Brazil's biofuel industry welcomes EU climate change package
(SAO PAULO) - Brazil's sugarcane industry -- the main pillar in the country's biofuel sector -- hailed the European Union plan unveiled Wednesday to cut greenhouse emissions by boosting ethanol use in transport.
The European Commission goal of having 10 percent of transport fuels coming from biomass (crops that can be processed to produce ethanol) by 2020 was "a sensible approach," the Brazilian Sugar Cane Industry Association (UNICA) said in a statement.
It hinted at an export potential for Brazil in the move, saying it especially "welcomes the fact that criteria for sustainability in the EC proposal does not discriminate against imported biofuels."
Brazil is the world leader in biofuel use. More than 80 percent of new cars hitting its roads are "flex" models, meaning they can run on petrol, ethanol, or a mix of the two.
UNICA said 45 percent of fuel in light vehicles in Brazil was ethanol from sugarcane, which allowed the country to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 25.8 million tonnes last year.
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Ethanol and the EU
Dimas has been spooked by the adverse publicity for biofuels arising from the allegation that they compete with food crops and can cause environmental damage. Driving up grain prices is another sin laid at the door of biofuels, an entirely fallacious accusation as rising oil prices and earlier withdrawals of land from grain cultivation have had far greater influence on prices and supply levels worldwide.
It's true that the EU, in order to reach the 10% target, would have to turn over up to 70% of its farmland to biofuel crops given present technology. That's not going to happen, so the EU will have to import bioethanol and biodiesel. Yet both the EU and the US insist on treating ethanol as an agricultural commodity, levying import tariffs, and biodiesel as an industrial commodity, with no tariffs.
This is a nonsense, as bioethanol is produced in a more 'industrial' way than biodiesel, requiring more steps in processing and a more intensive form of refining; but it also discriminates against European biodiesel producers who are not given the same advantage as EU ethanol producers.
That's the elephant in the room that nobody seems to mention at EC level, but no doubt it will eventually end up in another room, a courtroom, to be examined.
The sensible thing to do, before such a point is reached, would be to treat both alike; and as no conceivable European-scale biofuels industry can meet all future demand, the form equal treatment must take is to remove the tariff on ethanol.
In addition, what nobody is pointing out is this: second generation ethanol, now only a few years away if you're an optimist, will NOT compete in any way with food crops. Cellulose biomass, the feedstock, can be grown on marginal and unused land.
More to the point, virgin lands in the CIS, including the contaminated zones around Chernobyl, can be brought into production without displacing any food crops. In the case of the Chernobyl lands, especially in Belarus, grains grown there which cannot be passed into the human or animal food chain can feed ethanol production.
The company I work for, Greenfield Project Management Ltd, plans to start flowing half a billion litres of ethanol from these sources within 18 months to two years. It will not displace food crops and will not drive up grain prices. But in the longer term, we see the Chernobyl lands as a vast source of cellulosic ethanol feedstock — and we see the process of producing ethanol there as a key factor in cleaning up the radioactive contaminants far faster than nature can do it.
With the right kind of crops, technology, safety systems and processing, pure fuel ethanol can be safely produced from the nuclear zone, and the recovery time for the lands cut by up to 90%. We estimate Belarus could produce three to six per cent of the EU's 2020 ethanol requirement, without taking a single square metre of land from food production and at a low cost per litre second only to Brazil's.
Time the authorities in the EC woke up to the potential here: ethanol which demonstrably does NOT compete with food crops, does NOT drive up food prices, and does NOT have adverse effects on the environment; but which DOES provide a vast supply of fuel on Europe's doorstep and which WILL play a major part in bio-cleaning the Chernobyl lands — a problem not solved in the 21 years since the explosion.
Commissioner Dimas, please take note.