Biofuels food impact exaggerated - consultant

10 June 2008 20:32  [Source: ICIS news]

KUALA LUMPUR (ICIS news)--The effect of crops that are grown to produce biofuels affects some but not all food markets, a consultant with Wood Mackenzie said on Tuesday.

“A lot of other things are going on that affect food prices,” consultant David Morrison said at the 13th Asia Oil and Gas Conference (AOGC) in Kuala Lumpur.

“It is just unfortunate that popular press has latched on to something that is convenient but not necessarily true.”

Morrison noted that soaring energy prices had a profound effect on the price of a loaf of bread in the US, where production and distribution accounted for 80% of its cost.

“Apart of the impact of biofuels, the weakness in the dollar, extreme weather patterns, rising demand in Asia, insufficient investments in agriculture and the growing global affluence leading to changes in diets also have parts to play in today’s soaring food price environment”, he said.

Wood Mackenzie have projected that biofuels consumption is set to rise dramatically with world usages of ethanol and biodiesel to hit about 100m tonnes/year and 25m tonnes/year, respectively, by 2020.

Even so, biofuels are expected to supply only a portion of the overall energy demand with it projected to satisfy 10% and 3% of the gasoline and diesel demands, respectively, by 2020.

The AOGC is an industry-wide forum attended by participants of the oil and gas sectors and concludes on Wednesday.

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Bookmark Simon Robinson’s Big Biofuels Blog for some independent thinking on biofuels

By: Bohan Loh
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