A contribution to the nuclear power debate

international | environment | opinion/analysis

Thursday April 13, 2006 15:07

by MichaelY - iawm

The use of ethanol in Brazil

Can the use of ethanol in motorcars substitute for fossil fuels?

Energy policy or the absence of it
The fossil fuel trap

Nuclear power is beginning to enter the political agenda. In the ‘Late Late’ last week we had the spectacle of a French pro-nuclear ‘expert’ telling us all how cheap, safe and basically absolutely essential nuclear power is…backed by a young and inarticulate yuppie economist whose argument was that nuclear power is basically the only choice we have….had RTE and Kenny played tapes of the ‘Late Late’ of the late ‘60s with Gay asking American and Irish experts questions about nuclear power, you would have heard similar argument about us being told that the Irish economy would be in tatters by the ‘80s if a plant was not build at Carnsore Point. Thirty years later history repeats itself…early days yet to tell whether this time it would be a farce or a tragedy. But to use an Italian phrase ‘Chi Vivra vedra’ – Those who will live will see!
The anti-side focusses, correctly, in my opinion on the absolute need for a democratically debated and consciously drafted national energy policy. At the same time, examples of European countries such as Sweden and Norway are put forward as States where renewable energy development has become part of an ever expanding process of substituting renewable sources, such as wind and wave, for reliance on nuclear power. One issue, however, that has received scant attention as yet is the expanding use of biofuel production – and particularly the example of ethanol production in Brazil and its use in cars.
“Renewable fuel has been a fantastic solution for us” said recently Brazil’s minister of agriculture Roberto Rodrigues, continuing “…and it offers a way out of the fossil fuel trap for others as well”. Sugar cane has been cultivated in Brazil since the 16th century. Vast green fields of sugar cane stretch to the horizon, producing a crop to be consumed not just as sweets and soft drinks but also in the tanks of, literally, millions of cars.
The use of ethanol in Brazil was greatly accelerated in the last three years with the introduction of “flex fuel” engines, designed to run on ethanol or petrol or any mixture of the two (like the Toyota Prius sold here in Ireland that runs on a switch of petrol and electricity and runs 85 miles to the gallon). Interestingly, petrol sold in Brazil contains 25% alcohol – a practice that has accelerated Brazils’ shift from imported oil.
Ethanol development in Brazil has been led by Brazilian SMEs with limited capital. However, as was to be expected, global giants of the world’s agribusiness, such as Archer Daniels Midland, Bunge & Born, Cargill and Louis Dreyfuss, have recently begun showing interest.
As would be the case with any new and unproven technology, consumer suspicions were high at the beginning. However, as Volkswagen introduced the fist ‘flex fuel’ engine in its Brazilian produced cars in 2003, consumers began to warm up to the idea. Today, less than three years after the technology was introduced, 70% (yes, seventy percent) of the cars sold in Brazil, a number that already topped a million earlier this year, have flex fuel engines. And, again, contrary to our experiences in Europe, these cars have entered the market without increases in prices.
Listen to the Barry Engle, president of Ford do Brazil: “ From the consumer standpoint, it’s wonderful, because you get flexibility and you don’t have to pay for it….the rate at which this technology has been adopted is remarkable…the fastest I have ever seen in the motor sector, faster than the airbag, automatic transmission, electric windows or seatbelts”.
Sugar cane’s and ethanol’s expanding frontier is not bad for the environment either because it is putting largely abandoned or degraded pasture land back into production. And, of course, ethanol burns far cleaner than fossil fuels.
As the closures of the sugar factories in Carlow first, and now Mallow, throws out a lot questions regarding sugar beet production in Ireland, and the farmers engaged in it, perhaps Brazil’s example may open some windows for the future.
If the part of my brain that saves historical data is right, it was Henry Ford who, at the dawn of the motorcar age, had predicted that “ethyl alcohol is the fuel of the future”. Could he have been right for once?

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Comments (7 of 7)

CRUSADERS?

by will law - statistical centre

Wed Oct 25, 2006 16:24

Can we just nail this one once and for all. The Islamic killing machine attacked Europe and other regions long before the crusades began. They attacked Europe during the crusades and they attacked Europe after the crusades.
Islam is was and will forever be spread by violence and any other means necessary. That, my brainwashed lefty dhimmi friends is what Jihad means.

Pers Cap

by anon

Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:18

It wouldn't be bad idea to use the (pers cap) suffix. so we know when you are relaying the IAWM position on things and when you are commenting on your own interests (like this topic) which I think is what curious was getting at.

The war, oil and nuclear power

Fri Apr 14, 2006 12:09

Curious asks a number of key questions:

The war, or better the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq are, quite obviously, intimately linked to the question of fossil fuel resources - oil primarily but also gas. Therefore, any debate, about those resources running out and who controls them are directly linked to the question of the war - and the support of the Irish government to the Crusaders through the use of Shannon.
The issue of nuclear energy, I am sure Curious knows, is the main headline in the warmongering going on against Iran. A country that has signed the Non-Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, and as such is entitled to develop nuclear capacity, is being now threatened by the same powers that attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. The UN Security Council is due to discuss the Iran situation after April 28th. And that's why the iawm is calling for a demonstration on May 6th around the US Embassy in Ballsbridge - Dublin.
The issue of gas in the Kaspian Sea, and its control, is also central in the relations Iran has with Russia.
These are some of the reasons members of the iawm are interested in these issues. Curious - perceptive as he is - would have been very quick to point out that anti-war militants cannot close their eyes about these issues and go on and on, blindly, about Shannon.

