The Big Biofuels Blog

The Biopact blog has looked at the commercial viability of a number of potential biofuel crops.

The blogger suggests that people in temperate latitudes will only find growing crops such as rape seed and wheat making sense commercially when the price of oil is considerably higher than it is now.

Green fuels based on low yielding crops, such as corn or rapeseed, survive when the price per barrel of crude reaches record highs, like it did a few weeks ago, when oil hit US$77/barrel. But now, with prices down US$20/barrel, not many biofuels from the North can compete. Subsidies and market distortions are needed to keep them alive.

(my emphasis)

Bioethanol and biodiesel cost the US taxpayer between $5.5bn and $7.5bn in tax breaks, are ruining the countryside and storing up trouble for the future, according to

It's getting to that time of year again, when we start looking back, rounding things up and Compiling lists, and one of the most useful of these was produced recently by the US National Biodiesel Board in its round-up of biofuels legislation passed at state level across the US through September 2006.

Technorati Tags: America, biodiesel, bioethanol, biofuel, State, Legislation, US

Biodiesel and to a greater extent bioethanol will play a larger roll in the world’s fuel mix by 2030… that’s the good news the bad news is that increasing use will produce greater conflict with existing uses for the; and alternatives like lingocellulose face considerable technical hurdles.

That’s not my view, it’s the International Energy Authority’s in its new report World Energy Outlook 2006, which I’ve gained access to.

The report is chock full of interesting details, and I’d like to give everybody a free copy,

Technorati Tags: America, Asia, biodiesel, bioethanol, biofuel, Legislation, Report, International Energy Authority

Biofuels like ethanol and biodiesel took a knock in the recent mid-term elections with the defeat of Proposition 87 in California. This was a plan to tax California's oil producers and use the money to fund alternative energy. The idea was also to cut gasoline consumption by 25% in the state, it was to be levied on oil extracted in the state and the oil companies themselves would have to pay it. The Proposition had some pretty high profile supporters, including Vinod Kholsa and a veritable galaxy of Hollywood stars and starletts

So does it matter that it failed it depends who you ask...

The John and Ken show puts it like this

Proposition 87, was defeated 55 percent to 45 percent with 90 percent of Tuesday’s votes counted—despite support from Bill Clinton, Al Gore and such Hollywood stars as Julia Roberts and Brad Pitt.Proposition 87 was portrayed as a battle between liberal Hollywood and Big Oil in a state that has long blazed a trail in environmental causes and has one of the most aggressive greenhouse gas reduction laws in the world. . .

The Cut oil Imports blog thinks it might for US legislators now the dust is settling after the election

Californians rejected Proposition 87. This legislation would have taxed Californian oil production to fund alternative energy projects. If the most liberal (er… I mean environmentally friendly) state will not pass new taxes to fund alternative energy then the Democrats in Congress may have to think of ways to shift money from other sources versus just raising gasoline/carbon taxes.

According to Alternative Energy Stocks, blog

Unfortunately for Khosla and his bunch, California voters defeated Proposition 87 at the ballot box on Tuesday. Unsurprisingly, this had no impact on the market value of the alternative energy sector on Wednesday. Unsurprisingly because California remains one of the hottest, if not the hottest, alternative energy spots in the world, Proposition 87 or not.

Only a few weeks ago, the California Legislature passed bill SB107 requiring investor-owned utilities to achieve a 20% renewable electricity portfolio by 2011. This represents one of the most ambitious such targets in the world, moving the 20% goal, which already existed under another program, from 2017 to 2011. What’s more, SB107 allows, for the first time, trading of Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) between power producers, introducing a necessary layer of flexibility and efficiency in the system. This could be one of the most important such initiatives in the US, covering upwards of 10,000 MW

It is good to see California getting into carbon trading in this way, I wonder if Californian Carbon credits are the same as Kyoto carbon credits...

Cake or Death (good name for a blog... give me cake or... ) wondered

Al Gore got the no vote again as the Alternative Energy (Prop 87) bill that would increase taxes on oil companies appears to be losing. You've got to wonder if having Gore and Clinton in ads for this one helped or hurt...

