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by Rene Q. Bas Editor in Chief
The government is now on high
gear in the drive to save on import dollars and create millions of
rural jobs by the production of biofuels.
In 2008 the share of the National
Biofuels Board (NBB) in the P3.6-billion budget of the Department of
Energy (DOE) will be P90 million.
There will also be, in the
Agriculture department budget, a big amount to produce feedstocks
from coconut, corn, sugarcane, cassava and sweet sorghum.
Should the Arroyo administration
be lauded for its resolve to raise Philippine wealth as an ethanol
exporter, a self-sufficient biofuels producer and user and at the
same time a savior of the environment?
Greenhouse gas emissions
Some experts say the
administration’s biofuels push is misplaced. Why? Because the
process of extracting ethanol from sugar derived from corn,
sugarcane, coconut, sorghum or cassava uses up energy. The gas
emissions the process entails are nearly just as bad for the
environment as the use of pure diesel for your car or bus. This is
specially true now that newly developed diesel fuels have become
less polluting.
Also, since our production of
sugarcane, coconut, cassava, sorghum and corn is not enough for the
local demand—for human food and animal feed—we need to invest
billions to have the surplus feedstock.
Without meeting the demands for
food, feed and biofuels, the biofuel thrust of the administration
will cause a food-security problem. If farmers will earn very very
much more planting their land to biofuel crops, they will stop
planting rice and corn.
UK, EU concerns
In late January this year, the
United Kingdom’s Parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee,
although recognizing that “some biofuels are sustainable and can
be used to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from transport,” called
for a “moratorium on biofuels.” It said that the British
government and the European Union “should not have pursued targets
to increase the use of biofuels in the absence of robust
sustainability standards and mechanisms to prevent damaging land use
change.”
The Committee said that
“without these measures some biofuels could lead to environmental
damage in the UK and the destruction of environmentally crucial
rainforests.”
It urged the British government
to “ensure that biofuels policy balances greenhouse gas cuts with
wider environmental impacts so that biofuels contribute to
sustainable emission reductions.”
The report also concluded “that
biofuels are generally an expensive and ineffective way to cut
greenhouse gas emissions when compared to other policies. Emissions
from road transport can be cut cost-effectively, and with lower
environmental risk, by implementing a range of other policies.”
These concerns have already been
aired in the European Union itself. On January 14, 2008, the EU
Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas announced that the EU is
rethinking its biofuel program owing to environmental and social
concerns. He called for new guidelines that must ensure that EU
targets are not damaging to the environment and human beings. The EU
official was particularly concerned about the impact of biofuels on
rising food prices, rainforest destruction, notably from palm oil
production and concern for rich firms driving poor people off their
land to convert it to fuel crops.
American experts agree
American experts, including some
scientists who have come to the Philippines and given talks on the
subject, have expressed the same concerns.
A sign that the Arroyo
administration is somewhat aware of the problem is that the
approaches of the President’s Office and its PNOC-AFC subsidiary
and of the Department of Agriculture differ.
The Palace and PNOC are all for
the promotion of jatropha plantations while the DA will have
biofuels made of corn, cassava, sugarcane and sweet sorghum.
Toxic jatropha
Farmers fear that jatropha—
which they know very well as tuba-tuba—is a poisonous plant that
they use to ward away snakes and other animals. They say that
jatropha leaves the soil it is planted on unusable for other crops,
most especially food crops. Some agricultural scientists agree.
Another concern, albeit
temporary, is that of the local oil companies. They told The Times
that for at least a few years from the minute the Biofuels Act comes
into effect next year, they have to import ethanol. For none of the
new biofuel refining factories that are envisaged by the Arroyo
administration to begin construction this year will come on stream
until two or three years from now. The oil companies will then have
to meet the demand—created by the law—for 70 million liters of
biofuel a year to be blended with their diesel products.
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