The current debate on international bio-fuel policy has reached Maltese shores. This crucial environmental issue, however, now risks confusing this international concern with the local bio-diesel setting. A clarification is necessary to distinguish between these two issues which are totally dissimilar.
The international debate focuses on grain-produced bio-fuels as a substitute for the unsustainable use of diminishing fossil fuels and also to counter/avoid carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. This, it is being claimed, has led to rising grain prices as more land is being taken over for bio-fuel crops and has also brought increasing deforestation to meet the growing demand for bio-fuels.
Another issue regarding growing international concern is that although burning fuel releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere living trees and plants absorb a comparable amount of the gas. However, the debate on whether bio-fuels are climate-friendly also involves the argument that the energy employed in farming and processing the crops may produce as much pollution as petroleum-based fuels.
The local picture is totally different to the international one. Bio-diesel being produced in Malta offers a win-win scenario all the way seeing as it recycles used cooking oils that would otherwise have been absorbed into the local waste stream to the detriment of the environment.
Bio-diesel produced in Malta is actually made up of used oils and fats collected primarily from the catering trade and local households. Local bio-diesel is not grain-based as is the bio-fuel being contested on the international stage. The international bio-fuel being disputed makes use of grain cultivated specifically for the production of ethanol which makes up for 15 per cent of bio-fuel of which 85 per cent is petrol.
The pressure on prices of food products that are now being utilised for bio-fuel production is rhetoric and put forward by the strong petroleum lobby. The reality is that the two most populated places in the world, namely China and India, have double digit economy growth and with such affluence they are consuming more and eating more.
Over the past three years, EORC - who won the 2007 Industry Sustainability Award - has put some five million litres of clean-burning 100 per cent carbon-neutral and carbon-free fuel in the market. Fat Chance, the EORC Malta bio-diesel project, was also among the three finalists at the BBC & Newsweek World
Challenge Awards in 2005, short-listed from 500 international projects worldwide.
EORC continues to be on the forefront of bio-diesel research in collaboration with local scientists who are exploring alternative second generation bio-fuel utilising non-edible feedstock including algae and jatropha.
Malta is still one of the few places where bio-diesel is cheaper than diesel.
European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Mariann Fischer Boel said recently that bio-fuels are being used as a "scapegoat" to explain a sudden rise in food costs. He said: "Cereal prices have halved in real terms since 1975, but right now they are climbing, and people are worried." "The storm of media comment about (bio-fuels) has become louder and louder, to the point where it's now difficult to hear the real debate above the shriek of the wind," added the commissioner.
UN and EU officials also recently said said that bio-fuels should be developed more selectively to prevent competition with food crops, but they are still an answer to climate change. The European Regional Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said there was some concern that some bio-fuels did not go in the right direction but crops such as sugar cane could be part of the solution if grown in the right places and with a sustainable production system.
At the same conference, the EU Environment Commissioner said that the EU was drawing up new rules on bio-fuel development that took environmental and social concerns into consideration.
Commission analysis shows that the European Union's target for every member state to use 10 per cent bio-fuels in all road transport by 2020 will not put an excessive strain on land resources nor food and feed markets.
Global warming is now a scientifically acknowledged fact and if we do not switch energy use soon, within 50 years we risk redefined land mass, loss of agricultural belts and 30 per cent loss of present crops through arid climate and rising waters.
The great international fuel debate does not comprise Malta's pro-environment option of recycling used oils and fats. Unfortunately a Malta-type recycling option does not appear anywhere on the international agenda. Maybe if it did it would dissipate the crossed swords and afford a more manageable and eco-friendly situation.
• Mr Psaila is commercial manager at EORC
The international debate focuses on grain-produced bio-fuels as a substitute for the unsustainable use of diminishing fossil fuels and also to counter/avoid carbon dioxide emissions into the atmosphere. This, it is being claimed, has led to rising grain prices as more land is being taken over for bio-fuel crops and has also brought increasing deforestation to meet the growing demand for bio-fuels.
Another issue regarding growing international concern is that although burning fuel releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere living trees and plants absorb a comparable amount of the gas. However, the debate on whether bio-fuels are climate-friendly also involves the argument that the energy employed in farming and processing the crops may produce as much pollution as petroleum-based fuels.
The local picture is totally different to the international one. Bio-diesel being produced in Malta offers a win-win scenario all the way seeing as it recycles used cooking oils that would otherwise have been absorbed into the local waste stream to the detriment of the environment.
Bio-diesel produced in Malta is actually made up of used oils and fats collected primarily from the catering trade and local households. Local bio-diesel is not grain-based as is the bio-fuel being contested on the international stage. The international bio-fuel being disputed makes use of grain cultivated specifically for the production of ethanol which makes up for 15 per cent of bio-fuel of which 85 per cent is petrol.
The pressure on prices of food products that are now being utilised for bio-fuel production is rhetoric and put forward by the strong petroleum lobby. The reality is that the two most populated places in the world, namely China and India, have double digit economy growth and with such affluence they are consuming more and eating more.
Over the past three years, EORC - who won the 2007 Industry Sustainability Award - has put some five million litres of clean-burning 100 per cent carbon-neutral and carbon-free fuel in the market. Fat Chance, the EORC Malta bio-diesel project, was also among the three finalists at the BBC & Newsweek World
Challenge Awards in 2005, short-listed from 500 international projects worldwide.
EORC continues to be on the forefront of bio-diesel research in collaboration with local scientists who are exploring alternative second generation bio-fuel utilising non-edible feedstock including algae and jatropha.
Malta is still one of the few places where bio-diesel is cheaper than diesel.
European Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Mariann Fischer Boel said recently that bio-fuels are being used as a "scapegoat" to explain a sudden rise in food costs. He said: "Cereal prices have halved in real terms since 1975, but right now they are climbing, and people are worried." "The storm of media comment about (bio-fuels) has become louder and louder, to the point where it's now difficult to hear the real debate above the shriek of the wind," added the commissioner.
UN and EU officials also recently said said that bio-fuels should be developed more selectively to prevent competition with food crops, but they are still an answer to climate change. The European Regional Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) said there was some concern that some bio-fuels did not go in the right direction but crops such as sugar cane could be part of the solution if grown in the right places and with a sustainable production system.
At the same conference, the EU Environment Commissioner said that the EU was drawing up new rules on bio-fuel development that took environmental and social concerns into consideration.
Commission analysis shows that the European Union's target for every member state to use 10 per cent bio-fuels in all road transport by 2020 will not put an excessive strain on land resources nor food and feed markets.
Global warming is now a scientifically acknowledged fact and if we do not switch energy use soon, within 50 years we risk redefined land mass, loss of agricultural belts and 30 per cent loss of present crops through arid climate and rising waters.
The great international fuel debate does not comprise Malta's pro-environment option of recycling used oils and fats. Unfortunately a Malta-type recycling option does not appear anywhere on the international agenda. Maybe if it did it would dissipate the crossed swords and afford a more manageable and eco-friendly situation.
• Mr Psaila is commercial manager at EORC