Up beat EnergyOutlook says;

...biofuels look like the big winner. While efforts to add to domestic oil production are likely to stall, aggressive promotion of ethanol and biodiesel will enjoy strong bi-partisan support and seems unlikely to attract a veto. Look for more generous incentives for ethanol, including tax breaks for E85 infrastructure. Still, the defeat of Proposition 87 in California, the largest "blue state", sends some kind of signal about how alternative energy should be funded.

If the US is committed to biofuels like ethanol an biodiesel then legislators legislators have to find innovative ways to fund research and will need a clearer declaration of aims than 87 proposed.

Technorati Tags: America, biodiesel, bioethanol, biofuel, Bush, California, Carbon trading, economics, Elections, ethanol, Kholsa, State, Proposition 87, US, Vinod

I've just come across this Proposition 87 post-mortem on R-squared, from Robert Rapier. He's a pretty thoughtful chap and gives his views about why proposition 87, the Californian plan to tax fuel companies and us the money to set up an organisation to fund biofuels failed at the polls last week... worth a look for a reasoned view from someone in occasional contact with the "yes" campaign.

Technorati Tags: America, biodiesel, bioethanol, biofuel, Democrat, ethanol, Republican, US

Kansas' Govenor. Kathleen Sebelius says she will join other govenors in urging Congress to adopt a national energy policy and user the writing of a new farm bill to boos the production and sale biofuels, according to ECOtality blog.

Sebelius wasn’t specific about her plans, saying her proposals still are being developed. She also said many of the initiatives she will pursue will be administrative actions that don’t require legislative approval.

Sebelius' is committed to biofuels and shows this in her link togas stations selling E85 in Kansass.

Brooke Lowry, who writes the blog suggests:

Sebelius’ interest in ethanal is no surprise in Kansas, a big corn-producing state that sees corn-based ethanol as an economic boost for the state. But her mention of a new “farm bill” to boost the production of biofuels suggets Sebelius, as the governor of a big corn-producing state, wants a national energy policy that favors corn over other source materials for ethanol.

Lowry adds

That’s short-sighted and may actually hobble the growth of ethanol as an alternative fuel source rather than acclerate things.

I'd have to agree with Brooke, there needs to be a national debate in the US about which is the right biofuel direction to take in the future. It would be a mistake, as I've argued before here, to peruse the wrong, approaches which may be too water-intensive have the potential to be more environmentally damaging than sticking with oil.

Senator Barak Obama, of Illinois has ventured on to the world of myspace with his own podcast and transcript  to talk about the President (generally pretty shoddy effort, must do better) and more interestingly about biofuels (a good thing).

Here's a taster

I ask the question because I'm sitting in the middle of an exchange on an Australian forum about biofuels, and they're looking for ways of engaging the media and government in the biofuels story. Have you got any thoughts or ideas? I'd love to know.

You can see the thread, but you'll have to join the forum to contribute directly.

I'm going to be asleep when George W Bush gives his State of the Union speech tonight.

Time zones, not delivery.

So to give you the opportunity of seeing how many no brainers I got wrong the other day, here's a link to c-span which should show the State of the Union speech live. There will be a small and insignificant prize for the first person who correctly lists them in a comment folling this post...

Two world leaders talked biofuels in unusual circumstances recently... Remember when Fidel Castro phoned in to the Hugo Chavez Radio show?

"Hello presidente? This is presidente"

 That was surprising enough, to add to the excitement, they spent a chunk of time talking about biofuel. I've come across a transcript (my Spanish extends to Hello and two beers please).

Maybe Hugo and Fidel listen to The Big Biofuels Podcast. If either of you el Presidentes do please drop me a line. What would you like to hear more of...

Viva revolutionary media!

Civil disturbances fueled by worries over ethanol have greeted President Bush, on his visit to Brazil. Bush is expected to sign an ethanol deal with President Luis Da Silva. The visit has thrown the US tariff position on biofuels and the pressure on the administration over the issue into sharp relief

The BBC has pretty good coverage of the clashes which greeted Bush and some of the background to them. Tim Hersch's piece examining the background to brazil's pulling power looks to be solid.

Hersch quotes the Brazilian Ex-Ambassador to the US, Rubens Barbosa as saying

South Korea may subsidise biofuels, according to Planet Ark, which tells us that the country is considering cheap loans for firms building facilities which cut greenhouse gases.

