news/updates
Zubiri stands by biofuels law
By Dona Pazzibugan
Philippine Daily Inquirer
January 15, 2008
MANILA, Philippines -- The author of the Biofuels Act in the House of Representatives, Juan Miguel Zubiri, now a senator, said biofuel development would not only help reduce the country's diesel and gasoline imports, but also benefit the country's farmers.
Zubiri said the Philippines biofuel program would use sugarcane to produce bioethanol and jatropha for biodiesel.
This is unlike the situation in the United States which uses corn to produce bioethanol, and in Europe which uses soybean and sunflowers for biodiesel, according to the senator.
"We don't need to tap other lands but use areas already planted to sugar. Sugar is not a basic food source. It is an additive, and so won't compete directly with the population's food requirement," he pointed out.
He said the use of sugarcane for bioethanol production would help revive the sugar industry, which is in a worldwide slump.
"Will Dr. Hartmut Michel care to answer that problem? Would he be willing to provide for 5 million workers and farmers who will eventually suffer from the low world price of sugar?" Zubiri said, referring to the 1998 Nobel prize winner for chemistry.
Michel had said pushing for biofuel development would be counterproductive because there was little energy to be gained from it.
As for the biodiesel development, investors who want to go into jatropha production should only tap "idle government land," Zubiri said.
"What we want to achieve is a higher standard of living for our people in the countryside and produce biofuels without being subjected to OPEC's $100 per barrel gasoline... I challenge the good gentleman from the Netherlands to ask his compatriots in the Shell International oil company to bring down their price of oil," he said.
