Sugar cane could unlock massive biofuel potential

A South African policy document on biofuels that could unlock the creation of thousands of jobs and at least 700 to 1000 megawatts of electricity generated from sugar cane fibre is a possibility before year end. Speaking at the SA Association for Food Science and Technology’s biennial conference in Durban last week, a Tongaat Hulett executive highlighted the industry’s massive biofuel potential, which he said could be maximised if SADC countries joined forces to expand the local industry in a massive project, emulating Brazil. “If you look at Angola, Zambia, southern DRC, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Southern Tanzania and Northern Mozambique – that strip has potential in the same league as Brazil,” he said. “You could develop 2.5- 3.5m hectares of sugar cane which would need 3-6% of the land in that area,” he said. He said around 100 to 120 new sugar mills developed to generate electricity from cane fibre could generate 10000 megawatts of electricity into local grids, create three million jobs and inject R200 billion into rural economies. “It’s a staggering picture and the impact on those areas would be amazing. One of the big things is it generates massive infrastructure development,” Kruger said. However, he said any diversification of the local industry to produce biofuels would need to be government subsidised. He added that the vision to expand the industry across SADC would mean banning diesel vehicles, with the exception of trucks as Brazil had done, opening up the local market and pushing for half of the country’s petrol to be ethanol based. Kruger said Brazil planned to have 15000 megawatts of power generated from cane fibre by 2020, while India planned to have 10 000MW, the equivalent of South Africa’s controversial nuclear programme, by 2017. “We have coined a new phrase that if you are a sugar only industry you are no longer revenue competitive,” he said. He said the industry had engaged extensively with the Department of Energy to develop a policy paper for biofuels but it was stopped by cabinet earlier this year. “It’s supposed to go back to cabinet now so there is still a chance by the end of this year we will see a position paper that will spell out more clearly which crops and what the pricing formulas will be,” he said.