I've just come across the American coalition for ethanol. They're not likely to be unbiased, but there could be useful information buried on the site.

Check out The Frontal Cortex's report on a speech Barak Obama made in Detroit, the US car capital. It ranged over fuel, farmers and the future of Detroit. 

Jonah Lehrer says

I'd feel better about Obama's plans if he wasn't a leading supporter of the tariff on Brazilian ethanol derived from sugar. (There is a tariff of fifty-four cents per gallon on sugar-based ethanol from foreign sources.) Instead, Obama supports nurturing a "home grown ethanol industry," which means massive subsidies for corn farmers. While that sounds nice in the abstract, it's up against the brute facts of botany: ethanol distilled from sugarcane is much cheaper to produce and generates far more energy per unit of input--about eight times more, according to most estimates--than corn. And because we also impose tariffs on imported sugar - the sugar lobby is almost as powerful as the corn lobby - it's not economical to develop a domestic ethanol industry based on sugar cane. It's as if Congress has decided that supporting the corn farmers with massive agricultural subsidies is more important than 1) developing alternative fuels that are better for the environment and help prevent global warming 2) wean us off our dependence on foreign oil and 3) help support development in poor countries that grow sugar.

Way to go Jonah. And with a dose of cold reason, Johnah continues:

But he won't talk too tough to the farming companies that will be bankrolling at least part of his assault on the Whitehouse.

I can see that the farming lobby probably pays a considerable amount of money to politicians' campaign funds and, that as you need a lot of money to become president, its very welcome. But you also need a lot of votes in the right states.
There are many more drivers in the US than there are farmers, right, and they all have votes, so why not have a policy for them that would allow them to decide which fuel ethanol to buy expensive locally produced stuff or cheaper stuff from overseas.
And while we're at it, give tax breaks to people who either don't own cars or drive very few miles/year...

Argentina's biofuel bandwagon gets going, according to a report on AP and over the other biofuel blogs like a rash this morning.

AP Says

many Argentines are worried that diverting farmland for biofuels - made from corn, sugarcane, palm oil and other agricultural products - will drive up food prices even higher.

"This idea of using grains to make energy instead of using them for food, now that's a problem," resident Pedro Marcote said. "Food prices keep going up and up."

People in relatively poorer countries will feel the effect of diverting food crops into fuel crops faster than relatively wealthy consumers in North America. Are you seeing your food bills rising?

According to Australia's National news Nine's website Transport Minister Mark Vaile has urged Australia's petrol retailers to increase the availability of cheaper ethanol-blended fuel, as motorists face a fresh spike in petrol prices.

Vaile said the government would meet with oil companies in the coming weeks to push for the further rollout of ethanol-blended fuel.

Biofuels may be green but look increasingly bloody in Columbia, where according to the Guardian on line...

Armed groups in Colombia are driving peasants off their land to make way for plantations of palm oil, a biofuel that is being promoted as an environmentally friendly source of energy.

Farmers who have been forced off their land at gunpoint say that in many cases their banana groves and cattle grazing fields were turned into palm oil plantations. Luis Hernandez (not his real name) fled his 170-hectare plot outside the town of Mutata in Antioquia province nine years ago after his father-in-law and several neighbours were gunned down. When he and other survivors were able to return recently, they found the land was in the hands of a local palm producer.

There has been considerable political instability in Columbia for many years and given that many of the groups have been funding themselves with coca plantations which are illegal. This is a chance for them to become legit (in the language of South London), and turn their dirty money into freshly laundered loot.

Orangutans biofuels food and dilemmas lie at the heart of a conversation that's over in the comments under the Greenpeace biofuels film clip story.
Here's an extract.

Hi Jon, Biofuels cannot be based on staple foods in the longer term. On that we are agreed. What I worry about is that additional palm oil or ethanol displaces other foods or gasoline into markets with large demands for energy.

There's a quick round up of some of the effects of the last US farmbill and suggesgtions for this year's over on Tree Hugger. Hattip to blueskymining.

How did your senator vote over the ethanol import tariff? Hat tip to the club for growth.

