Biofuel: Need a comprehensive look

In addition to the benefits of developing biofuels, there are also many environmental, economic and social risks. These are two sides of a development process. The problem is promoting the benefits of biofuels and limiting the risks.

Biofuel is known for its many advantages: one of the measures to curb global warming; helping countries to be proactive, not dependent on fuel imports, especially for countries without oil and coal resources; curbing the rise in gasoline prices, stabilizing the energy situation for the world; create more jobs for people; nor does it require expensive equipment and technology.

Brazil is one of the leading countries in the world's biofuel development movement. From a country that has to import oil every year, Brazil has now become completely self-reliant on fuel, and has proved to be an absolute advantage of biofuels for underground fuel sources.

(Artwork: Bookstore.teriin.org) Recognizing the importance and benefits of biofuels, the US, the European community and many other countries around the world follow Brazil's example, rushing to develop the public foundation. There are many potentials in this industry.

But lessons from Brazil also show that everything has its price.

In addition to the known advantages, biofuel development also contains many environmental, economic and social risks. If it is not well managed and controlled, bad effects will occur, even to the extent that it engulfs the positive aspects of biofuels. The risk will be even clearer with the increasing scale of the biofuels industry.

Brazil will have an abundance of biofuels exported to the US and other countries in the world. To achieve the goal, the country will have to expand the area of ​​sugarcane (a material tree to produce biofuels) from 13, 6 million acres (1 acre ~ 0.4 ha) as it is now. 20.5 million arce in 2012-2013, larger than the area of ​​Maine, a large state in the United States.

In the past year, Brazil alone accounted for 65% of world ethanol exports, about 898 million gallons, an increase of 31% compared to 2005. At this rate, Brazil will increase its export ethanol volume by 2013. The current pair, estimated at 1.85 million gallons. The rapid development will put a lot of pressure on land resources, especially the area of ​​Brazil's traditional arable land, animal husbandry and forest, even threatening the entire Amazon basin region, which is known. as one of the richest ecological zones in the world needs to be preserved.

But that is not all, the main risks in the process of developing biofuels should be mentioned are:

1. Food issues

The use of land to grow biofuel crops could affect food supplies or increase food prices, especially for developing countries. When farmers see that planting material trees (such as sugarcane, palm .) is more profitable than growing rice, corn, potatoes, and cassava, they will stop transplanting rice, switch to sugarcane and palm to supply plants. and make food production decrease.

2. Pollution and exhaustion of water resources

Many types of raw plants require a lot of water during the growth process, so if grown too large, too large an area will deplete the water in the area. In addition, the widespread use of glory, a substance used to fertilize and irrigate sugarcane, can also contaminate rivers, canals and make aquatic species impossible to survive. In 2003, it was reported that a vihoto infection occurred in Sao Paolo, causing fish to die massively throughout Brazil's 95 miles of Rio Grande River.

3. Reduce forest area

In order to have land to plant material, people can continue deforestation. This goes against the goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions that biofuel developers still want. Reducing forest area also means disaster from soil erosion, reduction of timber for construction and other people's needs.

In Pernambuco province, Brazil's most sugarcane-growing region, only 2.5% of forest area is left in the beginning. This is the result of Brazil's policy of growing sugarcane for many years, both before and after the goal of biofuel production.

Some researchers are concerned that, in order to achieve the ambition of satisfying the world's biofuel demand, Brazil may have to pay the price of 148 million acres of forests that continue to be cut down.

4. Risks from monoculture

Planting only one tree for a long time on the same area will make the land barren and unable to continue farming.

In order to avoid the negative effects of monoculture, the Sao Paolo government had to pass a law on crop rotation policy, requiring that 20% of the annual sugarcane plantation area be replaced with one Other plants, before continuing to grow sugarcane.

5. Risk from genetic modification of material plants.

Biofuels are made up of many different plants (Photo: Ditjenbun.deptan.go.id)

In order to increase productivity, industrial plants are now genetically modified. The risk from genetically modified plants has been mentioned by many scientists. There are ecological imbalances, or natural genetic changes in plants and animals that live in the surrounding environment, including harmful organisms, making these organisms ability to survive stronger, more difficult to eradicate and destroy other innocent agricultural crops.

6. The risk of biofuel extraction from agricultural waste and some other plant species.

In addition to sugarcane, soybeans, palm . biofuels can also be produced from other agricultural waste and grass. However, agricultural waste and grass also have a separate role for the environment, can not be exploited without calculation.

Agricultural waste, has long been used as a measure of fertility regeneration, helps maintain the productive capacity of the land. Recovering agricultural waste without compensation, the land will become barren, impossible for products.

Some grass species are effective in keeping water, preventing erosion and flooding, and cannot exploit one way.

7. Socio-economic risks

The biofuels industry cannot stop at small scale production, but is constantly growing. Large plantations, wide-open sugarcane fields and flyers are increasingly appearing in Brazil, but hidden behind that magnificent scene are many economic and social issues that need to be addressed.

The poor, unable to cultivate autonomy must sell their fields. Land focuses on some large landlords. Thus, a class of people will deprive the means of production, fall into unemployment, poverty, destabilize social life. Accordingly, the situation of rich and poor diversification is becoming more and more obvious.

Recognizing the risk, Brazil recently launched a program called " bio-fuel biofuels ", which facilitates small-scale farming for the purpose of eradicating hunger and reducing poverty for many farmers.

8. And many other risks

There are many other difficulties affecting the biofuel development process of each country. Even as the recent developed countries have established a tariff barrier on the import of biofuels, in order to limit poor countries from developing this kind of energy, it can be considered a need to be anticipated. .

In short, in addition to the main issues, it is difficult to tell all the risks in the process of developing biofuels. But above all, it is clear that biofuels still have huge, undisputed benefits to ensure the energy security of each nation, eradicate hunger and reduce poverty for people and contribute to the public. global environmental preservation and protection.

So although there is still much debate about biofuels among economists, policy, science and environmental protection planning around the problem of prevention, restriction and risk recovery, but all agree to conclude: biofuel development is inevitable, but both sides of the process need to be made clear and proceed with caution, otherwise benefits promise to reap from the Biological data will no longer be available.

Dang Ngoc Yen (Summary of foreign materials)