Will Asia's food shortages be exacerbated by new Global Biofuels Alliance, with crops diverted?

Environmentalists are split over whether the launch of an international biofuels collaboration at this month's G20 summit in India may end up harming climate mitigation efforts and exacerbate food shortages.

The Global Biofuels Alliance (GBA) - its members including India, the United States, the United Arab Emirates and Brazil - aims to help boost global efforts to meet net-zero goals by accelerating the use of biofuels.

Import-dependent nations are also searching for alternatives following a surge in crude oil prices recently to around US$95 per barrel.

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Biofuels are produced quickly from biomass - from plants and agricultural waste, including from animals - rather than by the very slow natural processes involved in fossil fuels.

But analysts say that using more biofuels may result in the diversion of crops like sugar cane and rice for fuel, which could exacerbate food shortages and lead to more deforestation.

Instead, they say, it's better to focus on renewable energy production.

"Political leadership must think of feeding humans first, automobiles can wait," said Devinder Sharma, a trade and food policy analyst. "Food should never be diverted for activities which have nothing to do with food security.

"At a time when the UN has set a goal to achieve zero hunger by 2030, to form a global biofuel alliance would be nothing short of a historic blunder."

Biofuels are produced primarily through the fermentation of crops that are high in sugar (starch) or fat into ethanol, which can be mixed with petrol to power cars.

Sugar cane and palm oil are commonly used in many nations, including in Asia, in both human and animal products, food among them.

Policy mandates and subsidies to produce biofuels, though, could mean more hungry mouths to feed, as production would be diverted "away from food use" to fuel and other industrial uses, said Joseph Glauber, senior research fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington.

Growing crops for biofuels is less of an issue when supplies are plentiful and prices are low, he added. "The problem comes when there are supply shortfalls and prices rise."

Encouraging more biofuels would encourage higher production of sugar cane, palm oil, soybeans, maize and other crops, Glauber said.

"To the degree that these policies result in additional areas under cultivation, land use consequences like deforestation may result. Biofuel production should be driven by market price, not subsidies or mandates," he said.

Other analysts, however, say biofuels could help to reduce dependence on fossil fuels in the short to medium term.

For highly-import dependent nations like India, which imports 85 per cent of its oil and 50 per cent of its natural gas needs, biofuels can partially replace fossil fuels and help enhance energy security, said Purva Jain, energy analyst at the US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA).

India aims to be carbon neutral by 2027. It has advanced its deadline for doubling nationwide ethanol blending in petrol to 20 per cent by 5 years, to 2025.

Through this, the nation is expected to save US$5.4 billion worth of oil imports annually, Jain said. But she added that analysing land use issues would be vital, especially for biofuels such as ethanol that use food crops like sugar cane.

An IEEFA report said that generating solar energy to recharge electric vehicles is a far more efficient use of land than growing ethanol crops for fuel, Jain added.

She also said the new biofuels alliance can improve knowledge and technology collaboration for so-called second or third generation - advanced - biofuels, which would help to lower dependence on food crops to make them.

These kind of biofuels can be made from various kinds of non-food residue - from both plant materials and animal waste - including forestry and crop residues, algae and sewage, which are then used specifically as a source of biofuel.

Northern India, which is smothered in the winter by smog, in large part due to the burning of rice stalks, could use the material for multiple uses including cooking and electricity, Jain added.

Another expert, however, highlighted that burning biofuels may also have harmful effects.

It could reduce import expenses for oil and gas "but it will continue to provide a lifeline to fossil fuel production and consumption", said Souparna Lahiri, Senior Climate and Biodiversity Policy Adviser at the Global Forest Coalition.

That is because biofuels are made using fossil fuels too. So, for example, while less gas is used, it is still massively in the mix.

"At best, the resulting carbon emissions from a mix of biofuel and fossil fuel could be seen as resulting in some amount of avoided emissions," Lahiri said.

The amount depends on the type of biofuel, although so far there are few studies.

The impact of biofuels on engines is also not yet known, added Lahiri, with biofuels being "corrosive", with an impact on engine life.

Furthermore, the production of biofuels from palm oil plantations could aggravate environmental problems in places like Indonesia, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea, he said.

In recent years, the palm oil industry has received much international negative attention - and seen consumer boycotts - for clearing biodiversity-rich tropical rainforests in Southeast Asia.

Even using rice husks for ethanol could result in "locking massive areas of land" for one crop, Lahiri added, which is "not good for soil and biodiversity".

Richard Robertson, a forest campaigner with Stand.earth, a grassroots environmental organisation, said there is an increasing threat to forests from the biomass industry.

"This is coupled with the fact that burning biomass is a false solution to the climate crisis, since the urgency of this crisis means that there is not the time for these forests to grow back and absorb the carbon emitted from burning them," he said.

Forests need to remain as carbon sinks rather than be degraded by industrial activities, he said.

"The scale and intensity of the biomass industry is such that forests come under threat both to directly being logged to feed biomass plants and to make way for palm oil and other crops to supply the industry," Robertson added.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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