Brazil has become a major producer of ethanol, a biofuel that competes with gasoline. Monocultures of sugar cane form a monotonous landscape in the southern state of São Paulo and in the country's central-west region, but they help decarbonize transport in the country. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Oct 22 2025 (IPS)

Quadrupling the production and use of sustainable fuels by 2035 is the goal of a new international initiative to drive energy transition and mitigate the climate crisis, which will be launched during Brazil’s climate summit in November.

The Belem Commitment on Sustainable Fuels, led by Brazil with the support of India, Italy, and Japan, awaits the support of other countries after its official launch during the so-called Climate Summit on November 6 and 7 in Belem, northern Brazil.

The meeting of heads of state and government will this time precede the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30) on climate change, which will be hosted by Belem from November 10 to 21. The unusual separation between the COP and the summit aims to mitigate the accommodation problems of the Amazonian city.

The commitment, nicknamed “Belem 4x,” is based on a report by the International Energy Agency that points to the possibility of quadrupling the volume, adding new alternatives such as green hydrogen, sustainable aviation fuels (SAF), and shipping and synthetic fuels to ethanol and biodiesel.

At COP28, held in 2023 in Dubai, it was agreed to initiate “a transition away from fossil fuels” as an indispensable measure to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In Belem, the goal is to implement that consensual decision.

“Brazil was careful not to limit the initiative to biofuels in order to include various sustainable fuels, an important distinction because there are countries, especially in Europe, that oppose biofuels,” warned Claudio Angelo, international policy coordinator for Climate Observatory, a Brazilian coalition of 133 social organizations.

Objections to biofuels include potential environmental damage, land conflicts, and competition with food production, he said by phone to IPS from Brasilia.

Extensive cattle ranching has degraded 100 million hectares in Brazil. One third of this area can be recovered for the cultivation of sugar cane, corn, and oilseeds to double biofuel production, according to a study by the Institute for Energy and Environment. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Biofuels market

It is an old Brazilian dream to create a large international biofuels market, due to its large ethanol production and its potential to expand it.

Brazil tried, unsuccessfully, to promote this market in the 1990s and early 21^st century, based on the existence of many sugar cane producing countries, the crop with the highest productivity for this biofuel.

Cuba, once the world’s largest sugar exporter, rejected the proposal with the argument of prioritizing food, despite the decline of its sugar industry and its lack of energy, due to its dependence on imported oil, which became scarce after the fall of the Soviet Union, its major supplier, in 1991.

Brazil became the largest sugar exporter in the mid-1990s, two decades after launching its National Alcohol Program to replace part of its gasoline with ethanol.

It sought to mitigate the economic crisis caused by the rising oil prices, which tripled in 1973 and doubled again in 1979. At that time, the country imported about 80% of the crude oil it consumed; today it exports oil and ethanol.

Many countries use ethanol, blended into gasoline, as a way to reduce pollution. In Brazil, the blend already reaches 30%, and pure ethanol is also used as automotive fuel.

But most passenger cars in the country today are “flex,” consuming gasoline or ethanol and blends in any proportion.

In 2023, the Global Biofuels Alliance was born in New Delhi during the annual summit of the Group of 20 (G20) most relevant industrial and emerging economies, in a new attempt to promote its production.

The City Park, under construction in January, in the Amazonian city of Belem, which will host the debates and negotiations among government delegations and the United Nations at COP30, from November 10 to 21. Credit: Rafa Neddermeyer / COP30

Ambitious goal

Now, at COP30, the aim is to expand the attempt to replace fossil fuels with an ambitious goal: to quadruple the current production of alternative fuels within 10 years.

This follows the path charted at COP28, held in Dubai in 2023, where it was agreed to initiate “a transition away from fossil fuels” as an indispensable measure to contain global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. In Belem, the goal is to implement that consensual decision.

Currently, this production, basically of biofuels, reaches 175 billion liters, about two-thirds ethanol and one-third biodiesel. The United States surpasses Brazil as the largest producer.

Brazil produced 36.8 billion liters of ethanol and 9.07 billion liters of biodiesel in 2024. In recent years, production of corn-based ethanol has grown, utilizing the surplus of this grain in the country’s central-west region. Its share is already close to 20% of the total.

A study by the Institute for Energy and Environment (Iema), released on October 9, states that Brazil will be able to double this production by 2050 without deforesting new areas. The utilization of degraded pastureland would be sufficient to achieve the goal.

The country has about 100 million hectares of such pastureland, almost entirely abandoned. This is equivalent to twice the territory of Spain and is set to increase, as Brazil has 238 million cattle, far exceeding its 213 million human inhabitants.

From this total, the cultivation aimed at doubling biofuels could occupy 25 to 30 million hectares. Plenty of land would remain for the expansion of food agriculture, emphasized Felipe Barcellos e Silva, a researcher at Iema and author of the study.

According to his calculations, a portion of the pastureland would be allocated to reforestation for biome restoration and environmental protection areas, another part to the recovery of the pasturelands themselves for more productive cattle ranching.

Between 55 and 60 million hectares would remain for energy and food agriculture, with about half for each.

The area for biofuels would vary depending on the choice for more biodiesel, which requires the cultivation of oilseeds, or more ethanol, in which case expanding the area of sugar cane or corn.

The alternatives comprise six scenarios that combine priorities for different raw materials and the option to produce other fuels, such as SAF and green diesel, which is different from biodiesel.

Soy is another monoculture that occupies vast expanses of land in central-western and southern Brazil. Its oil fuels the biodiesel industry by offering surpluses at a low price, since soybean bran is the most in-demand byproduct for livestock feed. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Persistent alternatives

“Biodiesel has a problem because it is a degradable organic compound,” unstable, while green diesel is a product of the same vegetable oil but subjected to hydrotreatment and has “physicochemical properties similar to mineral diesel,” explained Roberto Kishinami, a physicist and strategic specialist at the non-governmental Institute for Climate and Society.

Green diesel, he assured, fully replaces fossil diesel without damaging vehicles and has the advantage of emitting fewer urban pollutants than biodiesel, such as fine particulate matter, carbon monoxide, and nitrogen oxide.

“The dozens of biodiesel plants (installed in Brazil) will disappear at some point. They were a temporary solution, favored by the soybean oil surplus, when soybean bran had growing demand,” as livestock feed, Kishinami told IPS by phone from São Paulo.

In his assessment, the energy transition and the decarbonization of transport and industry need sustainable fuels, since electrification is not economically viable for all activities. A combination of the two solutions will have to prevail.

The creation of an international market for these fuels, especially biofuels, depends on standardizing norms and patterns worldwide, a difficult task especially given the rigid European demands.

Furthermore, it faces geopolitical issues, such as “the US-China trade war that will dominate the coming decades,” concluded Kishinami.

Biofuel production in Brazil is growing not only through the expansion of crops but also through technological advances and the utilization of waste.

Second-generation ethanol is already being produced from cane straw, and biomethane, which is equivalent to natural gas, is produced through the biodigestion of vinasse generated in ethanol production, noted Silva.

There is also the beginning of cultivation of the macauba palm (Acrocomia aculeata), which has different names in Latin America and has high oil productivity.

Electrification will take time. It is relatively fast for light vehicles but slow for heavy vehicles, whose useful life reaches about 20 years. This is where decarbonization is achieved through biofuels, argued Silva.

“The transition in transport will continue until at least 2050,” after which biofuels will be able to meet other demands, including power generation, he concluded in a telephone interview with IPS from São Paulo.

The commitment to quadruple sustainable fuels is positive, but it cannot in “any way” dominate the energy debate at COP30, warned Angelo.

“The success of COP30 depends on promoting the implementation of a just, orderly, and equitable transition to eliminate fossil fuels, which are the main cause of global warming,” he concluded.

This G20 ministerial meeting, held in Rio de Janeiro on February 28 this year, discussed the global energy transition, with biofuels as a central issue. Credit: Paulo Pinto / Agência Brasil

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Nov 5 2024 (IPS)

Holding this year’s presidency of the Group of 20 (G20) large industrial and emerging economies is allowing Brazil to push forward the dream of creating a global biofuels market without the current trade barriers.

Brazil is trying, at least since the beginning of this century, to free up global trade in ethanol, but so far without success. The scenario is more favourable now, with the worsening of the climate crisis and other countries joining the production and consumption of bioenergy.

Presiding the G20 this year, Brazil is in charge of the issues and projects to be discussed, creating working groups and promoting agreements, which will crystallise at the group’s annual summit to be held on 18-19 November in Rio de Janeiro.“There is a conflict of interests, of split personality. If Brazil wants to lead in biofuels, it must rule out new oil exploration”: Pedro de Camargo Neto.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government has promoted social issues and included biofuels as a central aspect of the energy transition. Several of its proposals were approved in sectoral working groups or meetings of ministers, experts and civil society throughout 2024.

“The current context, driven by Brazil’s more active leadership in the G20 and regulatory progress on alternative fuels, offers a more optimistic outlook for the country’s success in expanding its biofuels market,” summarised Rafaela Guedes, senior fellow at the Brazilian Centre for International Relations (Cebri).

“The focus is no longer limited to ethanol,” she said in an interview with IPS in Rio de Janeiro. New products, such as sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and bio-bunker for maritime transport, open up multiple markets and reduce the risk of dominant suppliers.

These are joined by biodiesel and green diesel, both derived from animal and vegetable inputs but different in their production process and properties, the latter being chemically identical to fossil diesel.

Then there is ethanol, already produced on a large scale, and biomethane, equivalent to natural gas and the product of refining biogas extracted from animal manure, and agricultural, urban and industrial waste.

All these products gained new regulations and incentives in Brazil through the so-called Future Fuels Law, passed by the legislative National Congress in September and effective from 8 October 2024.

The new legislation should attract investment and reduce trade barriers by defining rules and standards in a country that leads biofuel production and presents itself as “a supplier and also a strategic partner for innovation and energy security”, said Guedes, an economist specialising in energy transition.

The biogas and biomethane plant of Cocal, a company that produces ethanol and sugar from sugarcane and biogas, biomethane and other derivatives from waste, in Narandiba, in the southern Brazilian state of São Paulo. Credit: Mario Osava / IPS

Fear of dependence

Ethanol thrived as a free trade fuel partly out of fear of being held hostage by a few producers. Brazil and the US account for around 80% of its global production, with 35.4 billion litres and 58 billion litres respectively in 2023.

Brazil tried to encourage production in countries with high production or potential for increased sugar cane planting, such as India, Cuba and Mexico, in order to lower barriers to international ethanol trade.

In addition to the fear of dependency, environmental and food security concerns remain another stumbling block. It is argued, especially in Europe, that bioenergy takes land away from food production.

That was the claim of Cuba, which until the 1980s was the world’s largest exporter of sugar, but whose sugar cane production subsequently fell to the point where it is now practically limited to supplying the domestic market of 10 million inhabitants, who are suffering from a severe energy crisis.

But now India, previously reluctant, has joined ethanol production, as have other countries, since its consumption, blended with gasoline, has spread to more than 70 countries. Investment in biofuels has increased in order to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“This diversification of producers reduces the possibility of monopolies” and thus the fears of dependency, according to Guedes, who says growth in the production capacity of emerging countries and the consequent expansion of global supply are favourable factors for a freer global market for biofuels.

“India has invested heavily in biofuels in its energy security and emissions reduction strategy. Its policies of using agricultural waste to produce ethanol and biodiesel contribute to increasing its productive capacity, as a potential exporter in the medium term,” she cited as an example.

Other Asian and Latin American countries are using their abundant biomass and organic waste resources to produce bioenergy, biomethane and green diesel, in what represents another model.

Rafaela Guedes, an economist specialized in energy transition, believes conditions are favourable for the creation of an international biofuels market, as Brazil desires. Credit: Cebri

Inputs are waste, not food

Restrictions based on food security were also relaxed because biofuels are largely made from waste, whether agricultural, urban or industrial.

Second-generation (2G) ethanol, made from waste such as bagasse, is another solution. The United States and Brazil have plants producing it, which are set for rapid expansion.

In Brazil, Raizen, a large sugar and bioenergy producer with the participation of the British oil consortium Shell, has been operating its first 2G ethanol plants since 2015 and estimates that this technology can produce 50% more ethanol than a similar area planted with sugarcane.

Guedes also adds that the International Energy Agency has defined sustainable agricultural practices, such as crop-livestock-forest integration, which is expanding in Brazil, traceability in production chains and criteria for defining sustainable energy, which strengthen confidence in biofuels that benefit the climate.

These are policies that promote so-called low-carbon agriculture, preserve soil quality and ensure that Brazil’s agricultural frontiers can expand sustainably and without affecting food security, she said.

Ambiguity

But Brazil’s decision to promote biofuels, even internationally, causes bewilderment according to Pedro de Camargo Neto, a cattle rancher who leads a movement of agribusiness, that of large farmers, that seeks to reconcile his sector with environmentalism, after decades of stubborn antagonism.

President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (center) visited Raizen’s bioenergy park in Guariba, a sugarcane-producing municipality located 340 kilometers from São Paulo in southern Brazil, in May. Credit: Ricardo Stuckert / PR

“There is a conflict of interests, of split personality. If Brazil wants to lead in biofuels, it must rule out new oil exploration,” he told IPS by telephone from Bandeirantes, a municipality in the central-western state of Mato Grosso do Sul, where he has a farm.

He criticizes the intention of Petrobras, the national oil company, to drill near the mouth of the Amazon River in search of oil deposits.

Large oil deposits are believed to exist in the Equatorial Margin in northern Brazil, an extension of the sea basin that already produces oil in Guyana and Suriname.

New and abundant stocks would make oil and gas cheaper, to the detriment of biofuels, argued Camargo, who has previously chaired the Brazilian Rural Society, a key farmers’ group, and held top positions in the agriculture ministry.

“Brazil does not know what it wants,” he said.

This is because it promotes a free and global market for biofuels, for economic and environmental reasons, and at the same time wants to become an oil producer, to the detriment of the climate and its own strategy.

The country currently ranks eighth in the world in oil production, with 4.3 million barrels (each holding 159 litres) per day on average in 2023.

The country should advocate international measures to make fossil fuels more expensive. This would enable a biofuels boom everywhere, with increased investment in a market in which Brazil is already a leader. Europe has already taken steps in this direction, Camargo said.

Oil exploration near the mouth of the Amazon is blocked by demands from the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, which considered Petrobras’ evaluations and guarantees insufficient.

An authorisation or denial of exploratory drilling will be ‘technical’, based on local environmental impacts, according to Environment Minister Marina Silva.