We need to speed the acceptance of biofuels by slowing down the rate of acceptance, that appears to be the approach of a new group called
The Alliance for a Safe Alternative Fuels Environment (AllSAFE) which won a victory recently when a U.S. House committee approved a bill requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to hold public hearings before approving any changes in gasoline-ethanol blends.

According to the By JUSTIN HYDE/Detroit Free Press and quoted on the Lincoln Nebraska JournalStar website:

AllSAFE represents companies that have about 400 million engines in the United States, everything from weed trimmers to yachts. The Alliance for Automobile Manufacturers, the trade group that includes Detroit’s automakers and Toyota Motor Co., is also a member.

Sorry Toyota is the garnish. My feeling is Detroit's automakers will be running the show and don't want to deal with biofuels.

Gristmill has a couple of interesting blogs on a recent pronouncement from JK Galbraith, who's been peering over his glasses at a number of conundrums including whether markets can solve global warming.

There are more proposals to be debated as the US Farm Bill 2007 gets closer to enactment, according to 25x25, a US pro-biofuel pressure group.
The US house of representative has agreed a proposal, which is different from proposals from Senator Jim Harkin in the Senate.
The house's agreed position looks like this, acording to 25x25
House Farm Bill Energy Title Addresses 25x?25 Goals
Meanwhile, the House farm bill?s energy title addresses many of the goals listed in The 25x?25 Action Plan: Charting America?s Energy Future, a set of 35 policy recommendations developed by the 25x?25 National Steering Committee in February to help insure a renewable energy future. The Action Plan calls for annual spending under the farm bill energy title to increase by $1 billion, including $250 million for the Section 9006 program.

The House bill increases the loan guarantee level in the 9006 program from $10 million level to $25 million, and provides $115 million over five years for the program. The House bill also provides up to $2 billion for loan guarantees of up to ninety percent of loans used to help pay for development, construction and retrofitting of biorefineries and biofuel production plants to demonstrate the commercial viability of converting biomass to fuels or chemicals. The House measure reauthorizes Section 9008 biomass research and development programs as recommended in the Action Plan, but provides no new money. The Action Plan would increase to $300 million the annual authorization for Section 9010, which reimburses ethanol and biodiesel producers for the purchase of commodities to expand existing production. While the House bill would authorize no new money, it does add the cost of cellulolic feedstocks as eligible for reimbursement under 9010.

In addition the House bill authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to work with other Federal agencies and universities to conduct a competitive research and development program (including grants, and cooperative agreements) to encourage new forest to energy technologies. It alsoestablishes a biomass energy reserve (BER) and provides financial and technical assistance to landowners and operators to produce energy crops and harvest, store, and transport cellulosic material.

The House bill reauthorizes the Sun Grant Initiative, which provides money for research of, among other things, the development of regional-scale agronomic production systems for energy feedstocks.

Another 25x?25 Action Plan recommendation incorporated into the House farm bill energy title includes a provision directing the secretaries of Agriculture and Energy to conduct a study of comprehensive infrastructure needs for the renewable fuels sector, including ethanol and pipeline needs and feasibility, and recommend needed action to ensure delivery of renewable fuels and feedstocks to the market. The House bill authorizes $1 million for the study.

Ethanol is not always a good idea, in countries like Barbados. That is the story the Barbados Free Press has on-line, about the visit of some European Union advisors to the country, who were sent to look into the suitability of converting the Barbadian sugar industry into ethanol production.
Worth reading not only for the tooing and froing that the report says went on between the government and the EU adivsors (who left pretty sharply) but also for the paper's take on the government's response to the EU's initial proposal for an audit of a one-off payment to help cushion changes in the sugar regime.

If developing countries are going to grow their biofuels industries, they will need to be able to convince donors that the money will be going to the right place. Donors have a duty to the people who fund them, that this is happening. Audits with aid would help ensure transparency and confidence between donor and recipient.

Hats off (and a deep bow) to Keith Ripley on the Temas Blog, who's post on his excellent blog, pointed me in this direction.

Lady Ethanol holds the heart of congress, concludes my good mate, Joe Kamalick, writing in ICIS news the other week, in a piece about the strength of the US ethanol lobby.

