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Fuel Rules Soak Soap Makers
John J. Fialka, Wall Street Journal
Alternative-Energy Subsidies Pinch Supply of a Key Ingredient
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WASHINGTON — Government efforts to reduce U.S. reliance on imported oil are forcing up prices for another indispensable commodity: soap.
Soap and detergent makers say they are being hurt by a double whammy of federal subsidies and mandates that has reduced the supply and pushed up the costs of a key ingredient, beef tallow. The steeply rising price of corn, driven by a federal requirement to use more ethanol, has pushed up corn prices, making animal feed more expensive and prompting farmers to blend the less-expensive tallow and other fats into their feed.
The upshot: In the past year, beef-tallow prices have doubled.
Then in April, the Internal Revenue Service issued a tax ruling that will expand an existing subsidy for turning animal fat into a diesel additive. The chief beneficiary will be a joint venture by ConocoPhillips, a Houston oil company, and Tyson Foods Inc., a major food producer, that will make a new “renewable” diesel oil later this year.
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• The Problem: Soap prices are headed upward because beef tallow, one of the main ingredients, cost twice as much as a year ago.
• The Cause: Expanding use of a federal tax credit designed to encourage alternative fuels has a number of companies blending diesel oil with a home-grown product made from animal and vegetable fats, including tallow.
• The Future: Soap makers say they could go out of business or become dependent on imported palm oil, which is more expensive.
(10 July 2007)
Contributor CP writes:
Here we see peak oil leads to the feeding of cattle fat to cattle. Haven’t we learned anything from the mad cow disease episode?
Could jatropha be a biofuel panacea?
Alison Hinds, BBC
There is a bush which has grown across the Americas, Africa and Asia for centuries.
It has been used to make soap and candles, or as a remedy for constipation, high fevers and even malaria.
It is also highly toxic. Just four seeds from its plum-sized fruit is enough to kill, while the milky sap from its bark can stain the skin and irritate it for days.
But the wild jatropha bush – spread across the world from Central America by Portuguese settlers in the 16th century – is now being seen as one solution to the world’s desperate search for new sources of energy.
Energy giant BP has just announced it is investing almost £32m in a jatropha joint venture with UK biofuels firm D1 Oils.
India is leading the way when it comes to cultivating jatropha on an industrial scale.
“There is no doubt about it,” says Sanju Khan, a site manager for D1 Oils.
“Those who are working with jatropha, are working with the new generation crop, developing a crop from a wild plant – which is hugely exciting.”
Although Indians have known about jatropha’s more day-to-day uses, and its dangers, for years, the interest now is in its potential to transform the lives of millions of poverty-stricken farmers who are struggling to survive.
The key is in growing jatropha to be used as a biofuel. Once dried out and crushed, these poisonous seeds yield oil which can be burned in almost any diesel engine – with no modification.
…Some see a danger that in a country where subsistence farming – growing food to eat – is still a widespread activity, jatropha could replace much-needed food crops, turning India into a monoculture.
The Indian government believes not. Its plans call for cutting down conventional diesel use over the next six years by blending the fuel with 13 million tonnes of biodiesel.
That would be enough to power half a million cars to drive the length of India.
(9 July 2007)
Brazilian ethanol ‘slaves’ freed in raid on plantation
Daniel Howden, The Independant
More than 1,000 “enslaved” workers have been released from a sugar cane plantation in the Amazon following a raid that has highlighted the dark side of the current ethanol boom.
Brazilian authorities said that the workers in the northern state of Para were being forced to work 14-hour days in horrendous conditions cutting cane for ethanol production.
Police said the raid was Brazil’s biggest to date against debt slavery, a practice reminiscent of indentured labour where poor workers are lured to remote rural areas, then pushed into debt to plantation owners who charge exorbitant prices for everything from food to transportation.
The plantation’s owner, Para Pastoril e Agricola SA, one of the biggest ethanol producers in Brazil, denied the charges yesterday.
Brazil has become the poster boy for ethanol production as its massive sugar cane plantations have fuelled a wholesale switch from petrol to biofuels. Rising international demand has turned the country into a major ethanol exporter. ..
(4 July 2007)
Food Fight: The case for turning crops into fuel
William Saletan, Slate
…The critics are right about several things. Corn-based ethanol isn’t very economical or environmentally helpful. It inflates food prices, and it’s propped up by foolish subsidies and tariffs. But to write off biofuel is to miss the forest for the trees-or, in this case, the grassland for the corn. Enthusiasm for ethanol isn’t the problem. It’s the solution.
Biofuel is our next logical technology. We’ve had an agricultural revolution, an industrial revolution, and an information technology revolution. Now, we’re putting them together to harness the power of life. Ecologically, it’s ideal: a fuel that literally grows on trees.
But biofuel has aroused the same fears as free trade, with a twist. The argument against free trade was that people in poor countries would underbid and take jobs from people in rich countries. The argument against biofuel is that people in rich countries will outbid and take food from people in poor countries. The old buzzword was job security. The new buzzword is “food security.”
…Castro thinks the very idea of making fuel from food is “diabolical.” But using food for fuel wasn’t Satan’s idea. It was God’s. Fuel is the whole point of food. That’s why edible crops such as corn and cassava are also easy ethanol sources: They’re loaded with energy-bearing starch.
Biofuel doesn’t feed people directly. But we’ve been diverting food from direct human consumption since we domesticated animals. Most of the corn we export today feeds livestock, not people. Two months ago, a U.N. report calculated that one-third of the increased demand for food over the next 30 years will come from people shifting their eating habits to meat and dairy-a net loss of dietary efficiency-as they become able to afford it.
…True, biotechnology can go wrong. But it can also go wonderfully right. Scientists are learning to split corn so it can make ethanol and still feed animals. We’re studying the use of microbes to extract fuel from straw and wood waste. We’re trying to grow biofuel in algae. We’re even learning to make fuel from animal fat and excrement.
Yes, ethanol subsidies are a scam. Yes, we should drop our trade barriers and let Brazilian sugar cane wipe out American corn. Yes, we need solar power, conservation, and efficiency. But don’t give up on biofuel. It just needs time to grow.
A version of this article also appears in the Outlook section of the Sunday Washington Post.
(7 July 2007)
