Addressing the food versus fuel debate in Ghana

By: Godwin NNANNA

Concerns over energy supply security and oil-price volatility are generating greater interest in alternative energy sources in Ghana. Civil society groups want a comprehensive biofuel policy. Godwin NNANNA in Accra writes that so far the policy has been slow in coming

The lines between energy and agriculture are becoming more blurred. As science advances, the use of biofuels in most parts of the world has continued to increase. One thing that has gradually come to stay and is in recently times attracting significant foreign investment in Ghana is energy crops. The last four years has seen Norwegian, Brazilian, Dutch, Swedish, German and British firms all competing for farmland to grow energy crops in different parts of the country.

Seven private companies from these countries are currently farming about 55,000 hectares of land for biofuels. More investments are expected in the next few years. As host of last October’s World Jatropha Summit, the Ghanaian government made it clear that it is not averse to foreign investment in biofuels. Summit organizers had hoped the meeting will resolve the food versus fuel debate. But as some who attended acknowledge, if the meeting achieved anything, it only heightened the debate.

Joseph Boamah, Chief Director at the Ministry of Agriculture says private investors are free to do what they like with their land. According to him, there are no evidence to show that biofuel growth threatens food production in the country. The national agric workers union disputes that assertion. “This has not come to our notice,” said Boamah.

“Our District Directors haven’t brought this news, extension officers are not complaining, nobody has gone to complain. You know that farming is a private sector activity. Investors have the right to go and negotiate with farmers.” But Ofei Nkansah, General Secretary of the Ghana Agricultural Workers Union disagrees. With hundreds of farmers not planting traditional food crops last season, Nkansah believes there is a real risk that the shift to biofuels might trigger the unwanted in future. “Ongoing land grabbing is taking place in parts of the country where the populations are largely farming populations… we believe that the land grabbing business is in actual fact taking vital resources away from farmers,” said Nkansah.

The agric workers and other civil society groups are calling on President John Atta-Mills’ government to draw up a comprehensive biofuels policy to reconcile these issues. “How would we justify an essentially agrarian country importing most of the food that it eats and then using our lands to produce something else that we don’t eat? Which country is doing that in the world and why should Ghana do that,” asks Nkansah.

“Why should we be encouraged to lease large tracts of land for biofuel production that we are not eating to make money and use that money to import food?” Ghana’s Energy Commission has been working on a biofuels policy since 2005 but till date nothing comprehensive as is being advocated by most local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is available. Food Security Policy Advocacy Network, an NGO, recently studied the impact of multinational jatropha production in the Volta, Eastern, Central, and Ashanti regions. The survey, conducted with ActionAid Ghana, found what it said were serious threats to livelihood and food security.

While the debate rages, industry experts say the overall increased use of biofuel in many countries around the world will make a dent in the global consumption of traditional fuel. “Global ethanol demand will represent 12 to 14 per cent of the global gasoline pool by 2015,” indicates data from Hart Energy Consulting. The research titled ‘Global Biofuels Outlook: 2009 – 2015′ notes that the United States is expected to see the largest increase in biofuel use per country, increasing its current consumption by more than 30 per cent.

The rising cost of oil and other traditional sources of energy is intensifying the search for alternatives across the world. One of those who believe such step is necessary for Africa is Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Many of the plans being considered by African governments, including huge hydropower dams and fossil fuel plants, are simply “more of the same”, Steiner told an UNITAD conference two years ago. Africa, he said, must learn from Brazil and Germany, two countries that took strategic decisions years ago to become leaders in biofuels and wind power respectively. “Everyone laughed at Brazil at the time. The theory was that they could not afford to invest in alternative energy. They spent $25 billion on public funds for the ethanol sector, but have saved $50 billion now on avoided oil imports.”

Despite opposition to its growing cultivation in Ghana, biofuels are poised to become big business in the country. Backed by growing scientific consensus about the potentially catastrophic impacts of climate change, public and political momentum for alternative energy solutions continue to build. Total revenues from biofuels, wind, solar, and fuel cell sales in the United States alone are projected to increase from $77.3 in 2007 to $254.5 billion in 2017.

One possible answer to what some see as the ultimately unworkable nature of grain-based ethanol as a primary fuel is something called cellulosic ethanol. Cellulosic ethanol is made from non-food products such as corn stalks, wood chips and switchgrass. If this tiny corner of the ethanol industry develops into a large enough producer, cellulosic ethanol could prove to be a viable, lower-cost compromise in the fuel versus food debate.

Seen as a technological ‘silver bullet’, cellulosic ethanol promises to require far less energy to refine than corn ethanol does. It does not require land that might otherwise provide food, as its feedstock is non-food agricultural waste. On that basis, cellulosic ethanol could reduce greenhouse gas emissions up to 87 per cent if used broadly, experts say.

However, the list of things that need to be done to create a proper biofuel industry in Ghana is a long one. New crops, tailored to fuel rather than food production, have to be created. Ways of converting those crops into feedstock have to be developed. That feedstock has to be turned into something that people want to buy, at a price they can afford.

As far as the crop themselves are concerned, there are three runners at the starting gate: grasses, trees and algae. Grasses and trees are grown on dry land, but need a lot of processing. The idea is to take the whole biomass of the plant and turn it into fuel. To its fans, jatropha is a miracle crop, an eco-friendly answer to Ghana’s future energy needs, but some are starting to question whether the wonder-shrub is too good to be true.

Their merits notwithstanding, some experts say plant-based fuels are not a complete solution to energy needs, since to develop them on a scale that would satisfy the need for transportation fuel would take up too much farmland needed to meet food needs. “The answer to the problem lies in third generation fuels,” says Kobby Vandyke, an energy consultant. “They are renewable and would not reduce the food supply,” he adds.

One promising potential source is algae, according to Wilson Acheampong, a plant scientist. It can be grown on a large scale off productive cropland. “The nice thing about algae and bacteria is that these organisms have the ability to double their mass in four hours. There’s not a farm field in the world that can double its mass in four hours. “This is an industry in its infancy, but it’s going to grow rapidly,” said Acheampong.

Algae have been touted as a solution to environmental worries over biofuels. Jimmy Degraft, a Germany-based Ghanaian scientist agrees that algae offers major advantages over other things grown as sources for renewable energy. According to him, growing algae produces oxygen and takes carbon dioxide out of the environment. “It grows more productively than other fast-growing energy crops while requiring less space. Non-potable and treated wastewater can be used for growing algae. And using algae for fuel production does not take food out of the mouths of people or animals, he said. Huge amounts of algae are needed for large-scale biofuel production. Mass production takes two forms: growing it in open

ponds or more complex and costly closed photobioreactors. Open ponds where nutrients flow along a racetrack-like circuit offer a simpler and less expensive way to produce algae, but must deal with fluctuations in temperature and solar radiation as well as potential contamination. Photobioreacators, which are large containers in which algae is grown, control the environmental parameters and ensure the best environment for algae growth, but are generally more costly, he said.

“West Africa has the potential to be the Saudi Arabia of biofuels”, says another Ghanaian energy expert. “What is needed is for the governments to standardise biofuel policies across the sub-region and work together to achieve economies of scale so that the industry would become competitive.”