Disclosure: I work for ICIS. About ICIS.

Joe says:

She is not the unblemished beauty she once was - she eats too much, costs too much and has some embarrassing emissions - but the enchanting Lady Ethanol still commands the affections of Congress.

If you are a UK citizen and live in the UK (or some small islands dotted about the globe) and think that biofuel vehicles should be pay less UK road tax you might like to sign this petition by 1 January 2008.

I like this analysis of the US ethanol from corn market as it now stands and Geoffrey Styles, proposal for a smarter ethanol policy for the US. Styles points out that after 25 years' of subsidies the US ethanol market is not economically viable.

He says there is a strong case for

shifting the focus of the ethanol portion of US energy policy--and agricultural policy. Considering all the above factors, I believe a wiser ethanol policy would consist of the following:

1. Freezing the federal RFS at the current level of 7.5 billion gallons per year.

2. Phasing out all subsidies for ethanol derived from food sources within five years.

3. Phasing out the tariff on imported ethanol within two years.

4. Shifting the point of subsidy from the blender to the ethanol plant, to ensure that future subsidies go to US producers, rather than offshore.

5. Increasing the subsidy on cellulosic ethanol to $1.00/gallon until 2010, falling by 10 cents per gallon per year thereafter.

Such a program would focus federal incentives where they will do the most good, promoting the commercialization of cellulosic ethanol, which offers much larger energy and emissions-reduction benefits than corn ethanol and entails fewer concerns about sustainability.

I particularly like his proposal for the end of subsidies on ethanol from food sources and the end to protective tariffs. I guess there would need to be support for cellulose production in the short therm and I'd argue for it to be phased out over 3-5 years after commercial production starts.

Since cellulosic ethanol is expected to be cheaper to produce, once it achieves economies of scale, it should not require permanent subsidies or tariff protection, as corn ethanol has. The result would be a very tough market for current ethanol producers, but it would ensure that the ethanol we use as an oil substitute is produced as efficiently as possible, without merely substituting LNG imports for oil imports

It would also allow corn to be used for what it is best for Food. He asks an unanswerable question which points up the difficulties that the US renewable fuel industry faces.

Whether or not something like this could ever be enacted by the US Congress, this is where the debate should focus, rather than on arguing about expanding an inefficient program by a factor of five.

Of course, there's no debate about fuel efficiency or what the price of any of this fuel will be in the future...

Interesting story on the connection between farming, energy and midwestern primary elections on the Des Moines Register yesterday.

Good to see that there is talk of fuel efficiency in at least one of the bills. The US is going to use around 177 000 million gallons of gasoline this year, its already using 20% of the corn crop to produce around 5000 million gallons of ethanol via fermentation. That cannot be unless there is a big change in consumption, the volume of corn that will be used in the short term will become unsustainable pretty quickly. Of course auto engines need to change to accept higher ethanol blends... and the fuel needs to be more widely available.

One area of human experience that I can't be bothered to get to grips with is Massively Multiplayer Role-playing Online Games. (If I can't see the whites of their eyes across the Monopoly board, I can't know how they are going to react when I storm off in a huff after landing on their Hotel?). However I do find politics the most interesting form of legalised bloodsport, and in many ways the two areas are not that different, so I was interested to read on Tobold's MMORPG Blog Tobold's take on the Iowa primaries, and what they mean for biofuels and food prices.
Tobold thinks that populous non-farming states should be the first to hold primaries, and it seems to me that although not on-line, getting that kind of change would be a Massively Multiplayer role-playing game (or is that politics)

I know when I'm not an expert, and while I find American politics fascinating from a distance like the mating ritual of the Capercaillie its not something that I'd claim any kind of expertise in.
So I'd recommend having a look at what John Davis has to say about yesterday's Iowa Primary in Domestic Fuel. Its clearly firing the starting gun in the race to be the next president of the US, and as John says there's a long way to go. But it is interesting to see the initial front-runners Obama and Huckabee stance on biofuels in his post. Of the two Obama's is the most explicit.

