The release today of the CSIRO’s future fuels report drives another nail into the coffin of NSW’s reckless push to mainstream grain-ethanol fuels with a 10% ethanol mandate. It also illuminates the path toward more responsible, low-emissions transport, should the Government choose to follow.
“The problem that we have is that our Government is more focused on votes from unsustainable ethanol jobs in regional NSW than they are on building fast, efficient public transport and other low-emissions transport alternatives,” said Upper House Greens MP Ian Cohen.
“As the CSIRO predict an $8 per litre petrol price tag by 2018, NSW is responding by building more roads and grain ethanol plants. Their vision for alternative fuels is to use concern about petrol prices as a way of entrenching a grain ethanol industry that is already technologically redundant and socially undesirable.
“Grain ethanol plants at Coleambally, Junee, Rockdale and Manildra are planned which have the capacity to produce 1250 million litres of ethanol. To achieve this production, more than three million tonne of grain will be required – mostly wheat.
“One-third or one million tonne is returned as distillers grain, leaving two million tonne lost to the human food chain. Two million tonne of grain converted into grain ethanol would feed over 13 million people at average rates of consumption and would make over three billion loaves of bread.
“Under one of the scenarios modelled by CSIRO, wheat ethanol would be providing 13% of road transport requirements by 2035 but at a cost of 50% of wheat exports in peak years.
“That 50% portion of our wheat exports would be disappearing from the world food supply at a time when climate experts are predicting further shortages. Oxfam are already saying that 30 million people have been dragged into poverty by governments mandating 1st generation biofuel production from food feedstocks.
“Ross Garnaut has only just warned us that by 2100, the Murray Darling food bowl could collapse. Now is not the time for NSW Labor to entrench an ethanol industry that will only add to pressure on the global food supply.
“The NSW Government is doing very little to take this state towards 2nd generation biofuels produced from feedstocks other than food.
“Recently an algal biodiesel company made the decision to locate their pilot plant in Queensland instead of NSW. Sunrise biofuels industries will not get a leg up in this state while grain ethanol continues to seduce the minister.
“The NSW E10 taskforce states that ‘NSW can physically produce sufficient grains feedstock to support an E10 mandate’. The assumption is that NSW always exports grain. This will be cold comfort to the states of QLD and Victoria who, according to ABARE figures, import grain most years – from NSW.
“The eastern states combined have consumed more grain than has been produced in three of the last six years. Adding ethanol demand to meet a NSW E10 mandate will drive grain supply to a perpetual drought situation where production only meets consumption in bumper years,” said Mr Cohen.
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