Spain and Senegal to cooperate on biofuels as way to curb illegal migration
In light of the technology and knowledge transfer accord, the island of Tenerife is committed to establishing a laboratory in Senegal that will develop oil-bearing plants adapted to the region and that can be used for the production of biodiesel. A team of Senegalese scientists and technicians will be invited to study in Tenerife to acquire the skills needed to manage research projects on in vitro plant breeding and to run the lab.
Revitalizing the land
The project is part of the Spanish authorities' program to help the Senegalese government to establish agricultural and livestock projects that can prevent rural populations from migrating. Being labor-intensive, bioenergy projects generate employment and wealth amongst rural communities. This ensures the push-factors leading to migration are tackled at the very source. Biofuels can contribute to relieving two waves typical of this exodus: poverty-driven internal migration from rural areas to the cities, and the poverty encountered there by unskilled workers who then decide to migrate further, to the EU.
Biofuels offer farmers a historic opportunity to strengthen their livelihoods and to revitalize rural economies, whereas jobs in non-farming sectors - in biomass logistics, science, technology and trade - become available as well. Between 70 and 80% of the Senegalese labor population is currently employed in agriculture (map, here). Its reliance on commodities like cotton have pushed millions into poverty, with subsidies and trade barriers in the U.S. and the EU taking much of the blame. Biofuels allow farmers to diversify their crops and to enter a new, global market. Demand for the green fuels is expected to keep growing over the coming decades, and a country like Senegal can tap its comparative advantages: abundant land, labor and suitable agroclimatic conditions for a range of efficient energy crops.
Curbing migration
Tenerife and other Canary islands are part of a major migration route from Africa to Europe. Last year, the Canaries received around 30,000 clandestine migrants from Senegal - itself a major transit hub attracting people from across West-Africa. Each year, thousands of them die making the treacherous trip in the Atlantic.
Both the EU and the president of Senegal, Abdoulaye Wade, have placed the biofuels opportunity within the context of reducing these pressures:
energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: technology transfer :: poverty alleviation :: rural development :: migration :: Spain :: Senegal ::
The country's president is one of the staunchest advocates of utilising biofuels as a way to secure jobs on the continent and thus to reduce emigration flows. Earlier Wade announced the formation of a 'Green OPEC' of sorts, the PANPP (Pays Africains Non Producteurs de Pétrole) (earlier post), while hinting at the potential of a biofuels industry to bring wealth to the rural parts of the country.
Stressting the urgency of a switch to biofuels Wade's administration meanwhile put its money where its mouth is, by launching a first biofuel production plan based on the cultivation of jatropha, of which 250 million seedlings were distributed amongst rural families.
The effort is part of a series of programs aimed at revitalising the farming sector: a large project called 'REVA' (Retour vers l'agriculture), with a segment called 'Retour des Immigrés Vers L'Agriculture' (Return of the Migrants to Agriculture) (previous post). Biofuels play an important role in REVA, and EU Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid Michel has hinted that the EU might put funds into the scheme.
Recently, the new chief of Senegal's Agronomic Research Institute (ISRA) outlined its biofuel strategy, explaining the great chances biofuels offer Senegal. He pointed to developing crops like tabanani (jatropha) and ricin (castor beans), initiatives to restore the environment and bring degraded lands back into culture by drought-tolerant crops like ricin, the acquisition of basic technologies, the development of dedicated policies, knowledge banks and extension services, and the creation of credit lines for farmers.
The role of the ISRA will consist of pursueing tech and knowledge transfers (from, amongst others, Brazil), but especially the education of the vast rural population that will need to acquire the basic skills needed to grow feedstocks. The Brazilian model of the Pro-Biodiesel program - which works with smallholders and is explicitly aimed alleviating poverty - is taken as the example to follow (previous post).
Most recently, Senegal and Brazil signed a biofuel cooperation agreement aimed specifically at strengthening Senegalese human resources in the bioenergy sector and at transferring technologies. Brazil's president Lula stressed his country's willingness to share its world leading biodiesel and ethanol expertise with the countries of the 'Green OPEC': "Under the leadership of Senegal, we want to extend this initiative to other non-oil producing African countries." Lula stressed the initiative is part of a larger South-South strategy on biofuels that will eventually involve NEPAD.
References:
Rewmi - l'Actualité sur le Sénégal: L'Espagne aidera le Sénégal à produire du biocarburant - August 24, 2007.
BBC: Key facts: Africa to Europe migration - July 2, 2007.