The UK' House of Commons Environmental Audit committee, which keeps an eye on government environmental policies said today that the UK should pause in its policy to use biofuels to see if they really are environmentally sound, according to Reuters.
This is interesting, because it reflects some aspects of the politically impartial Royal Society's findings last week, and also because, although the committee has no power to change policy, and it may be politically driven in its findings (Tim Yeo, the chairman is a Conservative MP, and the policy is driven by the Labour government) there is a chance it reflects some growing disquiet in society that the biofuels industry will have to address.

Biofuels are involved in a crime against humanity again. Only this time it’s NOT growing biofuels that would be the crime. Confused? World opinion certainly is.
This time its Brazil's president Lula who says that discarding biofuels would be the crime. Lula was speaking at a UN meeting in only days after Jean Zeigler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food had repeated that growing biofuels amounts to a crime against humanity, on Bayerische Rundfunk. (In German). He made the statement before in October last year, to the chagrin of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisaition and the global biofuels industry.
Lula said he is surprised by the backlash against biofuels:

"The surprise is all the stronger when you see that few of them (critics) mention the negative impact of the high price of oil on production costs, or that very few of them stand up against the negative impact of the subsidies and protectionism in the farm sector."

US farmers and ethanol firms blame oil for food costs, according to my pal Joe Kamalick on ICIS news.
(Disclosure: I work for ICIS: About ICIS)

Looks to me that

There's an interesting window into the Danish Biofuels debate on the Copenhagen Post. Thanks to Biofuelwatch@yahoo.com

According to the Post

'In the search for explanations, biofuels has become the scapegoat. Press coverage has been so intense that it's difficult to make head or tails of the real debate,' Mariann Fischer Boel, the EU's Danish agriculture commissioner, said at a biofuel conference in Brussels yesterday.

She may be right, but I have a feeling that heads are landing slightly more often than tails.

We would again caution, therefore, against hasty judgements driven by highly questionable, agenda-driven calculations, some of which have been featured prominently in the popular press. Many analysts both within and outside of government are currently working to model these questions, and the one certainty is that our data will improve substantially in the months ahead.

Appendix 1 Answers this question from Senator Bingaman: How has increased US. ethanol and biodiesel consumption affected domestic agriculture, and domestic food prices?

During the first 4 months of 2008, the all food CPI increased by 4.8 percent, with increased ethanol and biodiesel consumption accounting for about 4-5 percent of the increase in retail food prices.

Appendix 2 Answers this question from Seantor Bingaman: Has increased ethanol and biodiesel consumption in the United States contributed to increased global prices for agricultural goods? And if so, to what extent?

The price of corn increased by 61.7 percent from April 2007 to April 2008. Combining the change in corn prices with the corn weight of 8.1 percent, the change in corn prices contributed
5.0 percentage points to the estimated 45 percent increase in the global food commodity price index. Soybeans, soybean oil, and soybean meal exhibited larger price increases and play a much larger role in the global food commodity price index, a combined weight of over 15 percent. The combined effects of the increase in soybean, soybean meal, and soybean oil prices contributed 11.7 percentage points to the estimated 45 percent increase in the IMF global food commodity price index from April 2007 to April 2008.

And

The estimated impacts on global food prices are consistent with the estimates in response to Question 1. We estimate that the percentage increase in price ofcom from April 2007 to April 2008 would have been 23 percent lower in the absence of any growth in biofuel production in the United States. Based on this analysis, we estimate that the price of com would have increased by 47.5 percent assuming no growth in biofuel production in the United States, down from the actual increase of 61.7 percent, from April 2007 to April 2008.

The growth in biofuel production in the United States also has pushed up soybean, soybean meal, and soybean oil prices. We estimate the percentage increase in the prices of soybeans, soybean meal, and soybean oil from April 2007 to April 2008 would have been about 25 to 30 percent lower in the absence of any growth in biofuel production in the United States. Assuming no growth in biofuel production, the price of soybeans, soybean meal, and soybean oil in the global food commodity price index would have increased by 54.2, 51.2, and 61.5 percent, respectively, down from actual increases of78.6, 69.3, and 80.9 percent, respectively, from April 2007 to April 2008.