This is a mistake, according to Camargo, who calls for a broader assessment, not because of the local consequences, but due to the global climatic effects, i.e. greenhouse gas emissions, and because of the economic strategy of prioritising biofuels, which also favours the country’s foreign policy.

An Air Force plane brings home Brazilians who managed to escape the war in Gaza as part of a humanitarian operation. Airplanes shorten distances but pollute the atmosphere and aggravate the climate crisis by emitting two percent of greenhouse gases. Sustainable biofuels can mitigate that damage. CREDIT: FAB

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 13 2024 (IPS)

Brazil is counting on biofuels to assert itself as an energy powerhouse in the near future, as a decisive supplier of low-carbon jet fuel, a requirement of the climate crisis.

The electrification of automobiles has tended to curb the strong ethanol and biodiesel agribusiness developed in the country since the 1970s. But demand for sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) now offers the possibility of significant new expansion for many decades to come.

Electrically powered airplanes are not viable with current technology, and will not be for a long time. “Batteries are very heavy and store little energy,” said Arnaldo Walter, a mechanical engineer and professor at the University of Campinas."Brazil has favorable conditions for biofuels, such as available land, good climate and rainfall, although they are now more uncertain than before." -- Arnaldo Walter

Nor is green hydrogen, the fashionable ecological fuel, an alternative for aviation, because of the difficulty of storage and the need for temperatures of more than 250 degrees Celsius below zero to keep it in a usable liquid form. In addition, the entire design of aircraft would have to be changed, a process that could only be achieved in the long term.

Brazil has everything it needs to become a major producer of green hydrogen, which is generated by electrolysis of water, but requires abundant electricity from renewable sources. That is the case in this country, especially in the Northeast region, which has huge potential in wind and solar energy, in addition to ports closer to Europe than those of other competitors.

The solution is biomass-derived fuel, which does not require altering the format of aircraft or their turbines, by naturally replacing aviation kerosene, the use of which generates two percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Climate requirements

“Not just any biofuel will do, it has to meet the requirements for environmental, social and economic sustainability certification,” Walter told IPS by telephone from the southern city of Campinas, with a population of 1.1 million people located 90 kilometers from São Paulo.

Deforestation, for example, is one of Brazil’s Achilles’ heels, given the reports of forests being cleared to grow soybeans, whose oil will probably be one of the main raw materials for SAF. It is not enough to decarbonize the fuel, but also the whole process of its production.

The goal is to meet the target set by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

“SAF is the only economically viable and available alternative, despite its sustainability challenges,” argued Amanda Ohara, a chemical engineer and fuel specialist with the non-governmental Climate and Society Institute, in an interview with IPS in Rio de Janeiro.

Soybean monoculture represents half of agricultural production and is the main Brazilian export. It occupies extensive areas of the Cerrado, the Brazilian savannah, and part of the Amazon rainforest, after extensive deforestation. It can now provide the oil for the production of sustainable aviation fuel, known as SAF. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Soybeans and sugarcane, abundant but disputed

Brazil is the world’s largest soybean producer, with an output of 154 million tons in 2023, about half of which was exported to China. Its oil is the main raw material for biodiesel, which is blended with fossil diesel in this country at a current proportion of 14 percent. Congress is discussing the possibility of raising it to 25 percent in the future.

In addition to its thriving agriculture, based largely on oilseeds and sugarcane, which can supply SAF plants, the country has ample potential for expansion.

“Brazil has favorable conditions for biofuels, such as available land, good climate and rainfall, although they are now more uncertain than before,” said Walter. Tens of millions of hectares of land degraded by extensive cattle ranching in the past can be used to recover production.

In Latin America’s largest country, with 850 million hectares of territory, only 61 million hectares were dedicated to agriculture and 164 million to cattle pastures in 2022, according to MapBiomas, a monitoring platform of a network of organizations focused on climate change.

The government set a goal of recovering 40 million hectares of degraded land in 10 years, almost the same as the area planted with soybeans today: 44.6 million hectares.

Soy already has a well-established market and consumers. Dedicating part of its oil to SAF competes with these uses and will require a large expansion of its cultivation, that is to say, new lands and the risk of deforestation, which together with changes in land use constitute the great source of greenhouse gases in the country.

They represent economic and environmental costs that drive the search for alternatives.

The macauba, a tropical palm tree whose scientific name is Acrocomia aculeata, is attractive because of its high oil productivity and its presence in almost all of Brazil, as well as in other Latin American countries under various names, such as coyol, corojo, grugru or macaw palm.

It has not yet been commercially produced, nor has it been domesticated, making it a long-term, risky bet.

But Acelen, a company controlled by the Mubadala Investment Company of the United Arab Emirates, is promoting a project to grow macauba palm trees on 200,000 hectares of land in northeastern Brazil to produce SAF as of 2026.

To this end, it has an oil refinery in Mataripe, 70 kilometers from Salvador, capital of the northeastern state of Bahia, acquired in 2019 from the state-owned oil company Petrobras.

Ethanol is another alternative raw material, which, like soybean oil, has the advantage of large-scale production, but competes with other uses. In Brazil, sugarcane is the main source of ethanol, whose consumption as a fuel is almost as high as that of gasoline.

In its anhydrous form, it currently accounts for 27 percent of gasoline sold, a mix that is expected to rise to 30 percent or even 35 percent. But ethanol is also used alone, in its hydrated form. In Brazil today, almost all cars have flexible engines, powered by gasoline or ethanol, or by a mixture of any proportion.

A photo of the monotonous landscape of sugarcane in one of the plantations in the interior of the state of São Paulo, which provides almost half of the sugar and ethanol produced in Brazil. The 31 billion liters of ethanol in 2023 could be tripled in 20 years by increasing productivity and monoculture, to provide surpluses for the production of SAF. CREDIT: Mario Osava / IPS

Cane and corn ethanol

Ethanol lags behind vegetable oils in the production of SAF, but will benefit from a production boom expected in the coming years. It will be able to triple its annual production, which totaled 31 billion liters in 2023, without the need to greatly expand the cultivated area, according to industry leaders.

Brazil is already the country that grows the most sugarcane in the world, which allows it to lead the sugar market and occupy second place in ethanol, surpassed only by the United States, where corn is the main source.

Raízen, a joint venture between the British oil transnational Shell and Brazil’s Cosan, is studying the new biofuel, also in partnership with universities, while expanding its ethanol production, of which it is the national leader.

It is a pioneer in second-generation ethanol, extracted from sugarcane bagasse and other cellulose-based waste. This ensures up to 50 percent more ethanol, without the need for more crops. The company has already started up eight plants of this type and expects to have 20 in operation by 2030, despite the fact that they are more expensive than conventional plants.

Sugarcane productivity should also increase in the coming years, according to agronomic researchers, who expect to see production rise twofold mainly due to the planting of new varieties with genetic improvements.

In addition, second-crop corn, generally planted after soybeans in the same area, has allowed an increasing production of ethanol, especially in the midwest region of Brazil. It already represents 17 percent of the national total.

There are other alternatives, such as fossil derivatives but with reduced greenhouse gas emissions, wood from trees that grow faster in tropical countries such as Brazil, animal oils, and even cooking oil.

Each one requires different technologies, with their own costs, maturation times and environmental effects, said Walter. Logistical conditions, dispersion or facilities for collecting raw materials can also determine the most promising alternatives.

“There is no single solution, no silver bullet. We will have to combine various alternatives, depending on the intended or possible scale,” Ohara said. The choice is no longer purely economic, but also responds to the climate emergency, because “gas emissions must be reduced as a matter of urgency,” she added.

The expansion of monocultures will be inevitable in a country like Brazil, which aims to ensure a sustainable supply, but the damage can be mitigated with agroforestry systems, combining oilseeds with other crops, which diversify the vegetation and conserve the soil, proposed the chemist and environmentalist who worked for six years with biofuels in the state-owned Petrobras consortium.

Iêda de Oliveira is the director of Eletra, a pioneer in the production of electric and hybrid buses in Brazil. In July, the company inaugurated a new plant for the production of 1,800 of these buses per year, relying on the expansion of this market in Brazil and Latin America. CREDIT: Courtesy of Eletra

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Aug 19 2022 (IPS)

Brazil celebrated 100,000 electric vehicles in circulation in late July, but this is a drop in the ocean compared to the 46 million combustion vehicles registered in the country and in contrast with the pace of the phasing out of oil in the world’s automotive industry.

The lag is due to several factors, but one is the progress achieved in Brazil by biofuels, especially ethanol, which in its best years, such as 2019, surpassed domestic gasoline consumption.

Much of this consumption is due to the addition of 27 percent ethanol in Brazilian gasoline, a blend that helps reduce urban air pollution. Most of it is provided by fuel made from sugarcane.

Also contributing to the success of biofuels is the “flex car” that has been produced in Brazil since 2003, with engines that consume both fuels in a mixture of any proportion. The consumer chooses gasoline or ethanol according to convenience, generally because of the price difference.

There is a consensus that ethanol makes sense to buy if it costs less than 70 percent of the price of gasoline, because in general its consumption per kilometer driven is 30 percent higher. But some nationalists always choose ethanol, as a genuinely national product.

Thus, the transition to electric vehicles will cost Brazil not only the replacement of the entire fuel production and distribution infrastructure with electricity, but also a probable drastic reduction in its sugarcane industry, which generates one million direct and indirect jobs.

In terms of gas stations alone, for example, Brazil has more than 42,000 distributed throughout its vast territory, the largest in Latin America.

The Brazilian automotive industry, which ranks ninth in the world in terms of production, does not yet produce fully electric vehicles. Its option, for now, are hybrids, which have combustion and electric engines.

In June, of the 4,073 electrified vehicles that joined the national fleet, 73 percent were hybrids – ethanol (44 percent) and gasoline (four percent) – while the so-called plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) accounted for 25 percent and have batteries that are also recharged at specific points.

In the first two cases, the two engines provide propulsion or only the electric one, powered by combustion as electricity generator.

Only two of the 13 assembly plants in Brazil produce hybrids. Fully electric cars, with only batteries charged at plugs, are all imported. They accounted for 27 percent of electrified vehicles registered in Brazil in June.

Adalberto Maluf, president of the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association, fears that the lack of a national electric mobility policy will affect the competitiveness of the Brazilian automotive industry. He decided to resign from his corporate post to run for Congress, for the Green Party. CREDIT: Courtesy of Adalberto Maluf

Brazil’s hesitation

The industrial sector advocates a gradual transition, which would include greater development and use of biofuels and hybrid vehicles, to avoid or at least delay the end of a sector that represents 20 percent of Brazil’s industrial product.

Arguments such as pollution caused by the production and disposal of batteries undermine support for electrification to combat the climate crisis.

Greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation, a negative factor in countries that depend on fossil fuels, especially coal, do not affect electric mobility in Brazil, where renewable sources account for 85 percent of the electricity mix.

Batteries are also a barrier, as is the higher cost of electric vehicles. But technological advances are expected to make them cheaper and Brazil can benefit from domestic production, if the feasibility of a large lithium mine in the state of Minas Gerais is confirmed, as well as advantages due to the abundance of iron, nickel and niobium, other components, in the country.

Brazil’s reluctance is reflected in the lack of an “electromobility policy,” complained the president of the Brazilian Electric Vehicle Association (ABVE), Adalberto Maluf, at a Jul. 29 debate on the subject in São Paulo.

Without public incentive policies, Brazil could lose international competitiveness and get left behind by the global trend, he lamented.

Maluf, who was also director of Marketing, Sustainability and New Businesses at the Chinese company BYD in Brazil, left his corporate position on Aug. 15 to become a candidate for the lower house of Congress in the October elections for the Green Party. He promises to fight to reduce transportation pollution.

Global progress

The world produced 6.6 million new electrified cars in 2021, more than double the previous year and nearly nine percent of total motor vehicle sales, according to the International Energy Agency.

And the global trend is to go to 100 percent electric or battery-powered vehicles (BVE), rather than hybrids.

Meanwhile Brazil only incorporated 20,427 new electric vehicles during the first half of this year, out of a total of 918,000 cars, trucks, buses and commercial vans.

The automotive sector is facing a decline in production in the last two years, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Its peak occurred in 2013 with 3.7 million units produced that year.

The annual total has dropped since then, and has remained below three million since 2015. This year, 2.34 million vehicles with four or more wheels are expected to be produced.

Around the world, the accelerated advance of electrification is confirmed especially in the European Union, which decided to abolish the sale of combustion cars as of 2035. Norway, which is not a member of the EU, set that goal for 2025, viable since these new vehicles reached two-thirds of sales in the country in 2021.

China is also experiencing an electromobility boom, with three million electric vehicles sold last year, or 15 percent of all motor vehicles produced in the country.

In June 2017 the Ministry of Mines and Energy received the first electric vehicle made by Itaipu, the giant hydroelectric power plant shared by Brazil and Paraguay, as an incentive for the electrification of transportation. But little has been done since then for the dissemination of electric vehicles in the country. CREDIT: Marcelo Camargo/Agência Brasil

Buses reduce the lag

The high price of electric cars, the low investment capacity in infrastructure, the technology gap and the small scale of the market, among other factors, prevent developing countries in the South from following the trend of rich or emerging markets such as China.

But the advance of electric buses helps mitigate that disadvantage, at least in Latin America.

Brazil has the advantage of having companies that produce and export these vehicles which play a key role in mobility in large cities, in addition to a huge market. Its bus fleet exceeds 670,000 units nationwide, which will have to be replaced, since only a few hundred are electric, which is facilitated by the fact that many cities have made electromobility the goal of public transportation.

São Paulo, for example, aims to have 2,600 electric buses in service by 2024 and to eliminate all fuel-powered passenger transport by 2030. Around 15,000 buses serve Brazil’s largest city, a metropolis of 20 million people.

Several companies presented their new public transport vehicles at the Latin American Transport Fair (LatBus), held Aug. 9-11 in São Paulo.

This is the case of Marcopolo, the largest bus body manufacturer in Brazil, which exhibited the Attivi, its first 100 percent electric model for Brazilian cities. The company has already exported more than 350 buses to Latin American countries such as Argentina and Colombia, and Asian countries such as India.

Eletra, which considers itself a “national leader in sustainable transportation technology”, also presented its e-Bus buses in different sizes – 12.5 and 15 meters – fully electric buses that can travel 250 kilometers without recharging the batteries.

