Carlo Bakker’s World Mobile Plants. He says his mini refinery, loaded into a 40-foot shipping container on a flatbed truck,
roams South Africa making biodiesel fuel from used cooking oil, or from sunflower seeds or the jatropha shrub, which grows in poor soil with little water. One mobile unit can make 260,000 gallons per year, which sells for the equivalent of US$ 3.79 per gallon, on a par with regular diesel prices.
Governments favoured and encouraged the switch to alternative fuels in recent years to lessen dependence on imported oil. But producers are taking a hard look at the food crops used as raw material for these so-called first-
generation biofuels.
Research departments of Universities, corporate are pouring millions of dollars into finding ways to breakdown woody or grassy biomass for cellulosic ethanol or second generation biofuels that would unshackle ethanol from the volatile food market.
We will see a movement from first to second generation biofuels because the second generation used waste streams. They don’t enter the food-versus-fuel debate.
The U.S Department of Agriculture said biofuel production was responsible for just 3 percent of the global prices increases. It said the real culprits were oil prices which pushed up fertilizer and transportation costs, and the sharp drop in the dollar’s value.
On the other hand, a World Bank report in June calculated that 70-75% of the price rise was due to biofuels and the cascading effect they had on grain stocks, export bans and investor speculation.
Energy policy of European Union last year mandated a 10% biofuel mix in transport fuel by 2020, and the U.S set a production target of 36 billion gallons of ethanol by 2022 compared with 6.5 billion last year, which already consumed almost one quarter of the U.S corn crop.
Biodiesel, the biofuel of choice in Europe, Is made largely from rapeseed grown on disused land. Only 40% of the crushed rapeseed is refined into biodiesel, while rest is processed into the food chain as animal food.
If biofuels were grown on degraded land, that could be a good thing. Even as scientists work on second generation answers, foodstuffs are likely to remain in the fuel chain for years to come because of government subsidies.
Globally, the U.N Food and Agriculture organization estimates governments supported biodiesel and ethanol with upto US $ 12 billion in 2006.
Genetically engineered crops, corn ethanol costs US $ 1 a gallon to make, but cellulosic fuel from stalks leaves and straw costs US$ 5 to US $ 6. It requires the injection of enaymes to convert plant matter into sugar that are then fermented into ethanol.
Michigan State University’s Marian sticklen is one scientist trying to reduce that cost to about US $ 12 a gallon by genetically engineering crops to produce their own enzymes.
The World needs a no food for fuel policy.
November,2008