Wednesday, January 16, 2008 Editorials: Biofuels Act at the crossroads
BIOFUEL advocates used to have an easy time advancing their cause until recently when their position is being unusually challenged.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago has, for example, claimed that "some politicians have over-hyped the Biofuels Act to burnish their image, thus misleading the public."
In the House, the senior deputy minority leader has reiterated his proposal to the committees on ecology, energy and agriculture to review the impact of the biofuel program in view of questions on its efficiency.
He was reacting to reports that speculators are now pushing for the conversion of rice farms into plantations for biofuel sources such as sugar cane, corn, cassava, nipa, jatropha, palm, soy, rapeseed, and coconut.
Some farmers are said to be converting part of their rice land to jatropha farm, lured by the promise of higher income.
This could spark a conflict between our need to produce food and the need to produce fuel oil.
Different
But Juan Miguel Zubiri, author of the Biofuels Act in the House and who is now a senator, insisted that "biofuel development would not only reduce the country's diesel and gasoline imports, but also benefit the country's farmers."
Zubiri pointed out that the situation here is different from that in the United States.
Americans use corn to produce bioethanol; in Europe producers use soybean and sunflower to produce biodiesel.
Here we use sugarcane to produce bioethanol and jatropha to produce biodiesel.
He said there is no need to tap other lands and use instead areas already planted with sugar, which is not a basic food source.
"It would help revive the sugar industry," he said.
Toss-up
But critics note that in Malaysia and Indonesia, companies have invested tens of millions of dollars into plants that convert Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil into zero pollution diesel but at a cost that is some 30 percent higher than that of regular diesel.
This shows that while the anti-pollution goals of the Biofuels Act can be achieved, the target to have cheaper fuel prices may not be.
Consequently, the biofuel issue in Congress has become a toss-up between those who are for it, and those who are against it.
It is a question really of which side can offer the Filipino people the best assurance of a firmer quality of life.