The company announced the inauguration of a new industrial plant in São Bernardo do Campo – basically the capital of the Brazilian automotive industry near São Paulo – with an annual capacity to produce 1,800 electric and hybrid buses, and with 1,200 employees.

One phase of Colombia's sugarcane agroindustrial production consists of burning bagasse to generate biofuels. In the picture, workers arrange sugarcane waste in a field in the municipality of El Cerrito, in the southwestern department of Valle del Cauca. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
BOGOTA, Mar 17 2022 (IPS)

As a visitor drives across the plains of the department of Valle del Cauca in southwestern Colombia, green carpets dominate the view: sugarcane fields that have been here since the area got its name.

The long tentacles of dirt roads draw the visitor into the thicket of golden-crested flowering green plants, which will be cut to ground level in a few months, the start of an industrial process and the restart of an annual agricultural cycle.

But this crop has left a lasting and damaging imprint on the soils, some of the most fertile in this South American nation of 51.7 million people.

Irene Vélez, an academic at the public University del Valle, said legislative changes and the opening of the market to imported sugar have led to the shift from sweetener to fuel.

“One of the consequences of this process is the expansion of the agricultural frontier to other regions of the country, because the land is cheaper and there is a different system of relations between landowners and the agro-industrial sector,” she told IPS from the Portuguese city of Coimbra, where she is doing post-doctoral studies.

Along with sugar and molasses for industrial consumption, sugarcane also provides ethanol or ethyl alcohol, which by law has been blended since 2005 in a volume of 10 percent per liter of gasoline in Colombia.

Proponents argue that this biofuel helps curb dependence on oil, and improves the octane rating of gasoline by oxygenating, which reduces urban pollution.

But in contrast, a vehicle consumes more blended fuel for the same trip due to its lower calorific value than gasoline and, the higher the mix, the higher the emission of the carcinogens formaldehyde and acetaldehyde and ozone, especially in winter, which cause respiratory problems, according to a 2007 study by researchers at Stanford University in the United States.

Colombia is the world’s 15th largest sugarcane producer, supplying 22.87 million tons of milled sugarcane per year, according to data from 2021, when it fell by a slight three percent compared to the previous year, according to data from the Sugarcane Association (Asocaña), which groups sugarcane producers.

In parallel, the country refined 396 million liters of ethanol in 2021, 0.5 percent less than the previous year. But domestic production does not meet demand, so last year it imported an additional 64 million liters, mostly from the United States, a drop of almost 400 percent compared to a year earlier, according to Asocaña.

Colombia is the third largest ethanol producer in the region, after Brazil and Argentina. This South American nation extracts ethanol from sugarcane and biodiesel from palm oil. The industry enjoys tax exemptions and subsidies, thanks to the Sugar Price Stabilization Fund, which has been in operation since 2000.

The expansion of sugarcane cultivation in Colombia has its epicenter in the Cauca River valley, in the southwest of the country, and has left a trail of water exploitation, reduction of biodiversity and pollution from the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, which is not compensated by the use of part of the crop to produce biofuels. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Problematic expansion

The appearance of ethanol on the energy scene extended the sugarcane frontier in Colombia and fortified the vertical integration of the industry.

In the Cauca River valley, where most of the country’s crop is concentrated, sugarcane covers more than 225,000 hectares, which “is close to the total area available for planting sugarcane” in the region, according to Asocaña.

There are 14 sugar mills operating in the area, which directly cultivate 25 percent of the fields, while buying the rest of the cane from some 2,750 producers. The average size of the 3,300 farms that supply the mills is 63 hectares. In addition, they operate 12 energy cogeneration facilities, powered by sugarcane bagasse.

But that expansion has left social, environmental, economic and cultural impacts on local communities, says the report “The Green Monster. Perspectives and Recommendations from the Black Communities of Northern Cauca, Colombia regarding the Sugar Sector in Colombia”, published in June 2021 by the non-governmental organizations Palenke Alto Cauca-PCN and the UK-based Forest Peoples Programme.

The main impacts include the effects on soil, rivers and groundwater due to the use of pesticides such as glyphosate, soil compaction caused by the intensive use of agricultural machinery, soil erosion, polluting emissions due to the practice of burning sugarcane fields before replanting, deforestation arising from the increase in the area planted, and the monopolization of water sources.

The expansion of large-scale sugarcane plantations in Valle del Cauca has resulted in loss of land, damage to water resources, health problems, displacement and violence.

Carlos Molina, director of the El Hatico nature reserve in the municipality of El Cerrito, in the southwestern Colombian department of Valle del Cauca, stands in the middle of a cut sugarcane field on his farm. He advocates the transition from conventional sugarcane to an organic crop that contributes to the use of biofuels for energy decarbonization. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Seeking more sustainable sugarcane production

Carlos Molina, legal representative and one of the owners of the El Hatico company, said it is possible to reverse the damage caused by sugarcane, as he gestured to the surrounding fields.

“If we don’t restore now, we are going to run out of fuel. If they don’t change things, producers are going to go bankrupt. The solution is to show the alternatives and offer incentives for transformation,” he told IPS during a tour of his farm’s sugarcane crop in the municipality of El Cerrito, in Valle del Cauca.

El Hatico is a 285-hectare farm, of which 110 hectares are used for organic sugarcane production and 76 hectares for 245 grazing dairy cows. Thanks to the farm’s sustainability, it has achieved nature reserve status.

Faced with the loss of income due to soil deterioration, in the early 1990s the owners began a shock therapy program to abandon irrigation, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers and introduce natural fertilizers and other agroecological practices.

“We made an abrupt transition and that cost us 30 percent of our production, then we recovered. Sustainable management and value-added improve yields,” said Molina, who belongs to the eighth generation of sugarcane growers in his family.

For example, a conventional hectare requires about 180 kilograms of nitrogen and 12 billion cubic meters of water per year, while an organic farm needs much less.

The legal framework for biofuels began in Colombia in 2001 with regulations on their use and the creation of incentives for their production, use, marketing and consumption. In 2004, another regulation expanded the conditions to stimulate the production and marketing of biofuels of plant and animal origin to obtain biodiesel.

Thus, the introduction of the blend began in 2005 with the E10 combination, while the production of biodiesel began in 2008, with the addition of five percent of this fuel.

That same year, the National Council for Economic and Social Policy, which brings together seven ministries and the governmental scientific sector, issued guidelines to promote the sustainable production of biofuels in the country, proposing strategies to this end.

As a result, sugarcane refineries for biofuels started up in 2006, six of which operate in Valle del Cauca and one in the central department of Meta.

In 2013, the blend of ethanol per liter of gasoline increased to 10 percent and that of biodiesel to 12 percent.

A sugarcane plantation in the municipality of El Cerrito, in the department of Valle del Cauca, in southwestern Colombia. Cutting, slashing and burning are the three steps of cultivation: cutting the sugarcane, harvesting the crop and setting fire to the residues, a practice that is harmful to the health of the soil and the air. CREDIT: Emilio Godoy/IPS

Pros and cons

The shift of sugarcane towards ethanol production is paradoxical, as the crop causes environmental impacts but the fuel reduces emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2), the gas generated by human activities that is responsible for global warming.

Sugarcane ethanol reduces 74 percent of polluting emissions, compared to corn and canola ethanol – 45 percent and 25 percent, respectively – according to the 2012 study “Life Cycle Assessment of the Biofuels Production Chain in Colombia“, sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank and the national Ministry of Mines and Energy.

By law, ethanol emissions have had limits in the country since 2017. Data from the non-governmental Sugarcane Research Center for six mills indicate that the average in 2016 was 551 kilograms of CO2 per cubic meter of fuel and 558 in 2017.

These results were below the regulatory ceiling of 924 kilograms for 2017 and 889 for the following year. In 2021, the ceiling stood at 780 kilograms.

The sugarcane manufacturing process generates the greatest amount of pollution, with 249 kilos of CO2, followed by planting and harvesting (181 kilos), effluent treatment (89) and transportation to blending centers (39).

Biofuels, part of the NDC

In its 2020 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) update, Colombia pledged to reduce its emissions by 51 percent by 2030, down from 258 million tons of CO2 in 2015, the base year, to 169 million tons, mainly by combating deforestation.

Within this voluntary goal, Colombia pledged that at least 20 percent of its energy mix would be made up of biofuels by that year, subject to financial support from industrialized countries.

The independent Climate Action Tracker calls the NDC “highly insufficient”, as other approaches are needed, especially in energy and transportation. Although transportation accounts for 12 percent of the country’s total emissions, mitigation actions, such as the deployment of electric cars, are insufficient.

The Colombian government projects stable ethanol demand between 2022 and 2025, of about 60,000 barrels per day of the biofuel.

“The agroecological transition could be completed in three years, without any problem,” said Molina.

But Vélez disagreed. “It is associated with an agro-technological package that involves improved seeds that need pesticides, fertilizers and privatized seeds from transnational corporations. There is no point in switching from sugarcane to organic pineapple, for example. If land grabbing continues, we are not generating the necessary transition,” he said.

A view of Explora's biodiesel plant on the outskirts of the city of Rosario, where most of the companies that process soybean oil in Argentina are concentrated. In recent years, biofuels have generated investments of more than three billion dollars in the country, in addition to more than one billion dollars a year in exports, before the collapse in demand caused by the COVID pandemic. CREDIT: Courtesy of Explora

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 30 2021 (IPS)

Argentina, historically an agricultural powerhouse, has become a major producer of biofuels in recent years. However, this South American country is now moving backwards in the use of this oil substitute in transportation, a decision in which economics weighed heavily and environmental concerns have been ignored.

On Jul. 15, with the support of the government of centre-left President Alberto Fernández, Congress passed a new Biofuels Regulatory Framework, which will be in force until 2030.

The new law published on Aug. 4 reduced from 10 to five percent the minimum mandatory blend of soybean oil biodiesel in diesel fuel, and gave the executive branch the option of lowering it to three percent if deemed necessary to cut fuel prices for consumers."To mitigate we need all the available tools. And in this case, perhaps the worst thing is the setback in an area in which the country has gained a great deal of know-how and capacity, making it one of the largest users of renewable energy in transportation worldwide." -- Luciano Caratori

With respect to gasoline, the law maintained the current 12 percent bioethanol – based on corn and sugar cane – blend, but gives the government the option of lowering it to nine percent.

“The mandatory blends of petroleum-derived fuels with biofuels came into effect in 2010 and since then have generated the largest reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in Argentine history, at least until 2019,” energy consultant Luciano Caratori, a researcher at the Torcuato Di Tella Foundation, which focuses on environmental issues, and former undersecretary of energy planning, told IPS.

The expert mentioned 2019 because it was the first year that non-conventional renewable energies – basically wind and solar – represented a significant share of electricity generation in this Southern Cone country of 44.4 million people.

Today, according to official figures, they account for 9.7 percent of the electricity mix, in a country where 87 percent of the primary energy supply is based on fossil fuels: 54 percent natural gas, 31 percent oil, and the rest, coal.

Argentina, Latin America’s third largest economy, is a net exporter of oil, but due to its limited refining capacity it is also a net importer of gasoline and diesel.

Caratori said the reduction in biofuel use is inconsistent with the climate change mitigation commitments Argentina submitted in December 2020, in the update of its Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) under the Paris Agreement.

This country has committed to cutting GHG emissions by more than 20 percent by 2030 from the 2007 peak, and to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

One of the ways to reach these goals, according to the NDC, is to reduce emissions from transportation – a sector that accounted for 33 percent of total energy demand in 2019 – through the use of biofuels and hydrogen and electrification.

The Argentine Senate special public session in which the law reducing the mandatory percentage of biofuels in the blend with petroleum derivatives was approved. Most of the legislators voted remotely, due to COVID pandemic restrictions. CREDIT: Argentine Senate

“There don’t seem to be too many opportunities in Argentina to offset the emissions savings lost from reducing biofuel use, and 2030 is just around the corner,” said Caratori.

“To mitigate we need all the available tools,” he stressed. “And in this case, perhaps the worst thing is the setback in an area in which the country has gained a great deal of know-how and capacity, making it one of the largest users of renewable energy in transportation worldwide.”

In the Senate, the ruling party’s Rubén Uñac, chair of the energy commission, acknowledged that the biofuels industry made possible the creation of “new companies and thousands of jobs” over the last decade, through “more than three billion dollars in investments.” But he said the system was in need of “in-depth reform.”

In the opposition, the chair of the Senate commission on the environment and sustainable development, Senator Gladys González, denounced “fierce lobbying by the oil companies” and argued that the government “says one thing and does another,” because it expresses in public a deep commitment to the fight against climate change that does not translate into action.

A study published in July by Caratori and Jorge Hilbert, an expert with the government’s National Institute of Agricultural Technology (INTA), points out that the current installed biodiesel and bioethanol production capacity could cover between 4.5 and 8.0 percent of Argentina’s international commitment to GHG emissions reduction.

“The decarbonisation opportunity offered by biofuels is considered to be very significant with minimal investment,” the paper underscores.

Pros and cons, depending on who is looking at it

In any case, the real environmental impact of biofuels is disputed. María Marta Di Paola, director of research at the Environment and Natural Resources Foundation (FARN), raised several reservations.

View of a soybean field in the province of Santa Fe, in western Argentina. Biodiesel is made from soybean oil in more than 50 plants near the city of Rosario, located in the south of the province. CREDIT: Confederaciones Rurales de Argentina

“We are concerned that they fuel the expansion of the agricultural frontier, compete with the use of crops for food and rely on agricultural production that is highly dependent on fossil fuels,” she told IPS.

“Consequently, although biofuels are presented as an alternative for the energy transition, it is very difficult to quantify their real contribution to the fight against climate change,” said the expert from FARN, one of the country’s most respected environmental institutions.

“In any case, the decision made by the government and Congress had to do with other issues, which clearly demonstrates that the priority given in Argentina to environmental debates is very low,” Di Paola asserted.

At any rate, the industry dismisses the misgivings that are raised.

“Less than five percent of Argentina’s arable land is involved in biofuel production,” Claudio Molina, executive director of the Argentine Biofuels and Hydrogen Association, which has been promoting biofuel production for 15 years, told IPS. “Only three percent of the total corn harvest is used to make bioethanol.”

In Argentina, biodiesel, produced by national and international private capital, received its first big boost through exports, which between 2012 and 2019 generated more than one billion dollars a year, according to official data.

However, the drop in demand due to the COVID-19 pandemic led to a sharp decline in 2020, when exports dropped to 468 million dollars.

