Sunita Narain: Biofuel - Good idea, bad practice

DOWN TO EARTH

Now that the grim spectre of climate change has been accepted even by its strongest sceptics, there is a rush to find answers. The latest buzz is to substitute the use of fossil fuel with biofuels "" fuel processed from plants. But unfortunately the way we are going about implementing this "good" idea could mean that we have another unmitigated disaster on our hand.

Climate savvy Europe gave the first push to biofuels when it mandated that 6 per cent of fuels used in vehicles would come from biofuels by 2010 and 10 per cent by 2020. Now President George Bush has called on his country to produce 132 billion litres of biofuels by 2017. It is estimated that ethanol plants will burn up to half of US domestic corn supplies within the coming few years.

The repercussions of this switch are beginning to show. Late last year, Mexico saw tortilla wars, as people found the price of their staple "" corn "" had doubled.

The price hike was a combined result of the crop's new market as vehicle fuel and the corporate control over the crop future. In this case, one company, Archer Daniels Midlands has dominant interests in the corn and wheat market and is the largest ethanol processor in the region. In addition, it has a financial stake in the Mexican company, which makes tortillas and refines wheat. In other words, the company benefits when the price increases and consumers switch from corn to wheat. Or when the switch takes place from food to fuel, they benefit.

Similarly, Cargill, the world's big agribusiness company now is the big name in the biofuel market. The world is beginning to see rising prices of other food commodities as well "" from wheat, soya to palm-oil, which will adversely impact poor consumers.

The problem is compounded by the fact that this "switch" to biofuels will do little to avert climate change. In the US, for instance, it is agreed that if the entire corn crop was used to make ethanol, that fuel would only replace 12 per cent of the current gasoline (petrol) use in the country. Then this conversion is not very efficient simply because making it takes too much energy to produce "" from the diesel to run tractors to the natural gas to make fertilisers to the fuel to run refineries. There is also evidence that rainforests will be cut to expand the cultivation of both soya, sugarcane and palm-oil, which in turn will be devastating for climate change.

But don't get me wrong: I am not against biofuels, only against our current practices.

Firstly, biofuels cannot substitute fossil fuels; but they can make a difference if we begin to limit the consumption of fossil fuels. Governments should not provide subsidies to grow biofuels, but should instead spend money to limit their consumption of fuel.

Secondly, the opportunity for a massive biofuel revolution is not in the rich world's cities to run vehicles""but in the grid-unconnected world of Indian or African villages. It is here that there is a scarcity of energy""electricity to power homes, fuel to cook, to run generator sets to pump water and to fuel vehicles. It is also here that the use of fossil fuels will grow because there is no alternative.

But instead of bringing fossil fuels long distances to feed this market, this part of the world can leapfrog into a new energy future "" move from no fuel to the most advanced fuel in the world. The biofuels can be locally grown to run distributed energy sources "" from diesel generator sets to power stations. The biofuel can come from non-edible tree crops "" as in India, namely jatropha "" and it can be grown on wasteland, which will also provide employment to people. This will be the true win-win solution.

The new generation biofuel business needs a new model of distributed growth in which we have millions of fuel growers and millions of distributors and millions of users. Remember climate change is not a technological fix but a political challenge. Biofuel is one part of that new future. Currently, we are blowing it to shreds.