Management of Technology – Step to Sustainable Production, Sibenik June 10-12, 2009, Croatia

THE CURSE AND CURE OF BIOFUEL

Faganel A
University of Primorska, Faculty of Management Koper
Cankarjeva 5, Koper
Slovenia

ABSTRACT
Liquid transport fuels made from biomass have been seen as an opportunity of greening the transport
and avoiding expensive oil imports. Renewable energy sources account for 6.7 % of the European
energy consumption; mandatory target has been set at 20 % by 2020. However, negative sides of
biofuels are several: massive production of biofuel crops could release more CO2 than it would save;
danger of impacts on biodiversity and damaging soil and water resources; global rising of food prices
in 2008. Political support for the biofuel industry will be influenced by public perceptions of biofuels
contributions. The paper presents a media content analysis of the problem coverage in 2008, and an
inter-disciplinary insight of connected issues.

Keywords: biofuel industry, media coverage, green marketing, EU, energy consumption, sustainability

1. INTRODUCTION
Biofuels can be defined as solid, liquid, or gas fuel derived from recently dead biological material,
which is easily replaceable and treated as a renewable source of energy. This characteristic
distinguishes it from fossil fuels, derived from long dead biological materials. It can be produced from
almost any biological carbon source, but the most common materials in use are diverse photosynthetic
plants. Biofuel industries are in great expansion not only in Europe but all over the globe. Soaring
prices of fossil fuels, geo-political issues and environmental pollution associated with fossil fuel use
has led to worldwide interest in the production and use of biofuels. Developed and developing
countries have adopted a range of policies to encourage production of combustible fuels from plants.

EU policy framework for the development of a biofuels market is deriving from the Directive
2003/30/EC on the promotion of the use of biofuels or other renewable fuels for transport. Goals have
been set to adopt 2 percent of biofuel consumption by 2005, rising by 0.75 per annum and to reach
5.74 percent in 2010. These targets have not been met; EU has acknowledged some important
problems [1].

Two common strategies to produce biofuels are real: a) to grow crops high in sugar or starch and then
use yeast fermentation to produce ethanol, and b) to grow plants that contain high amount of vegetable
oil, such as oil palm, soybean, and algae. These oils can be burned directly in diesel engine or
chemically processed to produce fuels such as biodiesel. Wood and its byproducts can also be
converted into biofuels such as wood gas, methanol or ethanol fuel. Biofuels are discussed as having
significant roles in a variety of international issues, including: mitigation of carbon emissions levels
and oil prices, the “food versus fuel” debate, deforestation and soil erosion, impact on water resources,
and energy balance and efficiency.

Brighter future is to be seen for the next generations of biofuels, acquired from vegetables or their
dead parts, not useful as food for people or animals. Second generation of biofuels are produced from
biomass, third generation are biofuels from algae. Strengths of these biofuels is their huge energetic
gain, almost 30 times more than from biofuels made from land plants, but also algae help to transform
CO2 in oxygen. Forth generation of biofuels is based on the technology of Synthetic Genomics, which
developed the technology for direct production of biofuel from CO2 with help of genetically raised
microorganisms.
Management of Technology – Step to Sustainable Production, Sibenik June 10-12, 2009, Croatia

2. LITERATURE REVIEW: BIOFUEL APPROPRIATENESS AS OIL SUBSTITUTE

Ma and Hanna [2] discussed the environmental benefits and attractiveness of biodiesel and pointed
that the cost is the main hurdle to commercialization of the product. Article is typical for the early
stages of introducing biofuels in regular production, discussed the primary ways to make biodiesel.

Bozbas [3] investigated fuel characteristics of biodiesel and its production in EU. Demirbas [4]
discussed in his book the realistic of biodiesel’s alternative role and exposed also some views on
global renewable energy and biofuel scenarios and the biodiesel economy and policy. Jones et al. [5]
reviewed key drivers and policy initiatives at both the Comission and member state level, which are
influencing the development of the biofuels market in the EU until 2010. They also addressed some
sustainability and fuel quality issues arising from the use of first generation biofuels and defined the
introduction of the second generation of biofuels.

Panichelli et al. [6] analyzed the environmental impact of soybean-based biodiesel production in
Argentina (the first exporter of soybean oil in the world). The relevant impact categories for
sustainable life cycle assessment of biofuel production account for number of important issues: the
primary non-renewable energy consumption, the global warming potential, the eutrophication
potential, the acidification potential, the terrestrial ecotoxicity, the aquatic ecotoxicity, the human
toxicity and land use competition. Such assessments require a country-specific approach due to the
significant importance of local conditions in estimating the energy consumption and the greenhouse
gas emissions of the systems. But the consequences have to be taken globally, as they influence the
globe. Sustainability criteria to study the environmental performance of products have been developed
by many researchers [i.e. 7, 8].

