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Sustainable biofuels: under what conditions?
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We often present biofuels as one of the most sustainable alternatives to oil. Factories and refineries are implemented all over the world. Oil is already replaced by rape, wheat, sunflower, sugar cane, etc...
European institutions begin to include them in their plans. Indeed, the European Council fixed the following objective: biofuels will represent 10% of road transport energy consumption by 2020.
However, an issue is pointed out: those vegetable have been used to feed people. Are those new fuels really sustainable? What kind of global problems may they generate? Under what conditions biofuels could take the place of oil?
Please tell us your opinion about this global issue.
photo Credit FlickR : tonrulkens
Jatropha curcas - the biofuel plant
Replies
My name is Alvin Kiang and I work at Alpha Biofuels in Singapore. Here at Alpha Biofuels, we recycle used cooking oil into Alpha Biodiesel. The feedstock is collected domestically. Our Alpha Biodiesel is processed domestically and sold to the domestic construction industry. According to the Singapore Agency for Science Technology and Research, Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology's emipirical lifecycle analysis research, pure Alpha Biodiesel reduces net fossil fuel CO2 emission by 95.42% when compared with using fossil diesel. Alpha Biofuels does not use fresh cooking oil in making Alpha Biodiesel; only waste vegetable oil is used. With this manufacturing model, Alpha Biofuels can continue to expand from our current rate of production by more than 10 times before the domestic waste vegetable oil feedstock market is exhausted. To contact us, send an email to greenfuels@alphabiofuels.sg
Global impacts from massive market forces as a result of incentivized commodities is a complicated subject. Biofuels are currently the only sustainable solution to replace fossil transportation fuels at scale. Turn off the oil spigot, and motor vehicles stop moving everywhere. But incentivized European mandates for biofuels, like all 1st world agricultural subsidies, impact the developing world, usually negatively. The growth of a corn ethanol market in the United States, for example, has heartened many development economists because the demand is pushing up the price of corn to a true market value. Usually this is spun negatively - a higher price for yellow dent corn (an animal feed) puts it further beyond the reach of the poor, the argument goes. But in the developing world, subsistence farmers are beginning to once again to be able to afford to grow grains competitively, where previously their countries could more easily import corn with catastrophic negative impacts on local small farmers. Subsidized European demand for biomass is having a similar effect - trees are being pelletized and shipped to Europe to burn for electricity because the incentives skews market forces to the point that it makes sense to chip and ship. If Europe were to require the production of biofuels from locally grown biomass, a dialogue over what is the optimal use for local land in Europe will begin to occur. Unfortunately, as long as food farming in Europe receives the benefits they currently do, farmers in Africa will not be able to compete. Biofuels don't cause hunger in the developing world, they create opportunities for local farmers who are able to compete once again. And to keep the playing field level, let's not single out biofuels; the fossil fuel sector has received - and continues to receive - massive incentives, which is a big part of why the planet is virtually totally dependent on a single commodity, oil.
Awesome stuff!!