The effects ofbiofuel production in the United States on global price for agricultural goods is estimated by combining the individual commodity price impacts with their relative weights in the IMF global food commodity price index. Assuming no growth in biofuel production in the United States, the IMF global food commodity price index would have increased by 40.6 percent compared to the actual increase of 45 percent, from April 2007 to April 2008. Lower com prices contributed 1.2 percentage points, lower soybean, soybean meal, and soybean oil prices contributed 3.2 percentage points to the total reduction in the global food commodity price index.

However, combining soybeans, soybean meal, and soybean oil in the same index overstates the impact ofbiofuels on global prices. Soybeans are processed into soybean meal and oil and by including the effects ofbiofuels on the prices of all three commodities we magnify the impacts of biofuels on the global price index. If we exclude the impact of biofuels on soybean meal and oil prices, the IMF global food commodity price index would have increased by 42 percent assuming no growth in biofuels production compared to the actual increase of 45 percent, from April 2007 to April 2008.

Do you think that this is a fair assessment? I guess that as both of the secretaries of state are from the Bush Administration, they've got a political interest in playing the numbers down. The IMF numbers should give an element of impartiality though. Once again the prices of crops matters much less in countries where people eat a high proportion of processed food, but much more in countries where people eat unprocessed food.

I'm struck that

What's more, the parliamentary committee is demanding that, before 2015, a full review of the whole EU biofuel promotion policy and its social and environmental impacts be carried out to determine whether the targets need revising. This review should "focus on consequences for food security, biodiversity and the availability of electricity or hydrogen from renewable sources, biogas or transport fuels from ligno-cellulosic biomass and algae," the text reads. 

This flies in the face of much of the current thrust of European biofuel industry, and will create uncertainty in the market. That is not completely a bad thing. The difficulty for many existing companies and the trade associations that represent them centres around their needs to keep shareholder/proprietors happy quarter to quarter and year to year. The Parliament, by voting in this way, is hoping to develop a rounded robust biofuels sector that will have little or no impact on food supplies. This has to be preferable in the long term to a biofuel sector that competes for food crops.

The one thing that I don't like about the vote is that it adds in electricity and hydrogen. I especialy doubt that hydrogen will be a sustainable fuel untill we develop bacteria/algae to produce it from organic material without generating carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is bad because it is currently made using electicity, so the process is less efficicnt than electricity production. There is little or no infrastructure in place to get hydrogen to the point of need. 

The European Parliament's powers vary from area to area, for example, if this decision is seen in the context of agriculture, then parliament can only give its opinion to the Council of Ministers. If its a non-sensitive area then the Council and Parliament have to agree. If there are any experts in the rolls of Council and Parliament out there, I'd like to hear from you.

So where do the Malaysians fit into all of this... They are concerned that the poposed increases in carbon savings that are also included in the parliament's decison will leave palm and soy oil out in the cold. They might neet to lobby national governements, or be much more imaginative.

"Current policies tend to favour producers in some developed countries over producers in most developing countries. The challenge is to reduce or manage the risks while sharing the opportunities more widely."The FAO puts the total share of the world fuel market supplied by biofuels at 2%. It also makes a point that this blog has made on numerous occassions in the past that

If developing countries can reap the benefits of biofuel production, and if those benefits reach the poor, higher demand for biofuels could contribute to rural development. "Opportunities for developing countries to take advantage of biofuel demand would be greatly advanced by the removal of the agricultural and biofuel subsidies and trade barriers that create an artificial market and currently benefit producers in OECD countries at the expense of producers in developing countries,"

Burried at the end of chapter 1 of the State of food  is this gem...

The potential for current biofuel technologies to replace fossil fuels is also illustrated by a hypothetical calculation by Rajagopal et al. (2007). They report  theoretical estimates for global ethanol production from the main cereal and sugar crops based on global average yields and commonly reported conversion efficiencies.

The results of their estimates are summarized in Table 3. The crops shown [wheat, rice, maize, cassava,sugar cane, sorghum and sugar beet] account for 42 percent of total cropland today. Conversion of the entire crop production to ethanol would correspond to 57 percent of total petrol consumption. Under a more realistic assumption of 25 percent of each of these crops being diverted to ethanol production, only 14 percent of petrol consumption could be replaced by ethanol. The various hypothetical calculations underline that, in view of their significant land requirements, biofuels can only be expected to lead to a very limited displacement of fossil fuels. Nevertheless, even a very modest contribution of biofuels to overall energy supply may yet have a strong impact on agriculture and on agricultural markets.