Reddy et al. [9] discussed the potential benefits of biofuels in increasing the farmers’ incomes,
reducing the environment pollution, the crop options and research and development interventions
required to generate feedstocks to produce biofuels to meet projected demand without compromising
food/fodder security in developing countries.

European Parliament’s Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety commissioned a
study on the biofuels sustainability criteria addressing relevant issues to the proposed Directive on the
promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources [10]. It is clearly stated that the harmonisation
with other sustainability schemes is of outmost importance in order to create more effective markets
and provide clearer signals to producers and consumers.

Politics intentions on both sides of Atlantic were supported from the administrations with state
subsidies, which should encourage the plants production of farmers for the transformation in biofuels.
The calculation of farmers was simple, as they earned more money as if they would produce for food.
Final result was the increase of food prices, for the first time after 30 years. Some cereals price used
for biofuels production increased three times. Chain reaction caused the instability of animals’ meat,
as 53% of cereals produced ends in animals’ mouth [11]. Another important question is the reducing
of biotic varieties as consequence of preferring certain plants and proliferation of farming to prior
uncultivated but also very important lands (i.e. forests, swamps, etc). The enthusiasm of possible
income is causing big dilemmas in Tanzania for example. Government thoughtlessly signed a contract
with British company Sun Biofuels; they can exclusively use 8000 hectares for 100 years. The number
is soon to be increased to 40000 hectares. In neighbouring Mozambique its being negotiating for one
eight of state land to similar purposes [12]. Different issues are being weighted and researches
concerns together with NGO’s actions result in media interest in producing news and articles. Media
coverage is important for the formation of public opinion and consequently for the actions taken by
governments, so we assessed a segment of reporting about biodiesel in Slovenian newspapers in order
to research the distributed news on theme. Of course, media are not the real voice of people; it is one
of information sources for them. Other important issues are media ownership, government actions, etc.
Management of Technology – Step to Sustainable Production, Sibenik June 10-12, 2009, Croatia

3. MEDIA COVERAGE ON BIODIESEL

In this work a content analysis of biodiesel issues newspaper coverage during 15 month, from January
1, 2008 until March 31, 2009, was done. Newspapers taken in consideration were five main daily
newspapers in Slovenia, plus their five weekly supplements, 10 altogether. The papers are Dnevnik,
Delo, Večer, Slovenske Novice, and Finance; supplements are Polet, Ona, Delo FT, Sobotna priloga,
and Nedelo. Found articles were 64; three were irrelevant to our research, so we analyzed 61 articles.
A criterion to sort the content of articles was the tone of writing. It was decided to apply three
categories: positive, negative and neutral-informative articles. To secure the elimination of subjective
influence in categorization, a second researcher has done the same analysis; the difference has been
noticed in three articles (5 %), which were labeled diversely. Following further discussion the
discrepancies were eliminated and the final result can be seen in Table 1.

positive informative negative total

% 23,0 42,6 34,4 100
No 14 26 21 61
Table 1. Orientation towards biodiesel in Slovene newspapers, 1.1.2008-31.3.2009

One third of articles have taken negative connotation, criticizing the production, usage and promotion
of biodiesel. 23 % of articles agreed with European policy of incrementing the use of biodiesel,
showing the bright sides of alternative resource. And good forty percent were just summarizing
different stories, facts, numbers and news of usage, production and other issues.

Some inserts from analyzed articles are presented, to lighten the atmosphere that follows and in great
part creates the public opinion on these important questions. Informative articles were the most
common, so the first one are these sentences:
• “most of biofuels are sold as the mix of biodiesel and diesel, the biodiesel part not exceeding the 5
percent”
• “European farmers seeded 3,1 % less canola, used for production in biodiesel, as in the last year
for the first time since 2003.”

Positive articles were very scarce, they were emphasizing different views:
• “car is being set in motion by biodiesel made from oils, gained from cocoa butter of wasted
chocolate”
• “the importance of biodiesel fuels should be increasing in order to respect the guidelines of EU,
regarding the renewable energy sources”

The most heterogeneous group of articles was the one that criticized the implementation of biodiesel,
due to different reasons. It has been tried to recapitulate the most important and frequent:
• “biodiesel production does not only reduce the surface of farming land for human food, but means
also great danger in water supply, as for the biodiesel production enormous quantities of water are
needed. So the biodiesel does not represent a viable solution for oil, which prices reached for new
records this year”
• “food became expensive because of climate changes, increased demand of biodiesel and the
increase of world population”
• “especially biodiesel is the main culprit for the distinctive raising of food prices all over the globe,
which pushed over the poverty threshold another 100 mio people”
• “destroying polycultural habitats and extending to new wood areas”
• “German government offered subventions for farmers to seed the canola. Interest was big, but they
did not warn the farmers, that it is impossible to grow canola in the same place for three years,
except if fertilizing abundantly with fertilizers from oil derivates”
• “OECD study reports that the total amounts of subventions and other subsidies for the production
of biofuels surmounted 11 bio $ in 2006.”
Management of Technology – Step to Sustainable Production, Sibenik June 10-12, 2009, Croatia

4. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

The production of biofuels has to be competitive also from the environmental point of view, fulfilling
sustainability criteria as avoiding deforestation, applying reduced tillage and crops successions,
applying inoculation methods, increasing yield, using low ecotoxicity pesticides and using biomass-
based methanol or bioethanol in production [6].

