Sustainability a key challenge as new global alliance seeks to increase biofuel production
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Biofuels were in the spotlight at the recently concluded Group of 20 summit in New Delhi.
PHOTO: BLOOMBERG
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NEW DELHI – As the world revs up its transition to clean energy, biofuels have come to command greater attention at the global high table.
They were in the spotlight at the recently concluded Group of 20 summit in New Delhi, where the Global Biofuels Alliance (GBA), a multilateral initiative to augment the use of biofuels, was launched to help meet global decarbonisation goals.
The GBA has nine members, including two of the top four biofuel-producing countries – the United States and Brazil – as well as India, which has put its diplomatic heft behind the initiative.
Singapore and Canada have observer status.
The other two main biofuel-producing countries – not in the GBA – are Indonesia and China.
A spokesperson for Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry (MTI) told The Straits Times it is studying how biofuels can support the country’s decarbonisation efforts and the role it can play in regional biofuel markets and supply chains.
While Singapore cannot be a significant producer of biofuels given its limited land and agricultural resources, MTI said the country can nonetheless play an important role in other areas such as biofuel processing and trading.
“To this end, we look forward to learning from the experience and expertise of other participating countries in the Global Biofuels Alliance and to contribute to global climate action,” it added.
A cleaner source of energy compared with conventional fossil fuels, biofuels are derived from biomass, such as from plants or agricultural and industrial biowaste.
But the push for biofuels, much of which is produced from feedstocks such as sugar cane and corn, has raised concerns.
Diversion of food crops to produce biofuels harms food security, especially for the poor when food prices are already soaring because of the war in Ukraine.
Another sticking point is deforestation to clear land needed to grow biofuel feedstocks. Such unsustainable production has a negative impact not just on biodiversity, but also on the ability of natural habitats to capture carbon.
A March 2023 report from the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research in Heidelberg, Germany, went as far as to describe biofuels as an “obstacle to mitigating climate change”, and suggested that investing in solar energy was a far better idea.
It claimed that one needed 40 times less land to power an electric car with solar energy compared with biofuel.
Converting just 2.5 per cent of the land dedicated to biofuels to solar energy, the report added, could produce the same amount of energy, leaving vast tracts of land for rewilding or food production.
Unsurprisingly, sustainability will be a key focus for the GBA.
Besides securing the supply of biofuels and ensuring they remain affordable, the alliance will support development and deployment of “sustainable biofuels”.
It plans to do so by helping to build capacity across the value chain to produce such biofuels and by sharing technical support as well as policy lessons.
“Producing biofuel sustainably means ensuring protection of livelihoods, life and environment, which requires countries to rethink, among other things, the conflict between use of land for food versus fuel purposes.
“It also means ensuring you don’t deforest to produce crops for fuels,” said Ms Shweta Saini, the founder of Arcus Policy Research, a New Delhi-based research organisation.
A May 2023 report by the organisation suggested that India augment its declining arable-land availability by reviving fallow tracts to produce crops, including for biofuels.
It also recommended that the cultivation of water-guzzling crops such as rice and sugar cane, which make up much of the biofuel feedstocks in India, be made efficient to minimise biofuels’ environmental footprint.
Multiple studies have shown that biofuel production from feedstocks drives up food prices, especially when supplies are short and market prices high.
This “food versus fuel” debate has been revived because of the Russia-Ukraine war, with policies to boost biofuel production – such as crop subsidies and blending mandates – being questioned.
India, for instance, has mandated that petrol sold in the country will be blended with 20 per cent ethanol by 2025.
Its distilleries use rice, among other sources, to produce ethanol.
In September 2022, India, the world’s largest rice exporter, banned the export of broken rice
“Ideally, countries should avoid distorting markets through subsidies and mandates, or at the least maintain flexible biofuel policies that suspend mandates and subsidies when feedstock supplies are low and prices high,” said Dr Joseph Glauber, a senior research fellow with the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, DC.
In July 2023, however, the Indian government had to even cut its rice supplies to distilleries because of fears that inadequate monsoon rainfall could crimp forthcoming production of the grain.
The International Energy Agency estimates that global sustainable biofuel production will have to triple by 2030 to put the world on track to meet net-zero emission goals by 2050.
Moving away from first-generation biofuels, which are produced from food crops, has emerged as a critical need to ensure sustainability.
Ms Saini told ST the biofuels alliance represented a good beginning on this front, adding that its member countries should now help speed up the commercial production of biofuels produced from agricultural waste, as well as newer sources such as algae.
“As a statement of intention, the GBA is brilliant. We hope it progresses with the same enthusiasm as we saw at the launch,” she added.
At Neste, a Finnish biofuel firm, waste and residues account for more than 90 per cent of its renewable raw-material inputs annually.
This includes animal fat from food-industry waste and used cooking oil.
The firm hopes to ramp up its global production, including from its refinery in Singapore, from the current 4.5 million tonnes annually to 6.8 million tonnes in 2026.
But this growth in sustainable biofuel production requires access to sufficient volumes of raw materials, the demand for which has been increasing, said a Neste spokesperson.
To meet this challenge, the company has been diversifying its raw-material sources and exploring lower-quality waste and residues, such as wastewater-derived grease.
It is also developing future raw-material options, such as microalgae that can be cultivated wherever there is water and sunlight.