The main market is the European Union, since the United States slapped high tariffs on Argentina’s biodiesel in 2017 to protect its soybean producers.

The pandemic’s impact on demand and a rise in the price of biodiesel put pressure on the government and left it with two alternatives that it wants to avoid: authorise an increase in consumer fuel prices or reduce the profit margin of the oil companies, especially the state-owned YPF.

This is included in the text of the new law, which states that the government reserves the right to further reduce the percentage of biofuels in the fuel blends when an increase in the prices of biodiesel or bioethanol inputs “could distort the price of fossil fuels at the pump.”

Axel Boerr is vice-president of Explora, a company with the capacity to produce 120,000 tons of biodiesel per year at its plant on the outskirts of the city of Rosario, an area he describes as “Argentina’s Kuwait”, due to the number of factories that generate energy from oil from the soybean fields that abound in the area.

In an interview with IPS, Boerr said biofuels were a way to add value to agricultural production and help Latin American countries become more than just exporters of primary products.

“In addition, this will aggravate our external dependence, because Argentina is an importer of gasoline and diesel and will have to buy more and more, since it has no more oil refining capacity,” he predicted.

The political negotiations ensured that the current six percent blend would remain in place for sugarcane bioethanol. This secured votes in Congress from legislators from the northwest provinces, which are sugarcane producers.

A possible reduction from six to three percent was left open in the case of corn bioethanol.

“We don’t believe in the argument that we have to take care of consumer fuel prices, because what determines them is oil, not biofuels,” Patrick Adam, executive director of the Corn Bioethanol Chamber, told IPS.

“Today we are working at 70 percent of our capacity and with these changes, which represent a step backwards in terms of the climate, we would drop to 40 percent. We were ready to grow and this law caught us off guard,” he concluded.

Ecuadorian Environment Minister Tarsicio Granizo speaks during an interview with IPS in his office in Quito. Credit: Nina Zambrano/IPS

By Ela Zambrano
QUITO, Jul 20 2018 (IPS)

Ecuador has decided to move towards a bioeconomy-based development model, “which must be sustainable,” because otherwise “the remedy could be worse than the disease,” said the country’s Environment Minister Tarsicio Granizo, who is spearheading this innovative approach.

In this interview with IPS, Granizo explained that the proposal represents a response to an extractivist model which cannot be followed forever. His ministry is working hand in hand with other ministries, productive sectors and the governments of the 24 provinces of this South American country of 17.7 million people.

Ecuador is a megadiverse country, but it is also rich in minerals and fossil fuels. The current model of development is based on its underground riches, but now the aim is to move towards a post-extractivist model, focused on the sustainable use of the country’s biological resources.

As a first step, the government is drawing up an inter-ministerial environmental agenda with the support of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) to identify the administration’s current environmental actions, in order to design a new cross-cutting strategy.

The minister pointed out that it is not yet possible to talk about a “transition” or timeframes because “the new forms of economy are just being thought out.” But he stressed that “the concept of the bioeconomy at the state level is already in place.”

IPS: You’re leading what’s called a transition from extractivism and fossil fuels to the bioeconomy. Why?

TARSICIO GRANIZO: The bioeconomy is one of the many ways forward for this country which has an economy based on oil and minerals extraction. There may be other ways out, but let’s remember that we are a megadiverse country and that we have to make sustainable use of our megadiversity, with the highest technology.

IPS: What is the future for mining and oil in this model?

TG: We are talking about a long-term transition, whether we like it or not we have to continue exploiting oil and mining, we still have important resources in both sectors that support the country.

IPS: With a time limit for the exploitation of fossil fuels due to climate change…

TG: There is a deadline for oil exploitation; and, mining will always be there, but it must be organised. We cannot yet say that we are in a process of transition, we have just started thinking about these new forms of economy that will allow Ecuador to leave behind extractivism one day.Of course, not everything bio is necessarily sustainable, because I can replace oil with another product and run out of that product. The sustainable bioeconomy is based on that: the sustainable use of biological resources, and that includes a circular economy in waste management.

IPS: But can you put a timeframe on the goal of implementing the bioeconomy?

TG: We cannot… How long will fossil fuels last?

IPS: Experts say Ecuador’s fossil fuels could run out in 20 years, including officials from your ministry…

TG: Maybe 20 years, but in mining, we’ll have to see how things go for us. Mining revenues have to be greater than the environmental liabilities. In this respect, we cannot yet set timeframes.

IPS: What is the bioeconomy model you envision for Ecuador?

TG: We are thinking of sustainable bioeconomy as a model for which several elements are necessary: conservation, innovation, investment, and markets.

IPS: What comes first?

TG: Conservation. Ecuador’s soil is already conserved, through protected areas, protective forests that cover 30 percent of the national territory. Innovation is where we are most concerned, where we still have a long way to go.

IPS: How is the sustainable use of megadiversity included?

TG: Of course, not everything bio is necessarily sustainable, because I can replace oil with another product and run out of that product. The sustainable bioeconomy is based on that: the sustainable use of biological resources, and that includes a circular economy in waste management.

IPS: You stress the need to move towards a circular economy, one based on produce-consume-recycle rather than produce-consume-throw away…

TG: The circular economy is a part of the bioeconomy, for example waste can be a good business and an alternative for those already working as waste pickers. We see examples in many parts of the world where waste management is an option. What arrives at the treatment centres is minimal, everything stays in the factories. Little by little we have to make progress towards that.

IPS: They say the bioeconomy will favour the development of the most vulnerable segments of society. Is that true? Why and how?

TG: Of course, for example, it is the poor who rummage through and separate the garbage. We need to help them out of poverty and help them become small-scale entrepreneurs and have a better quality of life. We have identified about 500 bio-enterprises; the thing is that most of them are small-scale or pilot projects. We work mainly with the Popular and Solidarity Economy (an economic organisation institutionalised in 2011 in the country, whose members, individuals or groups, are based on cooperation and solidarity).

IPS: Is there an example that serves as a letter of introduction to what Ecuador already does in bio-economics?

TG: There are projects with guadua bamboo cane to make furniture and laminates. This is a fast-growing, abundant resource in the coastal and Amazon regions, which resprouts easily. It is also very interesting what is happening with vicuña wool in (the province of) Chimborazo. Vicuña wool fetches a very high price on the international market. In this country, Chimborazo is the only place where vicuñas (a South American camelid) are found, and that is why we are in the process of teaching local communities how to shear vicuñas, and to treat and use their wool so that it has added value.

IPS: How much does the bioeconomy currently represent in Ecuador, and what share of the country’s GDP is it expected to represent?

TG: Currently the bioeconomy represents about 10 percent of the industrial GDP, and we plan to double that in the coming years.

IPS: In how long?

TG: We are taking a series of measures, we have created the country’s Bioeconomy Network and the 2015-2030 Biodiversity Strategy, we have created an entity with the Private Technical University of Loja to promote bioeconomic initiatives. We are launching the brand BioEcuador.

IPS: Have you encountered resistance in the economic and productive sectors?

TG: Fortunately, the ministries of production, mining and hydrocarbons, and foreign trade are very well aligned. We have managed to position the bioeconomy as a state commitment also in the productive sectors. We have also talked with the banks to establish soft credit lines with certain benefits to promote the bioeconomy in aspects such as nutraceuticals (‘nutrition’ and ‘pharmaceutical’ – natural foods that provide medical or health benefits). The concept of bioeconomy is already positioned at the state level.

IPS: What are the strategies?

TG: To use the rich biodiversity that we have in order to provide economic alternatives for the country. In the bioeconomy we do not rule out the improvement of monocultures, for example we have selected five sectors to work in: oil palm farming, shrimp, flowers, cattle and bananas. We want to reach an agreement with these producers so that they do not expand their agricultural frontier, but improve their productivity within their current range. That’s one aspect.

IPS: Since the bioeconomy is a long-term project, how can we ensure that future governments maintain this direction and do not change it?

TG: As soon as producers see that the bioeconomy is a real alternative, it will not matter which government is in power.

IPS: Is this being established at a legislative and policy level?

TG: It is included in the Organic Environmental Code and above all in the 2017-2021 National Development Plan. We are working on the development of public policies.

IPS: Environmentalists criticise aspects of the bioeconomy, such as the use of biofuels based on monocultures. What is your view on this?

TG: Biofuels have their pros and cons. The problem is that land that should be aimed at guaranteeing food sovereignty is allocated to meet transport needs.

IPS: So you don’t rule out biofuels?

TG: No. I always say that everything can be done in Ecuador as long as it is done where it should be done and is done properly.

IPS: Are there other countries in Latin America looking towards the bioeconomy?

TG: There was a bioeconomics summit in Germany (in Berlin in April), attended by some Latin American countries. Several are in our line of sustainable bioeconomy. Others see the bioeconomy as the improvement of their monocultures. We don’t rule out that possibility either.

IPS: So, Ecuador is betting on different formulas, not only on the bioeconomy?

TG: Of course, we can think about the sale of services; in providing banking services to other countries; and, the sustainable bioeconomy. We have to look for alternatives for post-extractivism.

IPS: So the bioeconomy is one path, although a privileged one…

TG: Yes, but sustainable, it must be sustainable, otherwise the remedy could be worse than the disease.

Excerpt:

A view of Enresa, one of Argentina’s biodiesel plants. The country's biofuel production capacity is four million tons, but more than half is idle, due to a lack of external markets and limitations in domestic consumption. Credit: Courtesy of CEPREB

By Daniel Gutman
BUENOS AIRES, Oct 18 2017 (IPS)

The Argentine biodiesel industry, which in the last 10 years has become one of the most powerful in the world, has an uncertain future, faced with protectionist measures in the United States and Europe and doubts in the international scenario about the environmental impact of these fuels based on agricultural products.

In August, the U.S. government blocked in practice the import of Argentine biodiesel, which is made exclusively from soybeans, by imposing high import duties, arguing dumping, or unfair competition with local soybean producers.

One month later, Argentina recovered, at least partially, from the economic effect of this measure, when the European Union (EU) complied with a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling and lowered – although they did not eliminate – the anti-dumping tariffs they had imposed on the product in 2013.

"The emissions avoided by the substitution of oil could be less than those generated to transport soybeans, which in Argentina is done by truck. In addition, soy accounts for more than half of all deforestation in recent years." -- Hernán Giardini
“We are convinced that there is protectionism hidden behind false arguments. The decision by the Donald Trump administration not only affects consumers in the U.S., where fuel prices are already on the rise, but also delays the replacement of oil,” said Gustavo Idígoras, international relations consultant for the Argentine Chamber of Biofuels.

In his view, “the lowering of tariffs in the EU allows us to recover a commercial opportunity that had been closed arbitrarily, but it will not replace the U.S. market.”

The EU had heavily invested in biofuels until 2012, but began to reduce its use since 2015, when it considered that devoting agricultural raw materials to transport fueled deforestation and accelerated climate change.

This reasoning was disputed in his dialogue with IPS by Idígoras, who was a commercial attaché for Argentina before the EU in Brussels between 2004 and 2009.

“The use of biodiesel generates 70 percent savings in emissions of greenhouse gases, as international studies show, and is a fundamental tool in the fight against global warming,” he argued.

Argentina, a major soy producer since the commercialisation of the first transgenic seeds from biotech giant Monsanto was authorised in the 1990s, began to develop its biodiesel industry in 2007.

That year, a law to promote biofuels came into force, requiring a certain proportion to be included in petroleum-based fuels sold in the country.

“Today the country has an installed capacity to produce 4.4 million tons per year of biodiesel, 70 percent of which is produced by 10 transnational corporations.

“This country is the third largest producer of soybean oil biodiesel, after the United States and Brazil, but it is the leading exporter of biofuels, taking all raw materials into account,” explained Julio Calzada, director of Economic Studies at the Rosario Stock Exchange (BCR).

Most of the biodiesel-producing plants are near the central city of Rosario, where soy exports are shipped out from its river port to the Atlantic Ocean.

However, more than half of the national production capacity is currently idle.

The domestic market consumes 1.2 million tons, due to the obligation to incorporate 10 percent of biofuel into diesel.

Although the industry is pressing the government of Mauricio Macri to increase the proportion, automotive companies are lobbying in the opposite direction, arguing that it could affect the performance of the engines.

The country also produces ethanol, from maize and sugarcane, but in an amount that only covers domestic use. In 2016, according to official data, it produced 815 million litres, destined almost entirely to be mixed with fuel sold in the country, which according to the 2007 law should include 12 percent biofuel.

In 2016, Argentine exports of biodiesel amounted to 1.6 million tons which generated 1.175 billion dollars, according to data from the BCR.

However, more than 90 percent of that was exported to the United States, which in August brought purchases to a halt when it slapped an average tariff of 57 percent on Argentine biodiesel.

The reason given was that Argentina’s production of biodiesel is locally subsidised, since its exports are not taxed, unlike soybeans and soybean oil which do pay export taxes amounting to 30 and 27 percent of their value, respectively.

The decision left the Argentine government in a particularly uncomfortable position, because it was adopted only a few days after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was given a friendly reception in Buenos Aires, where he praised the economic reforms carried out by President Mauricio Macri, in power since December 2015.

The Argentine Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. decision in an Aug. 24 statement, saying that biodiesel “derives its success (in the U.S. market) from the recognised competitiveness of the soybean production chain in our country” and announced negotiations to try to reverse the Washington measure.

However, not only have they not been successful so far, but reportedly, in the near future the United States could raise import duties on Argentine biodiesel, due to the alleged unfair competition.

The EU also accused Argentina of dumping – selling at a lower price than normal – when it imposed a 24 percent tariff on Argentine biodiesel in 2013 – a rate that had been miscalculated, according to the WTO’s March 2016 ruling, which the EU complied with last month.

However, it is not only economic issues but also environmental ones that cast a shadow of uncertainty on the future of Argentine biodiesel.

“Beyond the fact that using crops for fuel goes against food uses, Argentine biodiesel is not green at all,” said Hernán Giardini, coordinator of the Greenpeace Argentina Forests campaign.

“The emissions avoided by the substitution of oil could be less than those generated to transport soybeans, which in Argentina is done by truck. In addition, soy accounts for more than half of all deforestation in recent years,” he told IPS.

On the other hand, Jorge Hilbert, an international consultant at the National Institute of Agricultural Technology, said that the environmental criticism against Argentine biodiesel actually arise from economic and political interests.

“Argentine biofuels are meeting the goals of emission reduction agreed at a global level, given the characteristics of our agricultural system,” he told IPS.

