Socioeconomic

Socioeconomic and Environmental Impact of Biofuels in Developing Countries.

By Gustavo Correa. PhD.

Introduction.

Oil as energetic source would be over within the next fifty years. It is the reason because countries around the world, but particularly industrialized or developed countries are encouraging the production of biofuels or agrofuels. However, the production of biofuels have different social, economic and environmental impact in each country depending on its natural resources used for production as well as social and political structures in each region.

Biofuels or biodiesels are fuels that are, in essence, biodegradable and non-toxic. They are manufactured from vegetable oils, waste cooking oils, animal fats or tall oil (a by-product of the pulp and paper industry). (NBEP, 2007).

The world is facing a huge global campaign whose purpose is to incorporate the fastest possible different feedstocks such as sugar cane, soybeans, oil palm, corn, rapeseed, sugar beet, etc.., to the production of biofuels as perfect substitutes for petroleum and its derivatives. The main justifications found for this phenomenon are based on global warming and environmental pollution. The 1st biofuels generation use crops as raw material or feedstock, and mostly they are biodiesel and bioethanol which accounts for over 90% of biofuels that is currently used in the world. In Brazil, Sweden and the United States there are 6 million vehicles which can accept mixtures ethanol / gasoline to 85%. The processing steps are different depending biofuels and raw material. Main steps for bioethanol production, and the technologies used in the 1st generation are simpler than those of 2nd generation which is based on cellulosic material. Also, the production costs and investment are lower for the 1st generation, and it has promoted its popularity. (Gonzalez, 2009)

Now, many of the crops used as feedstock are crops that must be cultivated under particular environmental conditions such as rain forest (palm oil), or regions with high brightness for a consistent performance throughout the year as sugar cane. Coincidentally these environmental conditions occur in specific underdevelopment countries or regions, and those regions are where the investors are concentrating all efforts on the production of biofuels from 1st generation.

However, the main question that merges is: Are the biofuels production the right path to development for developing countries?

A disadvantage in the production of these fuels has been the rising price of food, increasing competition for land and water, and deforestation. When agricultural land used for growing direct biofuels, rather than use only the remains of other crops, has begun to produce effect of competition between food production and biofuel, resulting in increased price of the first (Hernandez and Hernandez, 2008). But, the discussion about these energy resource is just beginning, and just now is being analyzed the impacts over developing countries and it would be a crucial part to establish in the future new parameters for biofuels production and the development of new technologies. During this work I pretend to review from written resources and different authors what have been the pros and cons of biofuel production in developing countries with emphasis in a few of them.

Advantages and Disadvantages.

The biofuels are center of a new debate about environment and development. Then, there are contradictors as well as supporters of this new business.

First, there are advantages such as the socio-environmental impacts and intensification of production is reflected favorably on farmer training expectations and the generation of income, improved soil value, also, new opportunities, training, and job quality compared with local jobs. In 2006, in Mexico began the construction of two plants of ethanol in the state of Sinaloa. The argument for this policy is to dispose of the maize production from this region toward niche market comprising California and Arizona, in the United States (Chauvet and Gonzalez 2008).

Production biofuels in the world is profitable through subsidies and incentives that have energies renewable. In Brazil, prices to be sustainable at levels profitability of their production of ethanol from sugar cane, is profitable when the barrel oil ranges from 45 to 50 dollars (Chauvet and Gonzalez 2008).

In general as I cited before there are two main biofuels that are bioethanol (ethanol) and biodiesel, and it is because their use as combustible for cars, equipment for transportation, machinery and industries as heat and energy resources. Then, there are in “a grosso modo” a list with benefits and harms to biofuels in general (from a technical point of view):

Advantages.

• The biofuels in general coming from animal fat, vegetal oil, or waste products are supposed to be less expensive that diesel or gasoline.

• Renewable. It is considered a renewable energy resource because it could be cultivated or raised in farms (chicken fat, fish fat, etc).

• The production of biofuels can give to the countries an independent position with respect to foreign countries, and it is particularly demonstrable trough what have been happenings with petroleum products imported from Arabic countries that are politically unstable and member of OPEC that manipulate supply across the world.

• New employment. It is said that new plants of ethanol or biodiesel would bring new and better jobs to rural and depressed areas.

• The carbon emission will be decreased, and it will help to avoid the “greenhouse effect” that contributes to the “global warming” phenomenon.

Disadvantages.

• Heat efficiency. Some scientists have found that biofuels have less caloric energy than oil, and it is a huge problem to use them in combustion for motors and machinery in general.

• Food price. The biofuels have been blamed to food high prices during the last five years.

• CO2 emission. For some biofuels, after adding and subtracting the CO2 generated, it has been shown that the equipment used to produce these fuels, from seed plantation to processing as well, ironically in some cases is higher than if only is used gasoline or diesel oil.

• Water resources. Crops to produce these fuels are more water demanding than food crops, also need as many chemicals (which are produced from oil), then these biofuel crops not only help to pollute

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