FAO sets up bio-energy platform

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has set up an international bio-energy platform (IBEP) to provide expertise and advice to governments and private operators to formulate bio-energy policies and strategies.

It will also help them develop the tools to quantify bio-energy resources and implications for sustainable development.

The IBEP, which will draw on the FAO's experience in promoting bio-energy development, will be formally presented at the UN in New York on May 9.

Announcing this, the FAO said in a statement issued in Rome that the trend of shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources was getting firmed up the world over, thanks to soaring oil prices and growing environmental considerations. Over the next 15 to 20 years, biofuels would meet 25 per cent of the world's energy needs.

The oil price of over $ 70 a barrel made bio-energy potentially more competitive.

Consequently, Hungary had formulated plans to turn one million hectares of farmland over to biofuel crops in the next few years. Brazil, the world's biggest producer of bio-ethanol, was way ahead of other countries in this field.

A million Brazilian cars run on fuel made from sugarcane, and most new cars hitting the road there are powered by "flex fuel" engines that run on gasoline or bio-ethanol, or any mix of the two.

A barrel of bio-ethanol was currently half the price of a barrel of oil in Brazil, the statement said, adding biofuel could be made from a variety of crops, including soyabean, oil-palm, sugar beet, and rapeseed.

"And diesel can be produced from virtually any vegetable oil. The world's first diesel engine actually ran on groundnut oil," the FAO pointed out.

In Europe, bio-diesel was now made from rapeseed, soyabean or sunflower seeds. Various countries, such as Germany, Ukraine and others, and many private and public companies, were considering a big move into bio-diesel from these crops and other sources.

But the FAO also cautioned against the competition for land between food and energy production. Besides, large-scale promotion of bio-energy reliant on intensive cash-crop monocultures could see the sector dominated by a few agri-energy giants "� without any significant gains for small farmers.

Moreover, no comprehensive attempt had been made till now to address the complex technical, policy and institutional problems involved in this, the statement added.