My emphasis. Biofuels can only make a marginal difference to the world's energy demands using current technology, and as I wrote earlier today, second generation technologies around cellulose will become increasingly costly in future.

Should we be downhearted?

No!

There is real scope for biofuels to make a difference, providing that we use the right combination of technologies, we use the right feedstocks and we trade them in the right way. That is fairly across borders using a genuine free market without hidden subsidies or corruption. 

I'm going to say it once again, we as a society must  get to grips with fuel econonmy in all of its guises, from better home insulation and higher building standards to building cars with greater fuel efficiency.

Hattip to c-questor.

Their ambassadors to the EU have drafted a joint letter, which Reuters claims to have seen, saying the safeguards "impose unjustifiably complex requirements" on producer nations.

European Parliament's approval of the Climate and Energy Package provides the European biotech industry with a predictable business environment to develop advanced biofuels

 

Brussels 17 December 2008

 

The European Biotech Industry Association (EuropaBio) congratulates the European Parliament and the Council of Europe on passing the Climate Action and Renewable Energy Package. EuropaBio appreciates the effort involved in approving this Package within a year of the Proposal's publication by the European Commission.

 

The biotech industry welcomes the mandatory 10% target for road transport fuels coming from renewable energies by 2020. This will provide industry with a predictable environment to develop a strong biofuels sector in Europe and invest in innovation for advanced biofuels. "Setting a two-step approach (35-50%) for the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission savings threshold, together with incentives for second-generation biofuels will drive public support and increase private sector investment in research and development to speed up the development and commercialisation of second generation or advanced biofuels" said Kirsten Birkegaard Staer, Chair of EuropaBio's Biofuels Task Force.

 

EuropaBio believes it is essential that the emerging biofuels sector is built on sound sustainability principles. The main driver of the renewable energy directive is to achieve environmental, societal as well as economical benefits. It is important that the long-term political and public support will be dependent on biofuels being seen to deliver on these goals in a sustainable and a socially responsible manner. The criteria as outlined in the renewable energy directive provide a good basis for the sustainability of transport fuel. However it is crucial for their adequate implementation by industry and Member States to develop clear guidelines or international standards.

 

EuropaBio agrees with the European Parliament on the importance of addressing the potential impact of land-use change. EuropaBio welcomes the decision to require the Commission to carry out a review on indirect impact and bring forward a proposal based on scientific evidence. However we recognize the significant scientific uncertainty in evaluating indirect effects and believe that the current objective of defining a method by 2010 to quantify it seems to be very optimistic. To minimize land-use change, EuropaBio supports an approach to increase productivity and pace biofuels development at a rate consistent with food production together with support for advanced biofuel technologies.

 

"We applaud Europe's policy makers for the work they have done to develop the renewable energy sector. Biofuels are essential to realising a low carbon society and energy security, and for this goal, every solution, including biofuels is important. A coherent policy environment such as the one envisioned in the Climate Action and Renewable Energy Package will provide much needed support to industry's investment and innovation" said Willy De Greef, EuropaBio Secretary General.

 

-ENDS

The leaders also discussed ethanol production, which Obama acknowledged had been "a source of tension between the two countries."

The US slaps a tariff of US$ 0.14 per litre (US$ 0.54 per gallon) on imports of biofuels, a measure that critics say is a protectionist tactic intended to tilt the playing field in favour of US corn producers. Last summer, Brazil threatened to challenge the tariff at the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body (see Bridges Weekly, 4 September 2008, http://ictsd.net/i/news/bridgesweekly/27688/). But no official complaint has been filed.
 
"It's not going to change overnight, but I do think that as we continue to build exchanges of ideas, commerce, trade around the issue of biodiesel, that over time this source of tension can get resolved," Obama said.
 
The US is the world's largest producer of the biofuel, while Brazil is the largest exporter.

It is incredibly short-sighted to not include as a renewable energy resource the millions of acres of dead and dying trees that, with one spark, could go up in wildfires, releasing billions of tons of greenhouse gases.