Biofuel Utilization Strategies to Promote Sustainable Development

Biofuels have attracted much attention due to the exciting potential opportunities for them to contribute to increasing energy security, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, economic development and poverty reduction in developing countries. However, there are also fears that, in practice, these opportunities may not be realised, and biofuels may instead end up actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions and causing or contributing to other environmental, ecological, and socioeconomic problems.

Some countries in Asia already have ambitious plans to develop biofuels on a large scale, and many others are quickly developing new plans. For example, India is producing bioethanol from molasses from sugar production, China is producing from surplus wheat, sweet sorghum and cassava and Indonesia is producing biodiesel from palm oil. India and China have already put in place energy policies that promote mixing 5% and 10% biofuel for transport use, and India aims to raise this share to 20% by 2020.

However, there are fears that biofuel markets may not develop in a sustainable way. Possible negative environmental and ecological consequences of large scale biofuel feedstock production include deforestation, biodiversity loss, land degradation, water pollution, and water shortages. Biofuel feedstock production already appears to be resulting in a food-fuel conflict characterised by higher food and feed prices, thereby presenting a trade-off between biofuels and food security. These issues are not always considered in countries’ biofuel promotion policies.

Therefore, it is desirable to re-examine the existing policy environment in Asia and Pacific region and identify suitable appropriate policy responses to addresses these issues. The Biofuel Project at the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies aims to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the environmental, economic, and social effects of biofuels relating to their production, trade, and use, in order to formulate effective policy options to optimize environmentally sustainable biofuel use in Asia.

In this project, various potential policy options are being considered, including promoting feedstocks which do not compete with food production and which can be grown in marginal and sub-marginal lands; promoting technological solutions such as energy crops; lingocellulosics; plant modification through plant breeding techniques and identification of advanced conversion techniques; market based regulations that balance environment, energy security and rural development goals; identifying appropriate utilization strategies such as mixing fossil fuels and biofuels; and promotion of low technology biofuel production that promotes rural employment and agro-industries.

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This abstract was submitted to 4th Asia DME Conferece to be conducted from 12-14 Nov 2007 at Kitakyushu, Japan.