UNCTAD calls for greater use of biofuels worldwide, sees opportunity in the South

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), has called for wider acceptance and greater use of biofuels world-wide, as a fuel for transport and for power generation, saying that biofuels such as biodiesel, ethanol, biogas and solid biomass offer a promising alternative source of energy with many advantages.

The UN group says that due to increases and fluctuations in global oil prices and growing concern about global warming, policy makers and the public are more interested in finding alternatives to petrol than at any time since the mid-1970s.

Biofuels production is based on agricultural production and therefore many countries can produce them easily. According to the UNCTAD, the importance of energy for development can not be underestimated. Biofuels offer several major benefits:

• reduction of oil import bills, which drain developing countries' treasuries (savings because of biofuels can be invested in poverty alleviation, development, social services and more efficient agriculture)
• better energy security and diversification of energy sources
• diversification of agricultural output allowing farmers to broaden their crop portfolio and break their dependence on single cash crops for which market prices have been low or sometimes even collapse (as has been the case for many crops, like coffee and cocoa - a situation that has resulted many times in mass poverty amongst smallholders)
• accelerated development of rural areas
• increased rural employment, and a curb in unsustainable internal migration from the countryside to the cities
• the possibility to raise export earnings and boost the economy
• mitigating climate change because biofuels are carbon-neutral and in some systems even carbon negative (see Bio-Energy with Carbon Storage)

Focus on the tropics and the subtropics
However, the UNCTAD stated that not all agricultural countries are best suited to produce biofuels. The economic viability of biofuels production depends on crop yields and the efficiency of the processing, it said. Producing ethanol from sugarcane is far more efficient than producing it from corn, both from the economic point of view and for achieving the greatest reduction of GHG emissions. The reason is that there is much more solar energy available for the plants in the tropics than in a temperate climate:
bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: ethanol :: biodiesel :: biogas :: biomass :: energy security :: poverty alleviation :: Africa :: Latin America ::

As stated by Mr. Claude Mandil, head of the International Energy Agency which has been focusing on biofuels for many years, "the corn and wheat methods to produce ethanol are the worst imaginable, because they are only commercially viable with permanent subsidies and trade barriers, and their production requires a large amount of fossil fuels inputs, which is not the case for ethanol produced from sugar cane and other tropical biofuels" (earlier post). Later, the Chief Economist of the IEA too reiterated this message (earlier post).

They are part of a growing number of scientists, economists, development think tanks and international institutions who are calling for a 'biopact' of sorts, in which the industrialised countries open their markets for competitive and sustainable fuels from the developing world (earlier post).

While biofuels production using present processes in developed countries is not economically viable without subsidies and barriers to imports, biofuels production in developing countries (or more specifically in tropical and subtropical countries) offers interesting economic opportunities.

Careful management needed
However, UNCTAD notes there are also some concerns. These relate mainly to environmental issues such as deforestation (clearing virgin forest may be uneconomic and also results in the release of large amounts of carbon), worsening of water scarcity and loss of biodiversity. It is also argued that higher food prices resulting from competition over land between food and energy crops may raise issues of food security.

Proper management of land - Africa has hundreds of millions of hectares of currently unused non-forest land (earlier post and here) - can limit the extension of agricultural land and preserve primary forests. It should be mentioned that there is much more land available for biofuels production in developing countries, particularly Africa, than in developed countries, the UNCTAD added.

The UNCTAD has been quite active on the front of promoting biofuels in the developing world. Last year, it organised a high-level meeting on jatropha in West Africa, which resulted in committments of governments of the region to invest in the crop (earlier post), as well as a

More information:
AllAfrica: Africa: UNCTAD Seeks Focus On Bio-Fuels - May 2, 2007.

Biopact: Analysts see Africa as a potential global leader in biofuel production - November 22, 2006