Waste fuels no threat to food

Adelaide Advertiser
Thursday 18/9/2008 Page: 19

Second-generation biofuels can ease climate change without reducing food production, writes Dr Glenn Tong.

SOUTH Australia's longest serving Premier, Sir Thomas Playford, recounted a meeting he had as a young man with famed Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in London after World War I. Without having met him before, Conan Doyle correctly told Playford a number of things about him, including the fact that he was the oldest child in his family. Doyle said he could divine his sibling ranking from the way Playford spoke; he was used to being listened to, which, the author said, was the mark of the first born.

What would Doyle's creation, Holmes, say was the explanation for the opposition to biofuels globally? Because, sadly, it would seem that biofuels now are opposed in many quarters, despite their potential benefits. biofuels are produced from plants which pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, whereas fossil fuels bring no such benefits. So, biofuels have far less impact on global warming.

Opponents of biofuels say that, just like fossil fuels, arable land is a finite resource and competition between growing crops for food and for fuel presents obvious ethical questions. Developing countries assert that rich countries, in their hurry to respond to global warming, are driving up food prices by encouraging the use of crops to produce biofuels rather than feed people.

The World Bank's 2008 World Development Report states that about a quarter of a tonne of corn - enough to feed one person for a year - is needed to produce 100 litres of ethanol, enough to fill the tank of a sports utility vehicle. Last month, the head of BHP Billiton, Marius Kloppers, was reported as saying, "we are making hundreds of millions of people worse off with biofuels because it's pushing up food prices". Other international figures see biofuels in no better a light. The United Nations special rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, says biofuel production could amount to a "crime against humanity" because it will bring more hunger.

Mr Kloppers and Mr Ziegler's remarks may be relevant to first generation biofuels where there is a conversion of starch sourced from crops such as maize and sugar cane into ethanol. This ignores the benefits of second-generation biofuels. This is where cellulosic biomass, like wheat straw and sugar cane bagasse, is converted into ethanol, offering a means to convert low value agricultural residues - in effect waste products - into high value fuel, without any competition between food and fuel. Therefore, the best of both worlds can be achieved.

There are, of course, myriad advantages in using biofuels. Transport fuels account for about 40 per cent of Australia's energy use. All of this is hydrocarbon-based and most is imported and subject to the uncertainty of international developments. Critics who still perpetuate the food-versus-fuel argument do not appreciate the fundamental difference between first and second-generation biofuels. In Australia, more than 38 million tonnes of wheat straw, essentially a waste product, is produced each year. This represents a tremendous potential feedstock with which to produce second-generation biofuels and, in turn, help combat climate change.

What was once waste can be turned into a valuable resource of renewable fuel without competition against food supplies or increasing the demand for arable land. The potential exists for us to make a real impact on climate change through using biofuels as renewable energy sources. Second-generation biofuels offer a win for both food and renewable energy. Holmes, on the basis of these facts, could only agree.

Or Glen Tong is CEO of Molecular Plant Breeding Co-operative Research Centres formed in 2003 under a program funded by the Commonwealth Government. The MPBCRC has a large research unit within the Waite campus of the University of Adelaide.