Hope to see you all there

And! the biofuel crop will be GMO crop

Fri Apr 14, 2006 03:10

because you don't eat it will be safe, so they say, but it won't co-excist with conventional or organic crops without affecting them, so consumer choice becomes no choice for us.

Biodiesel does more harm than good

by Terence

Thu Apr 13, 2006 17:06

The energy debate as usual has the tecno-optimists out in force looking for easy solutions and biodiesel is reckoned to be one of them. However there's a dark-side to biodiesel which George Monbiot wrote about back in Dec 2005. It's probably best that I quote him.

Firstly he says:"
"Over the past two years I have made an uncomfortable discovery. Like most environmentalists, I have been as blind to the constraints affecting our energy supply as my opponents have been to climate change. I now realise that I have entertained a belief in magic."

And he had written about it earlier:
"The last time I drew attention to the hazards of making diesel fuel from vegetable oils, I received as much abuse as I have ever been sent by the supporters of the Iraq war. The biodiesel missionaries, I discovered, are as vociferous in their denial as the executives of Exxon. I am now prepared to admit that my previous column was wrong. But they’re not going to like it. I was wrong because I underestimated the fuel’s destructive impact."

And he goes on to give his reasons:
When I wrote about it last year, I thought that the biggest problem caused by biodiesel was that it set up a competition for land(3). Arable land that would otherwise have been used to grow food would instead be used to grow fuel. But now I find that something even worse is happening. The biodiesel industry has accidentally invented the world’s most carbon-intensive fuel.

In promoting biodiesel – as the European Union ..........In reality you are creating a market for the most destructive crop on earth.

Last week, the chairman of Malaysia’s Federal Land Development Authority announced that he was about to build a new biodiesel plant(4). His was the ninth such decision in four months. Four new refineries are being built in Peninsula Malaysia, one in Sarawak and two in Rotterdam(5). Two foreign consortia – one German, one American – are setting up rival plants in Singapore(6). All of them will be making biodiesel from the same source: oil from palm trees.

“The demand for biodiesel,” the Malaysian Star reports, “will come from the European Community … This fresh demand … would, at the very least, take up most of Malaysia’s crude palm oil inventories”(7). Why? Because it’s cheaper than biodiesel made from any other crop.

...my comment: so here we are destroying whats left of the great rainforests, so we can drive our asses around to the local shops .... it just proves that the capitalist system will not now or anytime in the future address the dire environmental consequences.

In September, Friends of the Earth published a report about the impacts of palm oil production. “Between 1985 and 2000,” it found, “the development of oil-palm plantations was responsible for an estimated 87 per cent of deforestation in Malaysia”(8). In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia.

Almost all the remaining forest is at risk. Even the famous Tanjung Puting National Park in Kalimantan is being ripped apart by oil planters. The orang-utan is likely to become extinct in the wild. Sumatran rhinos, tigers, gibbons, tapirs, proboscis monkeys and thousands of other species could go the same way. Thousands of indigenous people have been evicted from their lands, and some 500 Indonesians have been tortured when they tried to resist(9). The forest fires which every so often smother the region in smog are mostly started by the palm growers. The entire region is being turned into a gigantic vegetable oil field.

Before oil palms, which are small and scrubby, are planted, vast forest trees, containing a much greater store of carbon, must be felled and burnt. Having used up the drier lands, the plantations are now moving into the swamp forests, which grow on peat. When they’ve cut the trees, the planters drain the ground. As the peat dries it oxidises, releasing even more carbon dioxide than the trees. In terms of its impact on both the local and global environments, palm biodiesel is more destructive than crude oil from Nigeria.

The British government understands this. In the report it published last month, when it announced that it will obey the European Union and ensure that 5.75% of our transport fuel comes from plants by 2010, it admitted that “the main environmental risks are likely to be those concerning any large expansion in biofuel feedstock production, and particularly in Brazil (for sugar cane) and South East Asia (for palm oil plantations).

The full article is at the URL below

Earlier story on Eire and nuclear power

Thu Apr 13, 2006 16:48

There was an earlier thread on this discussion about a week ago on Indymedia after the publication of the report by the State agency, Forfás, of the report: A Baseline Assessment of Ireland's Oil Dependence: Key Policy Considerations -where the initial proposal about bringing nuclear power to Ireland was raised. This was about the same day that the pro-nuclear propaganda campaign to mould and deceive public opinion got under way.

See: Irish Govt agency floats the case for Nuclear Power
http://www.indymedia.ie/article/75289

This article also contains in the comments some interesting figures on the total usage of electricial power in Ireland and a breakdown of the capacity by energy sources.

Michael Y

by Curious

Thu Apr 13, 2006 16:19

Is Michael Y writing on behalf of the IAWM? If not then he shouldnt put IAWM after his name. I could understand if the IAWM had a position against nuclear missiles but I am puzzled as to why they should be opposed to civilian nuclear plants or be involved in campaigning for substitutes to fossil fuels.

When did the IAWM make this new departure? there is no information about it on the IAWM website.

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A contribution to the nuclear power debate

Comments (7 of 7)