Going Hungry for Biofuels

Phil McVan, managing director of Tywyn-based one-stop-shop renewable energy provider, True Energy, takes a look at the biofuel controversy that’s currently raging.

Across the world an alarming food crisis is developing as, increasingly, crops are grown to service biofuels rather than to feed people.

The roll call of countries with hungry - and angry - people increases each day.

There have been riots in Burkina Faso as the government fails to control food prices; seven deaths in Egypt either in fights or from exhaustion as people queue for subsidised bread; in Indonesia, a 10,000 strong crowd protested as the price of soya beans went up yet again; and in India, many poor families are reduced to eating just one meal per day as their paltry incomes fail to keep pace with the inflated prices of staple food products.

Furthermore, the World Food Programme says that around 33 countries in Asia and Africa face political instability as the poorer members of the population cannot afford to feed their families.

And the food crisis has reached such a pitch that the UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon, has called for a review of the global policy on biofuels, as the rising cost of food threatens to cause further instability.

Biofuels have been hailed as providing one of the solutions to the urgent problem of climate change by providing an alternative to fossil fuels.

So what exactly are they? Biofuels are made, at least partly, from biological materials such as plants, and they are being promoted by the US government, the European Union and countries such as Brazil as an environmentally friendly solution to our dependence on fossil fuels such as oil.

In Europe, biodiesel, which is produced from a variety of vegetable oils, is expected to be the most ubiquitous product. Bioethanol, made from grain, already provides more than 35 per cent of the fuel for vehicles in Brazil, and its use is increasing in the USA where President Bush has called for greater use of alternative energy.

However, the benefit of biofuels in environmental as well as moral terms is becoming increasingly doubtful.

Ironically, tropical rainforests are under increasing threat as people, seeing the opportunity for a financial killing, clear the tree cover so that crops for biofuels can be planted.

The rising demand for ethanol, a biofuel mixed with petrol, designed to bring down prices at the pump, has spurred farmers into changing their crops in America’s Midwest.

These days, soya bean crops are out, and farmers are planting huge swathes of corn - but none of it is aimed at feeding people, it’s all destined for the nation’s ethanol producing plants.

Biofuels have garnered some very high profile critics.

Top scientists, among them Professor Bob Watson, the chief scientific adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, have urged caution before rushing to biofuels before their efficacy has been adequately assessed.

And, more emotively, a UN official described massive production of biofuels as a ‘crime against humanity.’

All in all biofuels appear to be a solution that has become part of the problem.

So, where do we go from here? There is no doubt in my mind that we need to act on climate change as a matter of absolute urgency. But not at the expense of other peoples’ essential well-being.

Furthermore, cutting down rainforest in order to grow crops to sustain biofuels has to be an act of lunacy.

The UK’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) requires on transport fuel suppliers to ensure that, by 2010, five per cent of all road fuel is supplied from sustainable, renewable sources.

With a question mark hanging over biofuels’ sustainability, we need to look at a diverse range of renewable energy sources to provide the answers.

Fuel from hydrogen is one possible alternative. Hydrogen is produced as a waste gas from a number of processes, among them the incineration of waste.

BMW has already produced a hydrogen-fuelled car - the BMW Hydrogen 7 is the world’s first production-ready hydrogen vehicle. The company has produced 100 of these cars as loan vehicles for leading figures in politics, business and culture.

Another, probably less attractive option, is to change the way we live, as, indeed, we may be forced to.

Oil prices are at an all-time high. What’s more, it is inevitable that we will reach a ‘peak oil’ situation, a point at which the maximum rate of global oil production is reached, after which it will go into terminal decline.

What is vital is that we apply our undoubted technological prowess into developing truly sustainable and renewable energy sources, ones which do not compromise the poorer members of our global society by denying them the right to eat.

Developing sustainable fuel is perfectly achievable - where there’s a will, and particularly a global political will, there’s a way.