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The real threats for biofuels
The constant increase of prices for raw materials like grains and corn, have little or nothing to do with biofuels as many media are trying to make us believe.
The trap of a well organised PR campaign seems to work with some media who have no time or interest in finding the real facts. In Europe, the use of raw materials for biofuels in not even reaching the 5% of all produced, in some countries, like Spain, it’s even less, like 1%. Only by this simple fact, it’s clear that impacts on prices can’t be caused by conversion of raw materials into biofuels. There is simply not enough production to impact. Anyway there are still over 3 million of hectares of good agricultural land in Europe, which are not in use today due to CE regulations. So if there would be a shortage, why not use that land? But there are lobbies that have a great interest in pointing the finger to biofuels as the guilty one.But why do prices really go up then? There is no single course, but a more complex set of reasons, like the increasing demand from Asian and North African countries, production fluctuations due to weather conditions, the increase of intensive poultry and pork breed, increases of transport prices (and that has nothing to do with biofuels but with petrol costs), opportunistic behaviour of agents who see the campaigning and start to stock materials to try and sell at the best prices or the entrance in this business of investment funds, to name just some of the real sources of price increases. But biofuels are today not one of them.
The real threats for development of a solid European biofuels industry are two: First the opportunistic use of information by powerful anti biofuel-lobbies who try to convince European and North American public opinion that biofuels are the bad option. If they succeed to influence public opinion, they might force politicians to change course. The second and real threat for the future of biofuels is its sustainability. Most of the raw materials do not come from Europe, but from developing countries and are mostly still used by the food and feed industry as prime materials for all kind of end products. We are talking about palm oil, soy, and so on. Those developing countries like Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay or Colombia in South America; Thailand, Fhilippines, Malaysia or Indonesia in South East Asia and now also a large number of African countries, all see in biofuels an additional opportunity to kill remaining pockets of poverty or even develop their economies by producing more raw materials for the biofuel industry and even set up own production capacities. But a sustainable environmental and humanitarian behaviour on the way is not always a priority, which leads to mass destruction of rain forest in South America and South East Asia, which on its turn leads to massive destruction of remaining flora and fauna and humanitarian dramas.
Biofuels are indeed a historical opportunity for developing countries but they must understand that on the long run only a sustainable way of developing will be acceptable to the global community and pressure upon them to react will only increase. On the other hand, large industry lobbies in developed countries should reflect on their ‘anti’- campaigning, not only because of the unethical aspects of their behaviour, which I suppose won’t interest them too much as they started this at the first place, but at least because to my opinion after 25 years in PR Business, their own lobby will backfire on them and on a mid term harm their own interests.
Biofuels are here to stay and very much unlike other traditional non renewable energy sources, who made very few people very rich, biofuels give the opportunity to make millions of poor people live a little better. Maybe some lobbyists should remember that.
André Baken
General Manager Sustianable BioFuel Summits & Expos