ENVIRONMENT: Economics Blocks Energy Solutions

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 26 1997 (IPS) - Projects to produce alternatives to fossil fuels to provide energy have been stalled because of the economic logics governing the world today, according to environment officials here.

Brazil’s fuel-alcohol programme is an example of the battle between environmental and economic reasons, being waged within the government itself. To do away with subsidies necessary to keep the alternative fuel competitive would be “an environmental crime,” in the words of Deputy Minister of the Environment, Aspasia Camargo.

Created in 1975 in response to the oil crisis of that decade, the programme allowed 4.5 million motor vehicles to operate on fuel- alcohol, 30 percent of the country’s total. But assembly plants have stopped producing such vehicles.

With national oil production up, and prices stable, the programme’s strategic and economic justification have disappeared. But social reasons are more pressing than ever because the production of fuel-alcohol employs one million workers – not to mention the benefits for the environment, says Camargo..

The failure to face up to the urgent question of energy production has been the great gap in the ecological debate since the 1992 Earth Summit, says former environment minister Jose Goldemberg.

Fossil fuels, especially oil and coal, are non-renewable, and responsible for most of the emissions of gases that give rise to the “greenhouse effect” and resultant global warming, Goldemberg, a physicist, pointed out.

Fossil fuels are the source of 76 percent of all primary energy consumed in the world, and they produce three fourths of the carbon dioxide, the main cause of the greenhouse effect, according to the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change. Humanity’s insatiable hunger for energy also foments nuclear plants, another mortal threat to life on the planet.

Alternatives are sorely needed, says Goldemberg, who mentions wind energy – which covers 10 percent of consumption in Denmark – solar, and biomass – “the oil of poor countries.”

Alcohol produced from sugar cane is a key source of energy generated from biomass, says Swiss-Brazilian engineer Cristiano Richers, because it is more efficient than ethanol from other sources such as corn or beets, due to its low cost and reduced emissions of gases.

With 22 years of experience in its fuel-alcohol programme, Brazil could become a major exporter of the fuel and its technology. A mission visited Brasilia last week to negotiate Brazilian collaboration with a U.S. coalition interested in adding ethanol to gasoline to reduce air pollution.

Alcohol as an alternative fuel, as used in Brazil, is not feasible in the industrialised North because extreme cold impedes ignition. But it would be an ideal additive in environmental terms, says Richers.

The gasoline consumed in Brazil includes an additive of up to 22 percent anhydride alcohol, which absorbs a large part of the sugar cane produced. But to reduce the number of cars that run exclusively on alcohol would be a step backwards, say environmentalists, due to the resultant negative effects on the environment.

If the current trend is maintained, the number of such vehicles will be reduced to 2.5 million by 2005, while cars running on gasoline will soar from today’s 10.5 million to 23 million, meaning a major increase in air pollution, the Brazilian Association of Automotive Engineering forecasts.

The number of cars in other emerging countries like China, India and Indonesia is similarly swelling, meaning in the near future their contribution to the greenhouse effect will approach that of wealthy countries, and they will have to join efforts to cut emissions of gases, Goldemberg predicts.

Alternative sources are still limited in proportion to growing world demand for energy, and thus they have so far failed to affect the energy and environmental “impasse” in global terms, another former environment minister, Paulo Nogueira Neto, told IPS.

Neto’s hopes focus on nuclear fusion, research into which is absorbing millions in investment in a search to make it economically feasible and environmentally sound, without the risks of accident and the waste generated by the current technologies.