Posted on 04/25/2006 1:23:46 PM PDT by cogitator
ROME, Italy, April 25, 2006 (ENS) - Worldwide momentum is gathering for a major international switch from fossil fuels to renewable bioenergy, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today. The move is driven in part by record high oil prices, as oil jumped to an all-time high above $75 a barrel last week.
“The gradual move away from oil has begun. Over the next 15 to 20 years we may see biofuels providing a full 25 percent of the world’s energy needs,” Alexander Müller, the new assistant director-general for the FAO's Sustainable Development Department, said here.
Factors pushing for such a momentous change in the world energy market include environmental constraints – increased global warming and the Kyoto Protocol’s curbs on emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases – and a growing perception by governments of the risks of dependence on oil.
“Oil at more than 70 dollars a barrel makes bioenergy potentially more competitive,” Müller said. “Also, in the last decade global environmental concerns and energy consumption patterns have built up pressure to introduce more renewable energy into national energy plans and to reduce reliance on fossil fuels.”
His view is shared by a growing number of investors, including Bill Gates, who recently decided to finance a U.S. ethanol company to the tune of US$84 million. Other new entries in the field are a French company better known for making foie gras, and Hungary, which plans to turn one million hectares of farmland over to biofuel crops in the next few years.
FAO’s interest in bioenergy stems from the positive impact that energy crops are expected to have on rural economies and from the opportunity offered countries to diversify their energy sources. “At the very least it could mean a new lease of life for commodities like sugar whose international prices have plummeted,” noted Gustavo Best, FAO’s senior energy coordinator.
U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman, who is in Doha for the 10th International Energy Forum, said that high oil prices are causing great pain to the U.S. and global economies.
"Clearly these very high oil prices cause great dislocations around the world, they are very painful, they are very painful in every quarter of the world. That is certainly true of my country," he told a press conference.
The three-day forum, which officially opened Sunday, has brought ministers and representatives of some 58 countries together in order to foster dialogue between producers and consumers.
What the rest of the world could do tomorrow, Brazil, the world’s biggest producer of bioethanol, is doing now. A million Brazilian cars run on fuel made from sugar cane, and most new cars hitting the road there are powered by flex fuel engines. Introduced three years ago, they use either gasoline or bioethanol, or any mix of the two.
According to senior motor industry executives, the flex engines are spreading faster than any previous innovation in the automobile sector. In Brazil, which started producing biofuel 30 years ago, a barrel of bioethanol is currently half the price of a barrel of oil.
Some 1.5 million farmers are involved in growing sugar cane for fuel in Brazil. And “sun fuel” can be made from a variety of crops including soya, oil-palm, sugar beet, and rapeseed.
Europe lags behind Brazil in bioethanol production and consumption, and European prices are roughly twice Brazilian ones. But the EU has set itself the target of increasing the share of biofuels in transport to eight percent by 2015.
However, if oil prices stay high, things could move even faster. According to studies by the European Union, biofuels grown on available cropland could substitute 13 percent of petroleum-based fuels in the short term.
Diesel can be made from virtually any oil seed. “The world’s first diesel engine actually ran on peanut oil,” noted Best.
Europe is already the world’s largest producer of biodiesel from rapeseed, soya or sunflower seeds, and the sector is growing fast.
Various countries such as Germany, Ukraine and others, and many private and public companies are considering a big move into biodiesel from these crops and other sources.
“The beauty of bioenergy is that production can be tailored to local environments and energy needs,” Best said. “Where there’s land, where there’s farmers, where there’s interest, bioenergy may be the best option. And if we add some sound analysis and good business models, we will get that option right.”
Farmers, particularly in tropical areas, are seeing new opportunities for increasing production and raising their incomes. “But we also need to be careful," Best warned. "We need to plan. Competition for land between food and energy production needs to be converted to positive common benefits.”
One worry is that large-scale promotion of bioenergy relying on intensive cash-crop monocultures could see the sector dominated by a few agri-energy giants – without any real gains for small farmers. But to date no comprehensive attempt has been made to address the complex technical, policy and institutional problems involved, said Best.
In order to fill this gap FAO has set up an International Bioenergy Platform (IBEP), to be officially presented at the United Nations in New York on May 9.
The IBEP will provide expertise and advice for governments and private operators to formulate bioenergy policies and strategies. It will also help them develop the tools to quantify bioenergy resources and implications for sustainable development on a country-by-country basis.
It will further assist in the formulation of national bioenergy programmes, drawing on FAO’s experience in promoting national, regional and global bioenergy development.
“The aim is to help us grow both enough fuel and enough food,” Müller said, “and make sure that everyone benefits in the process.”
Yet again another "organization" for the UN to bilk millions while the media praises them for providing extra income for farmers.
--since I'll be in the middle of corn country for a while in a couple of months, I'll be curious to see how much of it is being used in corn-growing for ethanol --
One Minnesota ethanol guy told me a corn shortage could actually happen by the end of next year.
Let me get this straight. They're saying that market forces could solve the oil problem instead of tyrannical government mandates? There must be some mistake.
--very possible (depending on distillery capacity and midwest weather)--and that is a switch--
Isn't it amazing??
And feedstocks such as switchgrass, but the rub is getting the right bugs to do the bio-fermentation. With the market driving development, creating the right bugs could be accelerated.
Stalks are shredded and put back into the soil to provide nutrients for next years growing season. Using stalks for ethanol will require increasing the amount of fertilizer used.
Thanks for your post. I've been saying we should be using coal for years but I didn't realize how well it's already doing. Coal is definitely the best option because of price and availability.
51% of the US synfuel is produced in Central Appalachia, etc.
Over the next 15 to 20 years we may all live within walking distance of our job in the biofuel cornfields.
All countries of the first world have heavily subsidized, heavily protected farming sectors. In a perfect world they would be phased out but it not being a perfect world no country is going to outsource something as critical as food production.
This is a way to make the farming sector in the first world truly economical.
Yeast eating sugar excretes a carbon dioxide molecule for every alcohol molecule. When the ethanol molecule is burned it produces two more carbon dioxide molecules. Isn't that a problem?
We domesticated yeast thousands of years ago, an early microbial biotechnology advance. Yeast is like a little domesticated farm animal. It has two sexes, 13 million DNA base pairs, 6,275 genes, and shares 23% of its genome with humans. How long before PETA gets upset about bio-ethanol enslavement? :-)
With modern biotechnology skills we should be able to genetically engineer a self-replicating microbe that eats coal and shale still in the ground, excreting a simple gas or liquid hydrocarbon. Sadly we won't invest much in this direction without a life or death incentive. If a world war were to break out there would be $10 billion in research invested in this overnight to fuel our war machine.
Or Coronas
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