Hilbert claimed that “80 percent of the grains used are grown in the Rosario area, in soils with more than 100 years of agriculture, where there are no problems of deforestation or biodiversity.”

“The oil used for biodiesel is a byproduct of the soybean that Argentina produces in such quantity that there is no market for it. Its use in biofuel does not compete with food use,” he argued.

For Daniel Lema, an economist who specialises in agriculture, “U.S. and European producers are affected by Argentine biodiesel, and the problem is that our tax scheme gives them an argument for applying protectionist measures.

“Argentina should unify its taxes on all by-products of soy in order to not lose markets,” he told IPS.

Lema warned about another source of uncertainty with regard to biofuel. “Biodiesel faces another obstacle: it is more expensive than diesel derived from petroleum, and for the time being consumers have shown no signs of being willing to pay more in exchange for reducing emissions of polluting gases,” he said.

By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
ROME, Dec 3 2015 (IPS)

Investing in a low carbon infrastructure, particularly renewable energy, is key to addressing climate change. The really big investment challenges are in the developing world where access to modern energy services is far below what is needed to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals; indeed, almost two billion people still lack access to electricity.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram. Credit: FAO

Raising income levels in poorer countries will require closing these massive energy gaps. The big challenge is to do this cleanly.

The threshold for energy sufficiency can be established at around 100kwh per capita per day. Up to this level, there is a very strong correlation between increased energy consumption and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. At current prices, between 10 and 20 dollars per day are needed to buy the requisite energy services. But spending 10 dollars per day on energy services would exhaust the average incomes of even middle income countries such as Angola, Ecuador and Macedonia. This takes the challenge well beyond the ‘bottom billion’ or less living below the World Bank’s recently revised $1.90 per capita per day poverty line.

Today, coal and some large hydroelectric dams are the only sources that generate energy at sufficiently low cost. Consequently, while the only way to achieve sustainable development in the face of accelerating climate change is with an energy infrastructure built around renewable energy (of which the most significant are probably solar power, wind and biofuels) as well as carbon capture and storage, these are currently still unaffordable options. Without subsidies, modern energy would remain beyond the reach of poor families and communities for generations to come.

Currently much touted market-based solutions run the risk, particularly if insufficiently regulated, of actually working against sustainable development objectives because they seek to raise energy prices to make renewable energy more attractive to private investors. Instead, what is needed is a strategy that will significantly reduce the cost of renewable energy services.

The most promising option is a massive public investment push, coupled with appropriate subsidies to offset high initial prices in the short term. If targeted at the most promising technology options (e.g., solar and wind), such a strategy would trigger an early cost write down through innovation and scale economies, giving the private sector clear and credible signals, and encouraging energy efficiency.

The main constraint to such a big push is access to predictable and affordable finance, particularly where domestic markets are small. As their carbon-fueled economic prosperity has brought us to the brink of climate catastrophe, the onus is on rich country governments to fund the big push into clean energy sources in the developing world. So far, they have not risen to the challenge; despite commitments made at Kyoto, before Copenhagen in 2009 and elsewhere since, the resources for climate change adaptation and mitigation in developing countries remain paltry.

Supporting a big push into clean energy services in the developing world will, almost certainly, exceed the Marshall Plan which committed one per cent of US annual GDP to finance European reconstruction after World War Two, equivalent to well over 150 billion dollars today. This time, the onus should not fall on one country alone, and a broader mix of additional financing sources will be needed to fund the required public investment programmes in energy efficiency, renewables and forest management.

A range of financing instruments is now on the table, from green bonds to international taxes on financial transactions and air travel. But scaling-up multilateral support will require an overhaul of international finance, particularly when the energy challenge facing developing countries is combined with the need for adaptation investments to limit the growing damage they face due to rising global temperatures.

Establishing a viable new ‘framework for climate finance’ remains a pressing challenge despite the establishment of the Climate Fund at the Durban Conference of Parties (CoP). The scale of the challenge to avoid catastrophic climate change means that addressing it cannot be delayed and short-changed anymore, as it has been so far. It will be key to restoring trust to ensure that the deal to be struck in Paris later this year will take us closer to sustainable development and climate justice.

(End)

Excerpt:

Driven by solar and wind, world investments in renewable energy leapt in 2014. Photo credit: Jürgen from Sandesneben, Germany/Licensed under CC BY 2.0

By Sean Buchanan
ROME, Mar 31 2015 (IPS)

Driven by solar and wind, world investments in renewable energy reversed a two-year dip last year, brushing aside the challenge from sharply lower oil prices and registering a 17 percent leap over the previous year to stand at 270 billion dollars.

These investments helped see an additional 103Gw of generating capacity – roughly that of all U.S. nuclear plants combined –around the world, making 2014 the best year ever for newly-installed capacity, according to the 9th annual “Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investments” report from the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP) released Mar. 31.

Prepared by the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, the report says that a continuing sharp decline in technology costs – particularly in solar but also in wind – means that every dollar invested in renewable energy bought significantly more generating capacity in 2014."Climate-friendly energy technologies are now an indispensable component of the global energy mix and their importance will only increase as markets mature, technology prices continue to fall and the need to rein in carbon emissions becomes ever more urgent" – Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP

In what was called “a year of eye-catching steps forward for renewable energy”, the report notes that wind, solar, biomass and waste-to-power, geothermal, small hydro and marine power contributed an estimated 9.1 percent of world electricity generation in 2014, up from 8.5 percent in 2013.

This, says the report, means that the world’s electricity systems emitted 1.3 gigatonnes of CO2 – roughly twice the emissions of the world’s airline industry – less than it would have if that 9.1 percent had been produced by the same fossil-dominated mix generating the other 90.9 percent of world power.

“Once again in 2014, renewables made up nearly half of the net power capacity added worldwide,” said Achim Steiner, Executive Director of UNEP. “These climate-friendly energy technologies are now an indispensable component of the global energy mix and their importance will only increase as markets mature, technology prices continue to fall and the need to rein in carbon emissions becomes ever more urgent.”

China saw by far the biggest renewable energy investments last year – a record 83.3 billion dollars, up 39 percent from 2013. The United States was second at 38.3 billion dollars, up seven percent on the year (although below its all-time high reached in 2011). Third came Japan at 35.7 billion dollars, 10 percent higher than in 2013 and its biggest total ever.

According to the report, a prominent feature of 2014 was the rapid expansion of renewables into new markets in developing countries, where investments jumped 36 percent to 131.3 billion dollars. China with 83.3 billion, Brazil (7.6 billion), India (7.4 billion) and South Africa (5.5 billion) were all in the top 10 investing countries, while more than one billion dollars was invested in Indonesia, Chile, Mexico, Kenya and Turkey.

Although 2014 was said to be a turnaround year for renewables after two years of shrinkage, multiple challenges remain in the form of policy uncertainty, structural issues in the electricity system and even the very nature of wind and solar generation which are dependent on breeze and sunlight.

Another challenge, says the report, is the impact of the more than 50 percent collapse in oil prices in the second half of last year.  However, according to Udo Steffens, President of the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, the price of oil is only likely to dampen investor confidence in parts of the sector, such as solar in oil-exporting countries and biofuels in most parts of the world.

“Oil and renewables do not directly compete for power investment dollars,” said Steffens. “Wind and solar sectors should be able to carry on flourishing, particularly if they continue to cut costs per MWh. Their long-term story is just more convincing.”

Of greater concern is the erosion of investor confidence caused by increasing uncertainty surrounding government support policies for renewables.

“Europe was the first mover in clean energy, but it is still in a process of restructuring those early support mechanisms,” according to Michael Liebreich, Chairman of the Advisory Board for Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “In the United Kingdom and Germany we are seeing a move away from feed-in tariffs and green certificates, towards reverse auctions and subsidy caps, aimed at capping the cost of the transition to consumers.

“Southern Europe is still almost a no-go area for investors because of retroactive policy changes, most recently those affecting solar farms in Italy. In the United States there is uncertainty over the future of the Production Tax Credit for wind, but costs are now so low that the sector is more insulated than in the past. Meanwhile the rooftop solar sector is becoming unstoppable.”

A media release announcing publication of the UNEP report said that if the positive investment trends of 2014 are to continue, “it is increasingly clear that major electricity market reforms will be needed of the sort that Germany is now attempting with its Energiewende [energy transition].”

The structural challenges to be overcome are not simple,” it added, “but are of the sort that have only arisen because of the very success of renewables and their over two trillion dollars of investment mobilised since 2004.”

Edited by Phil Harris    

Food price rises as far back as 2008 are believed to be the partial culprits behind the instability plaguing Arab countries and they have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations.

Between 2007 and 2008, rises in food prices caused protest movements in Egypt and Morocco. “This has become an important concern for countries in the Arab region which want to meet the growing demands of their populations,” notes Devlin Kuyek, a researcher at GRAIN, a non-profit organisation supporting small farmers and social movements in their struggles for community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems.Arab countries ... have become increasingly aware of the importance of securing food needs through an international strategy of land grabs which are often detrimental to local populations

Arab countries, which appear to have started losing confidence in normal food supply chains, are now relying on acquisitions of farmland around the world. Globally, land deals by foreign countries were estimated at about 80 million ha in 2011, according to figures provided by the World Bank.

The 2008 international food price crisis caused alarm among policy-makers and the public in general about the vulnerability of Arab countries to potential future food supply shocks (such as, for example, in the event of closure of the Straits of Hormuz) as well as the perceived continued sharp increase in international food prices in the long term, explains Sarwat Hussain, Senior Communications Officer at the World Bank.

Increasing food prices are caused by entrenched trends that include population growth combined with high urbanisation rates, depleting freshwater sources, increased demand for raw commodities and biofuels, as well as speculation over farmland.

To face such threats, Arab countries have worked on buying or leasing farm land in foreign countries. “Investment in land often takes the form of long-term leases, as opposed to outright purchases, of land. These leases often range between 25 and 99 years,” says Hussain.

Currently, the United Arab Emirates accounts for around 12 percent of all land deals, followed by Egypt (6 percent) and Saudi Arabia (4 percent), according to GRAIN.

“It is however very difficult to estimate the total value of land grabbed today because most deals remain in the negotiations phase and are, for the most, very obscure ,” adds Hussain.

Land acquisitions are becoming institutionalised as clear strategies are developed by governments, which also rely on the private sector and international organisations, explains Kuyek.

Some governments of member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) – Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have adopted explicit policies to encourage their citizens to invest in food production overseas as part of their long-term national food security strategies.

Such policies cover a variety of instruments, including investment subsidies and guarantees, as well as the establishment of sovereign funds focusing exclusively on investments in agriculture overseas.

Countries falling victims of the land acquisition mania range from Western countries such as Australia, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, Ukraine and Romania to countries in Latin America, Asia or Africa.

Globally, the largest targeted countries are Brazil with 11 percent by land area; Sudan with 10 percent; Madagascar, the Philippines and Ethiopia with 8 percent each; Mozambique with 7 percent; and Indonesia with 6 percent, according to the World Bank.

“The main driving force seems to be biofuels expansion, with exceptions in Sudan and Ethiopia, which are seeing a trend towards growth of food from Middle Eastern and Indian investors,” Hussain points out.

Governments, often through sovereign wealth funds, are negotiating the acquisition or lease of farming land. According to GRAIN, the Ethiopian government has made deals with investors from Saudi Arabia, as well as India and China among others, giving foreign investors control of half of the arable land in its Gambela region.

Powerful Saudi businessmen are pursuing deals in Senegal, Mali and other countries that would give them control over several hundred thousand hectares of the most productive farmlands. -“The [Saudi Arabian] al-Amoudi company has acquired ten thousand hectares in south western Ethiopia to export rice,” notes Kuyek.

Besides food security concerns, it appears that such acquisitions are increasingly perceived by international companies as a useful investment tool allowing for diversification. A number of investment companies and private funds have been acquiring farmland around the globe.  These include Western heavyweights such Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, but also Arab players such as Citadel Capital, an Egyptian private equity fund.

Kuyek explains that large land acquisitions are triggering debates in developing countries and can become electoral issues.  Land grabs can have adverse repercussions on indigenous populations which find themselves evicted from the land they have used over generations for cultivation and irrigation.

“People are concerned by the sale of their local resources,” adds Kuyek.

This has translated into the creation of local groups that are challenging large land sale deals negotiated by their governments. As an example, farmers in Serbia have made formal complaints about the purchase of farmland by an Abu Dhabi company, Al Rawafed Agriculture, according to The National newspaper.

Small opposition groups will nonetheless face increasing difficulty in fighting-off governments and institutions, for which food security has become a matter of political survival.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency designated sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel because it lowers GHG emissions by more than 50 percent as compared to gasoline. Pictured here is a sugarcane harvester in Brazil. Credit: Mario Osava /IPS

By Daan Bauwens
BRUSSELS, Jul 12 2013 (IPS)

In an unexpected move, European parliamentarians have approved a new biofuel regulation that will take emissions from indirect land use change into account. The new text allows the biofuel sector to expand, sending a clear signal to world food markets and jeopardising food security for the world’s poorest.

The European Parliament’s Environment Committee (ENVI) voted Thursday in favour of a proposal that limits the use of biofuels to 5.5 percent. This percentage is a compromise between the European Greens who asked for a cap of three percent and the centre-right European People’s Party that wanted a cap of 6.5 percent.

The cap was introduced by the European Commission a year ago after criticism that the policy boosted food prices, causing hunger in developing nations.

The approved proposal also requires companies to measure the amount of indirect land use change (ILUC) caused by their fuels. ILUC refers to the clearing of rainforest, peatlands and wetlands rich in sequestered carbon to fulfill the demand for more land, and causing extra emissions. When the indirect land use change factor is accounted for, many biofuels turn out to cause more emissions than fossil fuels.

“The introduction of indirect land use change is the most important element in this vote,” Bas Eickhout, member of parliament for the European Green Party told IPS. “Furthermore, the cap of 5.5 percent includes all land-based biofuel crops that compete with food production in the use of land and water. This is a setback for the industry that just wanted to continue business as usual.

“But it is not over yet. This text still has to be approved at the plenary meeting. We know the industry is now getting ready for a heavy fight.”

Environmental campaigners have mixed feelings about the approved regulation. “From the point of view of the climate, this result is unexpectedly positive: from now on only truly sustainable biofuels will be subsidized,” Marc-Olivier Herman, Oxfam International’s biofuel expert, told IPS.

“But as far as food security is concerned, the result is outright negative. Last year the Commission proposed 5 percent to protect the existing industry while blocking its expansion. Everything higher than this percentage is unjustifiable. It signifies a subsidised growth of the sector, resulting in more speculation on land and food, causing more food insecurity and hunger.”

