305 million, a drop in the ocean from its $174 billion budget. Such companies include BlueFire Ethanol, which recently began the prefabrication process for its bioethanol refinery in Lancaster, California.
This facility will use cellulosic wastes diverted from landfills in Southern California to produce fuel-grade ethanol. BlueFire's use of the Concentrated Acid Hydrolysis Process Technology positions it as the only cellulose-to-ethanol company with demonstrated production of ethanol from urban rubbish, rice and wheat straws, wood waste and other agricultural technologies.
In Europe, Sekab is running a Cellulose Ethanol RD pilot plant in Sweden. The raw material used is wood chips from pine trees, but other raw materials such as bagasse from sugarcane, wheat and corn stover, energy grass and recycled waste are also of future interest for the project.
In 2007, the EU endorsed a plan calling for a 10 per cent share of biofuels for cars and trucks by 2020. Now EU parliamentarians are saying that this is too high. MEP Anders Wijkman, responsible for the report on sustainability criteria for biofuels in the Environment Committee, advocated a systems approach. He proposed scaling back the EU's targets from 10 per cent to 7 or 8 per cent instead "given all the uncertainties when it comes to land use and food prices".
There is little doubt that the "oil age" will be a distant memory for future generations. In the interim, biofuels, whether they are the sometimes-controversial first-generation fuels or the still to be perfected second-generation cellulosic solutions, will play a role.
Without them, the rising cost of oil will rocket, diesel - already rising dramatically in price due to demand - will rise even further. Some might see them as an evil, but it might just become an increasingly necessary one.