Biomass, Energy for Sustainable Development

Oil, natural gas and their derived-products

account for 55% of the world’s energy consumption. The

fast and efficient transport facilities of our times, as well as

most industrial activities are possible thanks to these fuels.

Unfortunately, they will last as much as a few decades: as fossil

fuels, their reserves are finite, supply safety is troublesome for

many importing countries and their use is the main source

of climate-changing and global warming gases.

These fuels, thus, must be substituted. The most rational

way of producing the substitutes is using renewable organic

matter (biomass), out of which, long ago, fossil fuels were

produced by nature. One of the options is the ethanol, an

excellent substitute for gasoline, the main car fuel used

around the globe.

For example in Brazil, the sugarcane-based ethanol substitutes half

of the gasoline that would be used if it did not exist and its cost is competitive without the subsidies that helped

launching the program at first. That has been accomplished

in 30 years since the Brazilian Ethanol Program was

launched in the 1970s to reduce the dependence on oil

imports. Economic considerations of the sugar industry

also had a bearing on the program when it was lauched;

however, environmental and social concerns did not play a

significant role at that time.

Another kind of example found In the United States, the largest world producer of cornbased

ethanol, an ethanol programme has been recently

launched and its justifications are eliminating additives

on gasoline and cutting down on global-warming gases. In

Western Europe, wheat and beet-based ethanol are also

used. In these countries, the cost of ethanol is four times

greater than in Brazil and internal subsidies and customs

barriers protect local industries, preventing ethanol

imports from Brazil.

This has caused some groups to feel quite uneasy, as they associate ethanol (and biodiesel,

produced at smaller amounts) to a false dilemma: producing food versus fuels. This argument

does not find grounds as we realize that ethanol production in the world, around 50 billion

liters per year, takes 15 million hectares, that is, 1% of the area currently used for agriculture

purposes in the world (ie, 1.5 billion hectares).

These groups also argue that, in fact, ethanol does not cut down on greenhouse gases;

however, in the case of sugarcane-based ethanol that is a misconception. Actually,

sugarcane-based ethanol is almost entirely renewable, since sugarcane bagasse supplies the

entire energy required in the industrial phase of ethanol production. The United States is in a

less comfortable position because ethanol production requires the use of energy fully derived

from external fossil-fuel sources. We can say that corn-based ethanol is, in fact, fossil-fuels

converted into ethanol, whereas in Brazil, it is almost fully derived from solar energy.

Sugarcane and corn production expansion involve changes in land-use, which may cause

emission of greenhouse gases if expansion triggers deforestation, which is not the case of

Brazil, where sugarcane expansion is taking place mostly in areas previously occupied by

pasture lands. Indeed, this is a an issue related to the expansion of agriculture more than a

problem associated with the expansion of ethanol (or biodiesel) production. The dilemma

here, if any, could be on food production versus climate change.

What we may call “a Brazilian fix for fossil fuel problems” - the use of sugarcane-based

ethanol to substitute gasoline – is not only a Brazilian phenomenon, as it is being adopted in

other sugarcane producing countries (almost one hundred), such as Colombia, Venezuela,

Mozambique and Mauritius Islands.

… in Indonesia, I don’t think so, the government seem like preferring to substitute many kinds of fossil energy with another fossil fuel such as Natural Gas or coal.