The global climate policy is currently gaining biomass a great popularity. The large-scale use of
biomass in the energy supply makes it possible for fossil carbon (stored in oil, gas or hard coal) to
remain in the soil, instead of ending up in the atmosphere as greenhouse gas. But it is a common view
that these advantageous lower emissions of greenhouse gases must not be exchanged for the
detrimental consequences of large-scale production of crops for energy or transportation fuels.
Biomass must therefore be sustainably cultivated, processed and used [8].

Investigated articles demonstrate that there is taken a lot of media space in different written media
about the proliferation of crops use for transportation and energy instead for human and animal food.
Authors of these papers are in a very high percentage professional journalist, while interviewees come
from the lines of scientists, politicians and environmentalists. Different issues are being dealt with, and
governments (national and supranational) will have to reopen the debate on theme very urgent. Goals
determined in substituting the fossil fuels with biofuels have proven to be irresponsible and
sustainably inappropriate in such dimensions. Biofuels could be a viable part of solution, but placed in
order with singular countries characteristics and circumstances. Themes as greenhouse gas emissions,
competition with food and other local applications, biodiversity, environment, prosperity and social
well-being have to coordinated and assessed with care, developing a dialogue with stakeholders and
listen to them.

It cannot be discussed the dilemma food or fuel so lightly; certain commentators roll the guilt to
speculations with oil prices and the desire of OPEC to increase the income. Higher oil prices are
influencing the food prices because of expensive transportation and producing of food. But taken
obligations of USA and EU to introduce higher percentage of biofuel, contribute an important part to
this nonsense. Subsidies for biofuels production should be minimized, because it influences the
decisions of farmers to produce more food for the production of biofuel instead for people and animals
use. Alternative solutions have to be find with next generations biofuels, using otherwise useless parts
of plants. But these technologies are in early phases of development and we should not rush until
every aspect of the innovating process is cleared, such as environmental issues, ecological economics,
influences on the farmers decisions what to produce and so on.

5. REFERENCES
[1] EC, Directive 2003/30/EC on the promotion of the use of biofuels or other renewable fuels for
transport, 2003. EC, Brussels.
[2] Ma, F., Hanna, M.A. Biodiesel production: a review. Bioresource Technology 1999. Vol. 70, No.
1, p. 1-15.
[3] Bozbas, K. Biodiesel as an alternative motor fuel: Production and policies in the European Union,
Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 2008, Vol. 12, No. 2, p. 542-552.
[4] Demirbas, A. Biodiesel: a realistic fuel alternative for diesel engines, Springer, London, 2008.
[5] Jones, R., Rätzsch, T., Buchsbaum, A. Biofuels in the European Union, Goriva i maziva, 2007,
Vol. 46, No. 4, p. 281-306.
[6] Panichelli, L., Dauriat, A., Gnansounou, E. Life cycle assessment of soybean-based biodiesel in
Argentina for export, International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 2009 Vol. 14, No. 2, p. 144-159.
[7] Bauen, A., Watson, P., Howes, J. Carbon reporting within the renewable transport fuel obligation:
methodology, E4tech, London, 2008.
[8] Cramer, J. et al. Testing framework for sustainable biomass. Final report from the project group
‘Sustainable production of biomass’, Creative Energy, 2007.
[9] Reddy, B.V.S., Ramesh, S., Ashok Kumar, A., Wani, S.P., Ortiz, R., Sreedevi, T.K. Bio-fuel crops
research for energy security and rural development in developing countries. BioEnergy Research 2008,
Vol. 1, No. 3-4, p. 248-258.
Management of Technology – Step to Sustainable Production, Sibenik June 10-12, 2009, Croatia

[10] Johnson, F.X., Roman, M. Biofuels sustainability criteria: Relevant issues to the proposed
Directive on the promotion of the use of energy from renewable sources {COM(2008) 30 final},
Stockholm Environment Institute, Stockholm, 2008.
[11] Kovačič, A. Biogorivo: Bič božji? Polet 2008, 5.6.
[12] Jamnik, A. Prihodnost: vozili se bomo na biomaso ali na alge. Finance 2008, no. 128, p. 23.