The move to increase the percentage comes despite calls from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. De Schutter wrote to parliamentarians on Apr. 23 and visited the European parliament on Jun. 19 to make clear what detrimental effects the European Union’s policy has on food security in developing nations.

“The EU’s agriculture and energy policies have huge impacts on developing countries whose markets are interlinked with those of the EU,” De Schutter told IPS ahead of the meeting. “Biofuel mandates send a strong signal to investors, and therefore trigger commercial pressures on land in developing countries and increase price volatility.”

De Schutter cites research by the EU Joint Research Centre showing that by 2020 EU biofuel targets could push up the agricultural price of vegetable oils by 36 percent, maize by 22 percent, wheat by 13 percent and oilseeds by 20 percent.

Furthermore, according to De Schutter, smallholders in developing countries fall victim in two different ways.

“EU biofuels demand has increased the existing pressures on land in developing countries,” he said. “It has stacked the odds in favour of large-scale export-oriented projects and against the interests of small-scale farmers who need secure access to land and resources.

“Indeed, the smallholders whose access to land and resources is threatened by large-scale investments are often among those most affected by rising food prices. The poorest farmers, though they depend on subsistence agriculture for part of their consumption, are often net food buyers, contrary to common perception.

“My mandate is to offer a rights-based assessment of major policies which have impacts across the world and to remind policymakers of the requirements of the right to food,” De Schutter told IPS.

Irrigated fields in Argentina. Credit:Patrick Burnett/IPS

By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Jul 1 2013 (IPS)

With its abundant natural resources, productive capacity and rising investment, Latin America looks set to become of the main suppliers to meet the growing, diverse and increasingly sophisticated global demand for food.

The challenge is to seize the opportunity, without neglecting the needs of a region where there are still 66 million indigents – 11.4 percent of the population – according to the latest figures from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).

Although the international market continues to face difficulties posed by price volatility, speculation and competition for land by biofuels, experts who spoke to IPS were convinced that the region could successfully overcome the challenges.

Rice, grains, oilseeds, fruit, dairy products, meat, cooking oil, wine – it is all produced and exported in large volumes by Latin America, especially in the southern part of the continent, overcoming drought, flooding and other climate change-related meteorological events.

Gino Buzzetti, Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) representative in Argentina, told IPS that for now there is no global food crisis, like the one in 2007-2008.

But, he said, there is “concern about the medium term” because not only is the population growing, but incomes are rising and demand is becoming more sophisticated. “It’s no longer just about producing rice; we’ll have to produce more meat, which requires greater investment,” he said.

“The potential land for meeting the growing demand is in the temperate tropics, but Africa has neither the development nor the technology, which Latin America, on the other hand, does have, especially in the Southern Cone,” he said.

Buzzetti pointed out that Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay produce one billion tons a year of grains on 72 million hectares, which represents 10 percent of the world’s agricultural land.

These countries account for 47 percent of the world’s soy production and 28 percent of maize exports, for example.

The region is also a leading global producer of meat: 21 percent of the world’s beef and 17 percent of chicken are produced by these Southern Cone countries, and the area’s meat exports represent a full one-third of global meat exports, the IICA official said.

And whereas Argentina was the undisputed regional leader in beef production a few decades ago, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay now surpass this country in volume of production.

According to agricultural engineer Fernando Vilella, misguided policies like export controls aimed at lowering domestic prices led to a drastic reduction in Argentina’s cattle herd in recent years, while chicken production grew and the soy frontier expanded.

But with greater investment and a shift to more feed lots, beef production could rise again, said Vilella, head of the agribusiness and food department in the University of Buenos Aires engineering department.

In fact, it has already begun to recover, he noted. He said Argentina should follow the example of neighbouring Uruguay, which regulates domestic prices of certain cuts of beef for the internal market while exporting the rest at international prices.

With respect to the outlook for the future, Vilella told IPS that by 2030, Asia could be producing 75 to 82 percent of its own food, sub-Saharan Africa only 15 percent, and North Africa and the Middle East 85 percent.

“The remaining demand will have to be met by South America, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Ukraine, which will have to feed a market of some three billion people,” he said.

“The role of Argentina and Brazil will be very important,” he said. The biggest challenge will be to boost productivity per hectare, because there is very little room for expansion of the world’s arable land, the expert said.

Vilella said production by direct seeding or zero tillage, which is widely used in soy cultivation in Argentina, is key, because is it the most efficient method, “as long as it is done on the best land” to avoid environmental deterioration.

With respect to competition from biofuels, Buzzetti said conflict occurs when food crops are diverted to the energy market, like what is happening in the United States with maize used to produce ethanol.

“Production has to shift towards second-generation biofuels, which use non-food biomass,” he said.

But besides the practical challenges, Buzzetti said the ethical problem of hunger in a world where more than enough food is produced has to be discussed, and measures of international consensus are needed to address the issue.

“At Rio+20 (2012 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development), the need to move towards an economic model that ensures better distribution of income was discussed, and the issue was taken up again at the G20 summit (of industrialised and emerging powers) and in World Bank appeals,” he said.

“We have to come up with a capitalist development model that provides for better distribution of income and food, to make the global system more sustainable and balanced,” he said.

To achieve this, there are recommendations that focus on reducing volatility of prices, which have been on the rise in recent years, and to curb financial speculation in food markets – but these processes take time, he said.

The sources consulted concurred that it is inconceivable that there are countries in the region where hunger is still a problem. Some, like Mexico and countries in Central America and the Caribbean, depend on food imports.

“Between 1999 and 2009, the number of net food importer countries in the region grew from 11 to 16,” Antonio Hill, a Colombian expert in agriculture and climate change with Oxfam, told IPS.

Hill said Latin America has a greater responsibility as a food producer because while it must increase productivity, at the same time it must “reduce levels of inequality, food insecurity and the ecological footprint.”

The most sensible thing “would be to increase productivity, expanding support for family agriculture, especially for rural women, to ensure greater availability of food for the poor,” he said.

An estimated half of fresh produce in Papua New Guinea is lost between harvesting and marketing. Credit: Catherine Wilson/IPS

By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Jun 13 2013 (IPS)

With less than three years before a 2015 deadline, the developing world is largely expected to miss one of the U.N.’s key Millennium Development Goals (MDGs): halving the number of people living in extreme poverty and hunger.

Despite limited progress, there are still more than 1.4 billion people – out of a total global population of over seven billion – who live below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars and on the razor edge of starvation.

"On the quicksand of development, predictions are dangerous.” -- Ambassador Ernest Corea
The Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has, however, identified at least 16 countries that have already reached the 1996 World Food Summit’s goal of halving the total number of undernourished people.

“This was made possible by the priority the government has set on ensuring the right to food and polices it has implemented,” says FAO Director-General Jose Graziano da Silva.

The 16 countries – namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Chile, Cuba, Fiji, Georgia, Ghana, Guyana, Nicaragua, Peru, Samoa, Sao Tome and Principe, Thailand, Uruguay, Venezuela and Viet Nam – will be honoured at an FAO ceremony in Rome on Jun. 16.

Meanwhile, in a report released last month, a high-level panel of eminent persons has projected a 2030 deadline to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger from the face of the earth.

But how realistic is this new deadline?

Ambassador Ernest Corea, who served for nearly 19 years on the staff of the World Bank’s secretariat for the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), told IPS: “On the quicksand of development, predictions are dangerous.”

Two missed monsoons could upend whatever progress has been made towards reaching this goal, he noted.

“Still, it is better to reach out towards a worthwhile objective than to do nothing at all.”

Hunger is a cruel and debilitating scourge. Malnutrition, often the by-product of hunger, causes the deaths of three million children per year, he added.

“Reversing this tragic situation is a goal worth striving for,” said Corea, a former Sri Lankan ambassador to the United States.

Dr. Joan Russow of the Canada-based Global Compliance Research Project told IPS one of the reasons for the failure of the MDG1 might have been because the urgency was not effectively communicated by using the word “halving”.

The goal should have been “eradicating extreme hunger and poverty and then delineating the drastic means to do so,” she said.

“It will only be possible to do so in 2030 if the global community drastically alters current global practices,” said Russow, a longtime peace and environmental activist.

These include, at a minimum, prohibiting land grabs for biofuel production around the world; establishing a global ban on genetically engineered food and crops, promoting organic agriculture and instituting a fair and just transition for farmers and communities affected by the ban.

Additionally, she said, there should be a ban on the production and use of pesticides such as neonicotinoids, which have been destroying the world’s honeybee population.

Frederic Mousseau, policy director at the San Francisco-based Oakland Institute, an independent policy think tank, told IPS the 2007-2008 food price crisis has mostly resulted in wishful thinking at international conferences that food security can be accomplished.

“However, silver bullet policy solutions, for instance suggesting foreign investment in agriculture will result in food security, ignore the unprecedented land rush over the last five years to grab the natural resources – land, water, forests – that the poorest depend on for their livelihoods.”

He said: “We know there are enough resources to feed everyone; it is therefore possible to eradicate hunger by 2030.”

However, this would require a major overhaul of current food security and development policies, which would have to focus on supporting the livelihoods of the rural poor in developing countries, protecting their rights to land and access and control over natural resources and promoting sustainable production methods.

Corea pointed out it would be a worthwhile exercise for a small working group convened by the FAO to review the record of the 16 countries and determine what common policies and practices among them contributed to their success.

Was it good governance? A crackdown on corruption? The development through research of enhanced sustainable productivity? Something else?

The findings of such a review would be invaluable to other countries.

Russow told IPS there are also other urgent issues that have to be resolved in order to eradicate hunger by 2030, including climate change.

She said there should be a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions – primarily by conserving carbon sinks, ending subsidies to fossil fuel industries and by seriously phasing out the production and use of fossil fuels and abandoning an animal-based diet in favour of a vegetarian diet.

She also called for a substantial reduction in global military budgets, and investments in socially equitable and environmentally sound transportation, and energy, such as wind, solar and geothermal power.

Russow said there should be a revoking of the charters of transnational corporations, which, in pursuing unsustainable exploitative development, have destroyed food security around the world.

And the world should abide by the legally binding International Covenant on Social and Economic Rights, reaffirming that everyone has the right to be free from hunger and enshrining the right to food and drinking water.

She said it is necessary to move away from the over-consumptive model of consumption and towards an effective programme of conservation, coupled with a serious reduction of the ecological footprint.

Additionally, Russow said, there should be a cancellation of the “devastating debt of developing states”, and the abandoning of structural adjustment programmes by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the elimination of the World Bank’s ill-conceived projects.

A soybean harvest in the state of Michigan. Between 2006 and 2011, U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields. Credit: public domain

By Joe Hitchon
WASHINGTON, Feb 23 2013 (IPS)

The rush for biofuels in the United States has seen farmers converting the United States’ prairie lands to farms at rates comparable with deforestation levels in Brazil, Malaysia and Indonesia – rates not seen here since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

A new study finds that, between 2006 and 2011, U.S. farmers converted more than 1.3 million acres of grassland into corn and soybean fields. Driven by high crop prices, biofuel subsidies and a confluence of other factors, states like Iowa and South Dakota have been turning some five percent of prairie into cropland each year, according to the report’s authors, Christopher Wright and Michael Wimberly of South Dakota State University.

The researchers suggest that farmers are growing crops on increasingly marginal land, in part because the federal government offers subsidised crop insurance in case of failure. In Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota, for instance, corn and soy are planted in areas that are especially vulnerable to drought.

Numerous incentives have encouraged the ploughing of grasslands. The federal system of financial payments to grain farmers has long encouraged conversion of grasslands to farms, but in recent years new subsidies for corn ethanol and other biofuel production have significantly stepped up this inducement.

The resulting increase in crop prices encourages the owners of livestock to plough prairieland in order to grow crops in favour of using that land for grazing. This has lead to the growth of industrial farms and industrial confinement methods for meat production, while genetically modified seeds now allow corn and soy production in semiarid regions that before were suitable only for ranching.

According to the new research, farmers are increasingly willing to take that risk because corn and soy have become so lucrative. Further, the study finds evidence that many farmers are no longer enticed by federal conservation programmes that pay for grassland cover.

“The big drivers that are often overlooked are the federally subsidised crop insurance and commodity support programmes in play,” Greg Fogel, policy associate at the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, an advocacy group, told IPS.

“If a lot of farmers didn’t have this support, they wouldn’t choose to produce on this land, because it is quite marginal and risky for them. But when they’re getting a 65 to 80 percent subsidy on their crop insurance premium, the risk is dramatically reduced because it has already a built-in revenue guarantee subsidised by the American taxpayer.”

While recent years have subsequently seen a shifting of risk from producer to taxpayer, Fogel warns that the latter will end up being forced to pay twice, “when we later have to pay for a conservation programme to rehabilitate and protect the destruction done to the environment on the back end.”

The loss of pasture itself could also have significant environmental impacts. According to conservationists in the Midwest, the United States’ prairie lands should be seen as a vast “carbon ocean”, with an enormous capacity to reduce climate change by sequestering heat-trapping carbon from the atmosphere.

“Native grasses are a stable repository of carbon, creating organic carbon below ground, much as trees create it above,” said John Davidson, a professor emeritus of law at the University of South Dakota.

“Grasses store carbon quickly, providing an immediate mitigation against global warming, and the carbon is stored safely underground, secure it from catastrophic events such as fire. However, ploughing releases that carbon, adding significantly to greenhouse gas concentrations while eliminating habitat used by hundreds of species.”

Indeed, an area covering the five northern states of the Midwest contains thousands of shallow wetlands and is one of the continent’s largest breeding grounds for ducks and other ground-nesting birds and waterfowl. But cornfields are now encroaching on this habitat, with wetlands disappearing and bird populations dropping.

Davidson is urging a public discussion on whether it makes sense to spend large amounts of money on attempts to control the release of carbon from coal-fired power plants and the cutting of tropical forests “while simultaneously releasing an immeasurable ocean of carbon by ploughing up our prairie”.

Further, a 2008 paper in the journal Science argued that fuels like corn ethanol and soy biodiesel lose a portion of their carbon advantage over gasoline if farmers are simply digging up virgin grassland to grow the crops.

Sodsaving

Environmental groups and policymakers are currently pushing initiatives to ensure that federal farm and crop insurance subsidies do not exacerbate the loss of these vital natural resources. A bipartisan group of members of the House of Representatives recently introduced legislation that would create a nationwide “sodsaver” law that would slash subsidies that contribute to the destruction of native grassland and prairie.

