Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
are not addressed properly. Moreover, if biofuels lose their reputation as
the 'cleaner, greener fuel' compared with fossil fuels, meeting and sustain-
ing any target level will be much more dii cult.
There are also moral and ethical dimensions to the issue when it comes
to sourcing biodiesel feedstocks from countries in the tropics that have
low food security. The livelihood impacts of switching from cereal pro-
duction for domestic use to biodiesel feedstocks production for export,
especially in the countries that are not self-sui cient in food grains, could
be devastating. Economists call for the most ei cient use of the resource
or mode of production, so according to them, it makes perfect sense to
produce biodiesel feedstocks as cash crops in these developing countries
and import cheaper grain from those who produce in surplus. However,
this is disputed by those concerned with sustainability, and also on moral
and ethical grounds. Local livelihood ef ects of changes in crop yields and
prices can be devasting, the examples of farmers committing suicide in
the Indian state of Kerala due to cash crop failures have become all too
common in recent years to justify the switch from cereal to cash crops in
such countries.
7
The review of cost and benei ts of biofuel production above shows that
just relying on i nancial cost-benei t analysis is not sui cient to assess the
true costs and benei ts from the biodiesel. Although the cost of biodiesel
is signii cantly higher than that of fossil fuel diesel at present, it is of set
by signii cantly greater environmental benei ts from biodiesel because of
lower GHG emissions and carbon neutrality. However, from both an eco-
nomic and policy perspective, the costs of switching to a more expensive
fuel source are incurred in the present, but the environmental benei ts
of the reduced GHG from biodiesel may not accrue until 40 or 50 years
from now. This makes analyses of costs and benei ts dii cult and complex
because of dif erent time horizons involved. It is also not surprising that in
the early days of adoption, biodiesel, like every new technology, is likely
to incur high short-run costs and low adoption rates, usually in favour of
long- term benei ts. Furthermore, despite growing environmental aware-
ness among consumers, lack of competitive prices of biodiesel compared
with fossil fuel diesel is slowing the adoption rate. It is essential to have a
higher adoption rate of biodiesel if it is to make a signii cant impact on
GHG emissions reduction.
In light of the growing production and use of biodiesel in the EU and
biofuels in general in the EU, as well as elsewhere in the world, it is not an
over-exaggeration to say that biofuels have a real prospect for providing
double benei ts, especially when issues such as sustainable production are
resolved. There are both positives and negatives from the use of biofuels
on a small scale and at a large scale. On a small scale, production costs of