Biopact: Senegal and Brazil sign biofuel agreement to make Africa a major supplier - May 17, 2007
Biopact: Senegal's Agronomic Research Institute outlines biofuel strategy - June 13, 2007
Biopact: Senegal in the spotlight: cooperation with Brazil, EU on bioenergy and migration - October 27, 2006
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Saturday, August 25, 2007
Australia's EPA approves largest geosequestration trial, report warns for leakage risks
In its Otway Project in south-western Victoria, CO2CRC will inject up to 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into a deep geological formation, and monitor and verify that the carbon dioxide is securely stored (diagram, click to enlarge).
CO2CRC Chief Executive Dr Peter Cook welcomed the approval, saying it represented an important step forward in demonstrating geological sequestration as a technology that could be used safely to make deep cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere.
Risks
However, an Australian parliamentary inquiry into geosequestration [*.pdf] released this month warned that the most substantial risk associated with geosequestration was the leakage of carbon dioxide from storage sites:
Moreover, it suggests that CO2 storage sites may become potential terrorist targets or that failure of the seal could result in catastrophic release.
Finally, pressure built up by injected CO2 could trigger small seismic events. Other risks identified have to do with 'gradual' leakage, such as contamination of freshwater resources and the gradual degradation of the storage site by the dissolution of minerals by CO2. (On the urgent need for a policy and regulatory framework for CCS, see here).
Carbon-negative bioenergy safest
Some of these risks can be sidestepped when storing carbon dioxide from bioenergy, simply because the spatial logic of selecting sites is entirely different in so-called 'Bio-energy with carbon storage' (BECS) projects. BECS results in the production of radically carbon-negative fuels. It allows sequestration sites to be selected independently of the location of the upstream or the downstream. Bioenergy projects can be brought to the safest, remotest sites, far away from populations and therefor also tap sites that would not be commercially feasible for fossil fuel based projects. This much more flexible site selection logic allows for a great reduction of the risks of seismic events or the destruction of life in case of catastrophic leakage.
Most importantly, by utilizing BECS, leakage of CO2 would add no net CO2 to the atmosphere, because the carbon dioxide is derived from carbon-neutral biomass. For these reasons, the Biopact thinks CCS applied to bioenergy is the safest option to implement the technology (more here and here). Researchers have found that, being the only carbon-negative energy concept, BECS-systems implemented on a large scale can take us back to pre-industrial atmospheric CO2 levels by mid-century.
In any case, even though CCS developments will be driven by the fossil fuels industry, they are important for the bioenergy community which expects them to be applied to biofuels sooner or later.
The project embarked on by CO2CRC to monitor the environment around the injection and storage site and verify the secure storage of the carbon dioxide in a depleted gas reservoir is the most extensive undertaken anywhere in the world, and includes monitoring of the atmosphere, groundwater and subsurface:
energy :: sustainability :: climate change :: carbon dioxide :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: biogas :: carbon capture and storage :: geosequestration :: bioenergy with carbon storage :: Australia ::
CO2CRC anticipates beginning the injection of carbon dioxide at the Otway Project late this year.
EPA Victoria Executive Director Bruce Dawson said the approval required CO2CRC to meet a range of environmental requirements and report on the testing to see whether carbon dioxide would leak into the soil or air.
"EPA believes that this trial is an important part of testing and evaluating the suitability of carbon storage," Mr Dawson said.
CO2CRC collaborates with leading international and national geosequestration experts to conduct worldclass research into CO2 geosequestration. Organisations supporting the CO2CRC include CSIRO, Geoscience Australia and the Universities of Adelaide, Curtin, Melbourne, Monash and NSW; the Alberta Research Council in Canada and the US Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
CO2CRC industry and state core partners are ACARP, Anglo American, BHP Billiton, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, NSW Department of Primary Industries, NZ Resource Consortium, Rio Tinto, Schlumberger, Shell, Foundation for Research Science and Technology (NZ), Solid Energy, Stanwell, the Victorian Department of Primary Industries, Woodside and Xstrata. CO2CRC is supported through the Australian Government’s CRC Programme.
Image: pilot geosequestration project in south-western Victoria. Credit: CO2CRC.
References:
CO2CRC: EPA approval for CO2CRC Otway Project - August 22, 2007.
Australia, House Standing Committee on Science and Innovation, Inquiry into Geosequestration Technology: Between a Rock and a Hard Place the science of geosequestration - August 13, 2007.
Biopact: Pre-combustion CO2 capture from biogas - the way forward? - March 31, 2007
Biopact: Policy and regulatory framework crucial for CCS success - July 29, 2007
Euractiv: 'Carbon-capture trials safest way forward', Laurens Rademakers, Biopact - April 3, 2007.
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posted by Biopact team at 1:54 PM 1 comments links to this post