This would dramatically lower the amount of money the government provides for native grasslands that have been recently ploughed. This doesn’t mean that farmers can’t keep farming, just that they won’t have as much of an incentive to convert prairieland to agricultural land.

The Protect Our Prairies Act, a provision of the 2013 Farm Bill, which was passed by the Senate in June 2012, would prohibit federal payments and reduce crop insurance premium subsidies by 50 percent on newly broken native sod. The bill would also close loopholes by requiring that newly converted prairieland be isolated from other crop acres when calculating insurable yields.

Proponents say these two provisions are crucial to removing the federally subsidised incentive to move agricultural operations into native grasslands. The bill would also save an estimated 200 million dollars over a decade, while ensuring that taxpayer dollars do not continue to facilitate the destruction of prairielands.

Further, proponents say doing so would result in more ranching opportunities, stronger ecosystems, increased hunting opportunities, less soil erosion and net economic gains for rural communities.

“As the House of Representatives begins developing its version of the Farm Bill, we will work to ensure that chamber does not make the same deep cuts to conservation,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president of Defenders of Wildlife, in a statement.

“And we will fight to make sure the House also requires farmers who receive subsidies to take appropriate measures to protect our lands, water and wildlife, as the Senate has done. We simply must find a way to provide a crop insurance safety net for farmers that doesn’t also encourage the widespread destruction of wetlands, forests, grasslands and America’s waters.”

Sugarcane harvesters have become a fixture in the Brazilian landscape. Credit: Mario Osava /IPS

By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 15 2013 (IPS)

Following a promising start, Brazil’s dream of positioning ethanol in the global market on an equal standing with petroleum-based fuels is hindered by new and old challenges.

Brazil’s goal of expanding ethanol sales across the world will only be attained when there are “more countries in a position to buy and supply,” noted Eduardo Leão de Sousa, director of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Union (UNICA), an organisation that represents the country’s top sugar and ethanol producers.

Brazil and the United States produce close to 85 percent of the world’s ethanol, according to information from the International Energy Agency. Since it is produced almost exclusively for domestic consumption, international sales are still marginal.

De Sousa told IPS that the critical level of demand necessary to stimulate ethanol production is not something that emerges spontaneously and must be driven by public policies, such as regulations that require a certain volume of renewable fuel to be blended into petroleum-based transport fuels.

Growing demand is led by the United States, spurred by the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS) programme that set increasing annual quotas for ethanol production through 2022, and the European Union (EU), which aims to bring the percentage of renewable fuels in transport vehicle engines up to 10 percent by 2020.

The RFS programme, created under the Energy Policy Act of 2005 and further expanded in 2007, with the aim of cutting greenhouse gas emissions and reducing U.S. dependence on foreign oil, established a limit of 56.78 billion litres for annual consumption of conventional ethanol fuels, which are those produced from food crops such as corn.

As U.S. consumption is nearing that limit, the bulk of the increase towards the 2022 target of 132.5 billion will have to come from cellulosic ethanol – a biofuel from wood, grasses or the inedible parts of plants, which is new and still too costly to produce- and from “advanced” biofuels.

“Advanced” or “second generation” biofuels are those produced by sustainable feedstock, which are defined by availability of the feedstock, greenhouse gas (GHG) emission levels and biodiversity and land use impact.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency designated sugarcane ethanol as an advanced biofuel because it lowers GHG emissions by more than 50 percent as compared to gasoline, taking into account the full lifecycle of production and consumption, including the use of land to grow the crop.

This development will boost demand for ethanol produced by Brazil and other sugarcane growing countries, bringing it up to 15.14 million litres by 2022.

As for the EU, based on a directive to promote the use of energy from renewable sources (Directive 2009/28/EC) that requires that 10 percent of the energy used in transport be sourced from renewable fuels by 2020, ethanol consumption for that year is projected at 15 to 16 billion litres, half of which could be supplied from outside the bloc, according to de Sousa.

EU and U.S. imports combined, then, will equal Brazil’s current domestic market, developed over the course of almost four decades, de Sousa estimated.

But that demand is not a sure thing. The EU’s executive body, the European Commission, is considering revising its transport fuel target to impose a limit on crop-based biofuels in an effort to prevent negative impacts on food supply, while in the United States the powerful oil and corn lobbies are pressuring against the RFS, the UNICA director said.

Out to conquer emerging markets

Another huge potential market is China, but only if it adopts an ambitious programme once “a supply of diverse and permanent sources is guaranteed,” de Sousa forecasted.

Many countries introduced the use of ethanol as a fuel additive in the 1990s. But there are numerous cases in which national programmes for the adoption of this biofuel were postponed or implemented on a trial basis. For example, after establishing a voluntary three percent biofuel blend in 2003, Japan is still reluctant to make it mandatory.

On the supply side, efforts are also “timid,” although sugarcane ethanol is being produced in other South American countries and in Central America and Africa, as well as in Southeast Asia, where UNICA sees “great potential.”

Mexico has extensive agricultural land but fragmented into tiny private plots that hinder large-scale production. Something similar occurs in India, which already has a large cane production to supply sugar for its 1.2 billion people, de Sousa said.

In Africa, the lack of infrastructure and labour trained for ethanol production are an obstacle to this activity. In Angola and Mozambique, where Brazilian companies are implementing sugar projects, landholding is also an issue, but for a different reason. As all land is state-owned, producers cannot purchase land and must depend on government concessions.

This eliminates land purchase costs but drives away investors who see property as a guarantee.

“The key is having clear rules and streamlining implementation,” said Felipe Cruz, investment director at Angola’s Capanda Agroindustrial Pole, an initiative of the Brazilian company Odebrecht, which is building the Angolan Bioenergy Company (Biocom) set to begin production this year.

“The focus is on sugar,” António Carlos de Carvalho, Biocom manager and financial director, said. Angola, which was self-sufficient in that food crop prior to independence in 1975, lost its entire sugarcane industry during its 27-year-long civil war. Now it is trying to rebuild it with projects across the country.

In addition to 260,000 tons of sugar, Biocom plans to produce 30 million litres of ethanol, which will be used to replace petroleum-based additives.

Blazing a winding trail

As a pioneer in the use of ethanol fuel and a major sugarcane producer, Brazil has developed technology and companies in the field that have made it possible for the country to pursue ethanol projects in every continent.

This strategy was launched as a response to rising international oil prices in the mid 1970s, when Brazil imported 80 percent of the fuel it consumed.

A decade later, almost all new vehicles manufactured in Brazil were running exclusively on ethanol, while the rest of the country’s vehicle fleet had switched to gasoline blended with an increasing percentage of biofuel. Today, vehicles run on a blend that ranges from 18 to 25 percent.

This initial success was followed by a crisis produced by a drop in oil prices. But in the 1990s, amid growing environmental concerns, Brazilian ethanol emerged as a effective way of reducing pollution.

Also at this time, the U.S. began producing and using flexible-fuel vehicles (or flex vehicles), which run on any blend of up to 85 percent ethanol. In Brazil, an improved version of flex vehicles with no limit to the percentage of ethanol triggered a new biofuel boom in 2003.

But without the expected climate agreements and with environmental concerns clouded by the more pressing economic crisis, global interest in ethanol has waned. Brazilian efforts to create an international market for this product, led by one of ethanol’s champions, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2011), are not yielding the expected results.

While the strong support from the U.S. -the world’s largest producer of ethanol since 2006-means that Brazil is no longer alone in its efforts, it has exacerbated critics who argue that diverting huge volumes of corn to ethanol production will raise food prices.

Another cause for concern is the potential development of electric and hydrogen vehicles.

De Sousa is confident that “cellulosic ethanol will alter this equation,” expanding biofuel production and increasing its sustainability, while all the other alternatives will only be competitive in the long term.

However, no alternative should be ruled out. “Every region will find the solution that is most suitable” for its conditions, he concluded.

Biofuels are tested aboard the USS Nimitz. Credit: US Navy

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Feb 1 2013 (IPS)

New biofuel requirements proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are being met with concern by a spectrum of interest groups from environmentalists to the oil industry, with some warning that a gap between the proposal and existing law could force the government to draw on food-based alternative fuels.

The announcement, which opens a 45-day feedback period, sets standards under the country’s landmark Renewable Fuel Standard programme. That 2007 legislation established long-term goals for alternative fuel use – 36 billion gallons a year by 2022 – for which the EPA is mandated to set yearly requirements for the country’s petroleum importers and refiners.

The new requirement proposals offer standards for three types of alternative fuels: biomass-based diesel made from various vegetable or even animal oils (1.28 billion gallons); “advanced” biofuels for use, for instance, in planes or ships (2.75 billion gallons); and “cellulosic” biofuels made from non-food items such as inedible grasses (14 million gallons).

This last type is of particular importance, given that legislators in 2007 specifically aimed to preclude any competition between the productions of biomass for alternative fuels versus food. Yet while the proposals do incrementally increase the usage levels across this range of fuels by about 1.4 billion gallons more than were stipulated in 2012, the level for cellulosic fuel is far lower than the original legislation stipulates as a signpost for this year.

By 2013, the 2007 bill states, the U.S. was to be using a billion gallons of cellulosic biofuel. The EPA’s announcement of just 14 million gallons would thus leave a massive shortfall – and even this lower figure could be a stretch.

The problem is that U.S. production capability for cellulosic biofuel has yet to come anywhere near satisfying the legally required demand. Production capacity was particularly hampered by the timing of the 2007 bill, which came immediately before the massive economic contraction of 2008, during which investments for the 100-million-dollar refineries required for this type of operation dried up.

Although investments in cellulosic biofuel refining have now picked up, the market has yet to achieve commercial viability. Last week, a court voided previous EPA requirements for this type of biofuel (for 2010 and 2011) because the country had produced none of the product during those years, and just 21,000 gallons last year.

While the court says that the EPA’s requirements were baseless, agency officials say the proposed standards constitute a “reasonable representation of expected production” by a handful of start-up refineries. The group that brought the court case, the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry lobby group, has responded scornfully.

“The court recognized the absurdity of fining companies for failing to use a nonexistent biofuel, but EPA wants to nearly double the mandate for the fuel in 2013,” Bob Greco, an API official, said in a statement. He also suggested that the agency “needs a serious reality check” and that “its renewable fuels program is unworkable and must be scrapped.”

Still, the EPA’s new moves have been strongly backed by the biofuels industry.

“The cellulosic biofuels industry is just breaking through at commercial scale,” Brooke Coleman, executive director of the Advanced Ethanol Council, a trade group, said in a statement, noting that the EPA had gotten the related standards “just right”. “The volume standards proposed … will continue to provide advanced biofuel investors and innovators with a predictable and durable path forward in that effort.”

986 million gallons needed

Currently, two cellulosic refineries are operating in the United States, with at least two more under construction. As such, even if the current forecasts were to be overly optimistic – and analysis by several advocates suggests that the EPA’s estimates may be conservative – the market for this type of biofuel looks set to achieve commercial viability in the next year or two.

Yet some are worried that the way in which the United States makes up the shortfall in its cellulosic biofuel stocks could still have significant impact. This gap is not only an issue with regard to the 14 million gallons that the EPA has now proposed, but more importantly the billion gallons required by the original 2007 legislation.

This means that at least 986 million gallons of alternative fuel will still need to be accounted for this year.

“Because these mandates are ‘nested’, that 986 million gallons would turn into a mandate for biodiesel, which in turn could come from sugarcane, vegetable oil, etc.,” Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Clean Vehicles Programme, told IPS.

“When you look at this year’s market, look at the availability of vegetable oil and sugarcane ethanol – those markets are tight, and so we don’t think it would be a good idea to expand those mandates faster.”

While Martin notes that he fully supports the broad aims of the EPA’s moves on alternative fuels, he says that just because cellulosic biofuel production is currently behind schedule “doesn’t mean we need to accelerate mandates that threaten our environment and our food supplies.”

Further, if the EPA decided to move in this direction, it might not be only the U.S. environment and food supplies that are threatened.

“The economists that model this type of thing initially thought that the remainder would be made up mostly through sugarcane, but now it looks like it might be diesel. Both of those, however, particularly the sugarcane ethanol, would almost certainly be imported,” Martin says.

“We’ve looked at the resources available for cellulosic fuel, and the United States has substantial resources. But that’s in contrast with biomass diesel and sugarcane, which are in short supply and in competition with food production.”

Further, one of the fastest-growing and cheapest sources of vegetable oil (for biomass diesel) is palm oil, the production of which in recent decades has been blamed for the clear-cutting and monoculturing of at least 15 million hectares worldwide, according to the United Nations in 2011.

While the EPA has made a preliminary ruling suggesting that palm oil may not environmentally friendly enough for use under the renewable fuels mandates, that ruling is not yet final.

“As you expand these standards, independent of whether you use soybeans, corn or other materials, at the end of day if there is an inadequate supply more will have to come from overseas,” Martin says. “And we think that palm oil will be the new supplier of vegetable oil into the world market.”

By Gunter Pauli
BERLIN, Jan 28 2013 (IPS)

When my children were born it was a clear commitment: all clothing would have to carry the “organic” seal. It was an expression of a lifestyle, a commitment to the Earth.

Gunter Pauli.

While in the early nineties I still had to search half the world to find certified organic children’s wear, today even mainstream shops carry organic clothing, especially for children.

I still have to pay a premium price like twenty years ago, but the products are easily available since an increasing number of brands pride themselves on offering natural products.

Whereas we have debated the use of biofuels that increase the cost of food, especially when subsidies divert corn from tortillas to gas stations, we have never debated the issue of fibres diverting land from food.

On a recent visit to China I learned that the government of the world’s largest cotton-producing nation decided to phase out cotton. The reasoning follows a clear logic: the land reserved to produce 32 percent of the world’s cotton should not provide a raw material for clothing. Land and its massive water reserve that made cotton viable and competitive should be reserved for producing food. Protein instead of fibres. The Chinese offer an insight into a logic that should prevail in all our production and consumption decisions: why waste water on clothing, when food is the priority?

All cotton, even organic cotton, requires excessive amounts of water. Eliminating chemicals is a great step forward, but is not enough to push society on a pathway towards sustainability.

There should be no doubt that by 2050 the additional two billion people on Earth will need to be dressed. However, the limited resources and the carrying capacity of our Earth need to be aligned with emerging demand.

