Oil change

Food versus energy — the pros and cons of using renewables as energy sources — has long been a hot topic worldwide. And even though skyrocketing grain prices have provoked no more than a few murmurs of protest in Europe these past few months, the fact is that consumers in many countries must now expect to pay more for their food than they have done hitherto, especially when a rainy summer results in a poor harvest, as was the case in Europe this year.

Meanwhile, the Chinese and Indian economies are both growing fast, and the governments of these countries are sucking several markets dry. Food producers face competition from an unexpected quarter now that wheat, rye and barley can be turned into ethanol instead of bread, and oilseed into fuel instead of vegetable oil.

Driven by generous subsidies, food producers worldwide are mutating into energy farmers. Experts are already predicting more than 240 biofuel plants in the USA alone, and they are on the increase in many other countries too, including Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia and Oman. Whether it makes sense for valuable foodstuffs to be tipped into fuel tanks, and whether the world has enough farmland to produce both food and fuel in adequate quantities, remains a moot point.

What is certainly true, however, is that because manufacturing industry in the industrialized nations is more anxious than ever to end its dependence on oil, the demand for renewables is set to increase. The chemical process industry is also on the lookout for alternatives to oil, and there is consensus among the world’s experts that renewables could indeed serve as a basis for some important raw materials or even entire families of chemicals in the future. Processes to generate syngas from biomass and so-called ‘bio-refineries’ are therefore being seriously discussed for a way to end the industry’s dependence on oil in the medium to long term.

The ‘oil change’ now taking place in the chemical industry could quickly turn into a boomerang, however, if the debate does not put food production on an equal footing with fuel. Food for thought, for example, is the fact that Mexico’s tortilla industry is currently facing bottlenecks owing to the shortage of maize.