While biologists have embraced chemicals, and even genetic manipulation to respond to growing needs, a smarter option emerges that goes beyond fiddling with nature through genetic control mechanisms, to searching for solutions within the regenerative resources that biodiversity offers.

After all, cotton originated from the Americas, but 63 percent is farmed in China and India, stressing the water reserves that even the United States does not have anymore. It is not good enough to have genetically modified cotton that requires less water: all water that is sustainably available should be dedicated to providing food security.

The question is: what else is available beyond hemp and kenaf? Time has come to create a portfolio of solutions. China offers once more an interesting strategy.

During the 2008 Olympics, the Chinese military was called in to clear two million tons of algae blooms from water bodies around Qingdao that were threatening the open water games.

This emergency situation provided an insight into the potential of algae. After all, these prolific protists feed on excessive nutrients and require no additional input. On the contrary, these grow in rivers and seas without ever needing fresh water as an input.

The processing is about removing water – not consuming water. It did not take long before motivated Chinese entrepreneurs and policy makers to join forces to create the first alginate-based textile fibre factory.

The conversion of 20 million tons, and the potential for farming beyond the harvesting of blooms, suggests that China could substitute all its fibre needs with these blooms. The cost to remove the bloom is converted into the generation of income without the need for additional land. The economics of new fibres could hardly be better.

A quick tour of the world confirms that Europe, Africa, the islands in the Chinese seas and Indonesia could provide a natural source for fibres that could release 25 percent of the world’s irrigation waters.

We should embrace a broader search and identify all the natural fibres that could meet demand without stressing this thin crust that sustains us. Regions characterised by temperate climates and void of rivers and seashores full of prolific algae growth seem to have forgotten another tremendous potential: nettle (Urtica dioica). Considered a weed around the world, this prolific plant thrives in poor conditions and could be part of the portfolio of fibres that will release water resources and dramatically reduce our dependency on chemicals to dress the world.

Nettles do not compete with food crops. Observing its presence, it does not even need to be planted. Since it is a perennial, once growing it only needs harvesting, no planting or nurturing. It is so easy to grow that it is embarrassingly simple compared to the industrialisation of cotton.

A piece of foul land the size of Belgium and the Netherlands is enough to provide a quarter of the world’s demand for fibres. We not only save the water, we save the chemicals and the seeds while generating jobs for producing a long lasting quality fibre that was the preferred raw material for the European royals in the Middle Ages, and remains the core fibre for men’s clothing in Bhutan and Nepal today.

We can continue to live on a beautiful blue Earth, provided we find out what we have. (END/COPYRIGHT IPS)

Excerpt:

The U.S. military is focusing almost exclusively on non-food items, including algae and oils made from non-food and agricultural wastes. Algae wallops its biofuel rivals, yielding 50 to 70 times more gallons of fuel per acre than corn ethanol. Credit: Jonathan Eng/IPS

By Carey L. Biron
WASHINGTON, Dec 19 2012 (IPS)

Reversing attempts to eliminate the U.S. military’s advanced biofuels programme, both houses of Congress on Tuesday approved major legislation that now presents no obstacles to broad-reaching Defence Department plans to mainstream and spread the use of alternative fuels throughout its operations.

The move has received broad plaudits from environmentalists, industry advocates and high-level defence officials.

“We’re really happy that Congress decided to support the Depart of Defence’s ability to develop and purchase biofuels,” Lena Moffitt, a Washington representative with the Sierra Club, an environment advocacy group, told IPS. “We wholly support the Pentagon’s major role in advancing the industry more broadly, including leading the charge in sourcing materials that are not food based.”

As the largest fuel consumer in the United States – using some 90 percent of the energy used by the federal government – the military has been ramping up plans to diversify its fuel options in the name of both economics and security, particularly following a related announcement by President Barack Obama in 2010. A major part of this push has been a focus on research into new alternative fuels, particularly though investing and partnering with the private sector.

Proponents say such public-sector spending offers a nascent but burgeoning industry critical capital with which to prove its products’ feasibility. Yet in recent months, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives had moved to ban the military from purchasing or developing biofuels, citing high costs and uncertain returns.

While the Senate voted down a related Republican amendment in late November, committees for the House and Senate have since been forced to reconcile the differing versions of the National Defence Authorisation Act (NDAA), an annual appropriations bill. That final version, approved Tuesday, adheres to the Senate rather than House bill, scuppering the attempt to block the biofuels programme.

The final version of the NDAA also does not include a Republican amendment that would have done away with earlier legislation that disallows all federal agencies from purchasing any alternative fuel found to be more polluting than standard fuels.

The NDAA, in total worth more than 633 billion dollars, is to be voted on by the full Congress and go to President Obama for approval by the end of this week.

Great green fleet

Since 2009, much of the military’s biofuels vision has been spearheaded by the U.S. Navy. In turn, this has been pushed particularly by Navy Secretary Ray Mabus, who recently wrote that “if the Navy can fully pursue its initiatives, (advanced biofuel) will reach cost-competitiveness in 2016.”

Together with the departments of energy and agriculture, the navy has entered into an agreement to develop cost-effective advanced biofuels, the high-quality type needed to replace jet fuel and other high-end energy sources. That agreement is worth some 510 million dollars, a critical part of which has been and will be used to build the costly refineries that can produce new alternative fuels to specification.

In July, the three departments announced 30 million dollars in matching funds for related research this year. That same month saw the start of a six-week test mission of non-retrofitted U.S. Navy fighters and cruisers, referred to as the Great Green Fleet, that sailed around the Pacific powered in part by biofuel, the largest such experiment ever undertaken. (The navy also considers nuclear power to be an alternative fuel.)

Within the next decade, the navy has pledged to increase its use of alternative fuels in its plane and ship fleets by at least 50 percent. The U.S. Marines, a branch of the navy, has also been ordered to cut its overall energy use by nearly a third by 2015.

Those and similar long-term plans offer critical incentive for the private-sector players working on the research and development of advanced biofuels. Significant initial work has already taken place in this regard, as has testing and certification to ensure new products would meet specifications.

The new NDAA authorisation “would help get the first commercial large-scale demonstration biorefineries built to fully validate the technology and ability to produce these fuels at large scale,” Paul Winters, the communications director for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a trade group, told IPS.

“In the current economic climate, there’s been a reluctance among institutional investors and large commercial banks to invest or provide capital to build these biorefineries. So this public-private partnership is intended to help alleviate that situation, to encourage that investment.”

Winters characterises both the military and private airline industry as “eager” customers for these fuels. A major new push will now provide critical understanding of what the industry could be capable of down the road.

“The initial validation of the production of these fuels is necessary to encourage investment in large-scale production for those markets,” he says. “It’s further pushing the production of fuels that, from an environmental perspective, will be an improvement from the fuels that are currently used.”

The new authorisation should now lead to the construction of the first commercial-scale biorefineries in the United States, which the military is looking to have operational no later than 2020.

While concern has mounted around the world in recent years over Western countries’ new appetite for biofuels impacting negatively on world food prices and availability, the current U.S. military push is focusing almost exclusively on non-food items, including algae and oils made from non-food and agricultural wastes, with plans to use trash at some point.

Still, critics have pointed out that arable lands for biomass projects have supplanted food production in many places, including the United States, with industrial-sized “land-grabbing” for such use currently at an all-time high in Africa. The U.S. military programme does currently use a type of flax known as camelina for some of its biofuel mixes, and is planning to move more broadly into the use of other plant matter in the future.

Rising corn prices in the United States brought about by biofuel mandates have cost developing countries 6.6 billion dollars over the past six years, according to new research released here on Wednesday.

The subsequent increase in food costs has drastically affected levels of world hunger and, in some countries, political stability, according to the report, published by the global watchdog ActionAid. The report also warned of the consequences of current U.S. policies.

“What this report really highlights is our inability to keep up with the current demands of corn for food and fuel – and most certainly future demands,” Kristen Sundell, a policy analyst at ActionAid USA, told journalists Wednesday.

Rising corn prices in the United States have triggered global hunger and political turmoil. Credit: Natural Resources Conservation Service Soil Health Campaign/ CC by 2.0

Timothy Wise, director of the Research and Policy Program at Tufts University and the study’s lead author, noted, “Increased food prices triggered the Arab Spring, and U.S. ethanol production contributed to those food spikes.”

Corn prices in the United States have steadily increased since 2007, when new legislation known as the Renewable Fuel Standard began requiring the use of a percentage of corn in the production of a biofuel called ethanol. Today, ethanol is added to petrol across the country.

According to the report, 40 percent of all U.S.-grown corn is now being used to fulfil these ethanol mandates – up from just five percent a decade ago. And because 40 percent of all U.S.-grown corn translates to 15 percent of global corn production, corn prices have increased by 21 percent over the past six years. That increase has cost the global economy 11.6 billion dollars, 6.6 billion of which fell on developing countries.

This year, the situation in the United States has been exacerbated by the worst drought in fifty years, which resulted in a harvest about 20 percent smaller than expected. Even so, the Renewable Fuel Standard requirements have not changed.

Unfortunate weather circumstances in the United States will only add to the burden felt by developing countries importing U.S.-grown food, Sundell said. “Our ethanol policy cannot be based on a prayer for good weather,” she warned.

Mexico and Egypt have reportedly suffered the highest costs. Over the past six years, the Mexican government has paid an extra 1.1 billion dollars to import corn, and Egypt, 727 million dollars.

Guatemala, which is particularly dependent on corn imports, paid 28 million dollars in 2010 alone, or more than 10 percent of the Guatemalan government’s annual expenditures on agricultural development. That was also six times the amount of U.S. agriculture aid received and almost equalled the amount of food aid that Washington gave to Guatemala.

Nearly half of children under five in Guatemala reportedly suffer from malnutrition.

Even developing countries that grow enough corn to export it are feeling the effects of the U.S. biofuel mandates. Uganda, for instance, has seen a small net gain in its corn exports, but the majority of its population is still seeing a spike in corn prices due to global demand.

“To the extent international prices transmit to Ugandan markets, U.S. ethanol expansion is contributing quite directly to food insecurity among the urban poor, even in a net corn exporting country,” the ActionAid report concluded.

Grain and fuel are not the only staples affected by these biofuel mandates. The U.S. meat industry is suffering from steep feed prices as well. American farmers have been forced to slaughter cattle and poultry they cannot afford to feed. Analysts warn that these actions will affect prices for eggs, dairy products and meat well into next year at least.

“In the last two years, we have seen a one-billion-dollar increase in the two major feed ingredients in the turkey industry,” Damon Wells, with the U.S. National Turkey Federation, said Wednesday. “The U.S. is world’s largest poultry exporter, and any price increase of this level is going to be felt around the world.” Government forecasters have predicted up to a 4.5 percent increase in poultry prices next year.

Still, ActionAid’s researchers stress that such staggering increases to U.S. corn prices should be preventable in the future. In November, for instance, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the governing body over these biofuel mandates, will rule on whether or not to grant a waiver for the Renewable Fuel Standards. Such a waiver would decrease the amount of corn being used to make ethanol and lead to lower corn prices.

“Putting a shock into the system will reduce the food costs here in the U.S.,” Wise said. “The ripple of such a shock will be felt around the world – everyone feels the impact of American prices.”

The European Commission has announced it will limit the amount of crop-based biofuels used in transport, but its newly proposed measures are not nearly enough to curb the disastrous impact of the EU’s biofuel policy around the world. Its effects will only worsen, activists say.

According to the existing European rules at least 10 percent of the EU’s transport energy must come from renewable sources by 2020, primarily through biofuels derived from wheat, soy or rapeseed. But in an unprecedented move, EU Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger and Climate Commissioner Connie Hedegaard announced Monday that the European Commission (EC) is planning to limit the use of crop-based biofuel to five percent in the total share of renewables in transport fuel.

Just ahead of the meeting, international NGO Oxfam released a new report which demonstrates that Europe’s hunger for biofuels is pushing up global food prices and driving people off their land, resulting in deeper hunger and malnutrition in poor countries.

According to the NGO, despite soy and maize prices being at all-time highs in July and prices of cereals and oil remaining at peak levels in August, the Commission and most governments seemed to turn a blind eye to the devastating impacts that EU biofuels mandates have on food prices and land rights.

At a press briefing after the morning plenary of the informal meeting, European Energy Commissioner Oettinger recognised the fact that the current EU policy had lead to “unfavourable developments such as the tearing down of rainforest to produce biofuel.”

He added that all ministers “agree that every percentage of biofuel higher than five percent should only be achieved by using second generation products like agricultural waste and leftovers instead of food crops.”

“I’m happy the EC is finally recognising the fact that the use of food-crops for fuel is problematic,” says Ruth Kelly, Oxfam’s economic policy advisor and writer of Oxfam’s new report, “but putting a cap of 5 percent on biofuel consumption is ridiculous. At this moment the biofuel use in the EU is only at 4.5 percent. So the new cap of 5 percent is actually an increase of what we’re using at the moment.

“In 2008 biofuels accounted for 3.5 percent of all transport fuels in the EU,” Kelly tells IPS. “That same year, the land that was required to grow crops for those biofuels could have fed 127 million people. The new target of 5 percent is not double, but it is significantly more. Increasing the percentage is obviously not what has to happen right now, given the negative effects we are seeing around the world right now.”

Recent data gathered by Oxfam shows land acquired for biofuels production in the Philippines in 2010 could be used to produce up to 2.4 million metric tonnes of rice, enough to make the country self-sufficient in rice production. According to a recent survey by the International Land Coalition, two-thirds of big land deals in the past ten years are to grow crops that can be used for biofuels such as soy, sugarcane, palm oil and jatropha.

Paraguay has also been hit hard by the EU’s demand for biofuel. According to research by Oxfam, each year 9,000 rural families are evicted and nearly half a million hectares of land are turned into soy fields. For families living beside massive soy plantations in eastern Paraguay, farming has become almost impossible. Water has become increasingly scarce as local resources are used up irrigating the plantations.

As the water table falls, the community has to sink wells twice as deep into the ground to reach drinking water. More than half of the soy grown in Paraguay is exported to Argentina, and much of this is turned into diesel either in Argentina or in Europe to fuel Europe’s cars.

“The key problem is that the EU’s biofuel mandates generate an important demand in the South,” says Constantino Casasbuenas Morales, policy adviser on economic justice at Oxfam UK, and Paraguay expert. “Relatively small countries like Honduras or Paraguay modify their national strategies in order to open up for foreign investment.

“As a consequence, smallholders are evicted from their land and have to move to the capital. Biofuel demand is clearly linked to land concentration, growing city populations and increasing poverty.”