Malaysia wants to become world biggest producer of Biodiesel
……Asia Pulse News
(January 30, 2006)
Introduction
It was with outrage that I read the headline. My anger – not a misplaced one – was not provoked by the quest of an obviously ambitious country. On the contrary, I was pained because right before our very eyes, we were about to witness a repeat performance of an earlier thrashing in the race to become a world leader in a product that nature seems to have granted us a competitive edge. We lost out to Malaysia in the last century and we seem to be primed for a repeat. I pray not.
Exactly a week ago, I happened on similar news that a sister African country, Rwanda had beaten us to the race of powering a bus on bio-diesel[1]. This represents significant progress for a nation which 15 years ago was in the throes of a numbing ethnic cleansing that left close to 1million people dead. .
To situate my reaction to Malaysia’s quest to become the by-word for bio-diesel production a little history would suffice. For the record, Malaysia is the world leading producer of oil palm. The story of Malaysia’s ascent to this global reckoning speaks of what sheer resolve and visionary leadership can achieve. The story goes that the Malaysia got her first oil palm seedlings from Nigeria in the 1960s[2]. While Nigeria’s agricultural sector – hitherto the mainstay of our economy-went comatose in the light of the oil boom, Malaysia took this gift and nurtured it to prominence, making the country the global leader in oil palm production.
Harking back to the 60s
Nigeria discovered crude oil in 1956 in Oloibiri present day Bayelsa State. With petrol dollars gushing from the Niger Delta, Nigeria soon became a leading force on the global energy scene. Reputedly the seventh largest oil producing nation in the world, Nigeria’s status as a leading exporter of crude oil to United States of America makes it a strategic trading partner with Nigeria. This partnership makes the U.S. vulnerable to the fluctuation in oil prices that are often time caused by the volatility in the Niger Delta region and other socio-political disruptions. For a nation that seeks energy security, it stands to reason why the U.S. desires alternative means of powering its economy; it also explains the less than altruistic interest that the U.S. has in Nigerian matters.
It has been argued that the discovery of crude oil provided and still provides more than enough resources to foster the transformation of Nigeria from a third world economy to one of the twenty most developed economies. This long overdue dream of becoming a global giant has now been deferred to the year 2020. By global giant, I am not referring to the nirvana that our leaders are quick to invoke when pressed to whip up patriotic fervor but a model that other well endowed nations would aspire to become on many fronts. The abandonment of oil palm like other cash crops -for which we were known and possessed competitive advantage – after the discovery of crude oil captures the misplacement of priorities that has come to characterize the Nigerian state. What was Nigeria’s loss became the gain of another nation – One of the Asian tigers
Today, it does hurt to know that a nation that took her first oil palm seedlings from us has not only become the global by-word for oil palm production and its associated technology, it also rankles me that they have become the strategic consultant in our half-hearted quest to revive our oil palm sector[3].
But I digress. The increased attention paid to climate change and its attendant global warming by developed economies poses an emerging risk to Nigeria’s continued relevant in the world energy scene. For a moment, let our creative imagination travel forward in time to 2020 when the world will have found creative solutions that will mitigate the effects of climate change. With a world going green crazy, we may one day wake up and realize that no one needs our crude any longer. While this may seem a wild dream, the energy policies of industrial economies are motivated as much by the urgent need to wrest their now fragile economies from the whims of oil cartels like OPEC as the quest to preserve mother earth for posterity. That explains their interests in cleaner, greener means of powering their economies
Biodiesel: My Prescription
Enter Bio-diesel. With the potential to reduce carbon emission-the culprit responsible for global warming – by 40%, bio-diesel has been getting more than a fair share of attention by policy makers and green energy experts. It is essentially a biofuel, a renewable source of energy produced from plant sources. Unlike Petrodiesel, biodiesel can be gotten from plant oils. While it is pitched as a cleaner source of energy, it has also raised the specter of a global food crisis. Opponents of bio-diesel and other biofuel envisage a competition for food crops like corn, cassava that would result in acute food shortage. Interestingly, the Rwandan experience of powering a 60-kilometre trip on Biodiesel lends itself to this fear. Nigeria however has a peculiar advantage on this score.
Why Biodiesel?
Biodiesel has the unique advantage of being able to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 78.5%.[4] In terms of overall fuel efficiency, biodiesel outperforms gasoline, ethanol and petrodiesel. It offers the prospect for the reduction of rural poverty as the cultivation of Jatropha can drastically reduce rural poverty. Biodiesel has physiochemical properties that make its performance comparative to diesel[5].
The Nigerian advantage
The fear of food shortages that biodiesel fans, is dispelled when alternative means of developing this biofuel outside of the use of food crops are considered. Jatropha curcas which grows naturally as a weed offers a refreshing alternative to the use of oil palm and other edibles. It can provide feedstock for biodiesel production. The plant can produce non-edible seeds for up to fifty years. The oil in the seed can be processed into biodiesel. Jatropha can be grown in degraded soils otherwise unsuitable for the production of food crops. It is estimated that Nigeria can make an estimated $3 billion dollars annually by cultivating Jatropha for biodiesel production. This would only required the use of 600,000 hectares of land estimated as 10.5% of the total land mass in northern Nigeria[6]. The semi-arid climate of northern Nigeria, the availability of large fallow land and availability of affordable labour make Nigeria suitable for the cultivation of Jatropha
Nigerian can develop a mastery of biodiesel production and become the go-to nation for biodiesel and its associated technology by the year 2020. This will not come by sheer wishful thinking like other tall dreams that currently litter the abyss of failure. The proximity of that target year impels me to recommend some creative avenues which are critical to the realization of this objective of becoming the world leader in biodiesel and other green energy products.
2020: By and By
Creating the right Buzz
A lot of Nigerians especially those living in the northern part of the country need to be kept abreast of this dream. The benefits that would accrue to them by cultivating the feedstock Jatropha curcas need to be emphasized. Seeking the support of traditional rulers of these communities and using them to disseminate timely information on the benefits of planting Jatropha especially on arid land would help keep the issue on the front burner. This should be given serious priority in the first three years of the launch of this campaign
Research
The creation of a well funded research institute with the mandate to develop innovative means of optimizing the production of biodiesel is long overdue. The institute shall have the dual mandate of devising attendant technologies for refineries that would utilize the feedstock. At the moment, there is no research institute with a sole oversight on biofuel development in Nigeria. We can also amass a great deal of Nigeria by producing thought leadership materials and leading reseach papers on biofuels and clean energy technologies. The world can soon see us as a research hub for alternative fuels.
Pioneer status:
A lot of tax concessions should be accorded entrepreneurs venturing into biodiesel production. Import waivers should be granted to upstarts importing technologies into the country for biodiesel refineries.
Knowledge transfer.
At the moment, there is an obvious technical knowledge gap in the area of biofuel development. No faculty in Nigeria currently offers biofuel development. I therefore propose as a means to speed up skills and competencies in this emerging discipline that a trust fund a lá the Petroleum Technology Development Fund be instituted to sponsor Nigerians on relevant offshore trainings and courses where they can be brought to speed on leading practices in this field. It is expected that these young men and women would return at the expiration of their academic programmes to transfer the knowledge acquired to their compatriots. It is hoped that in the space of three years, say 2010-2013we would have developed a sizeable manpower to drive our quest to become a global force on biodiesel production.
Funding
The private sector should also be encouraged to venture into this project by putting at their disposal a large pool of funds that can be administered in trust by a collective of subject matter experts, development finance mavens and policy makers. Venture capital funds can be created specfically for biodiesel projects. Perhaps the presence of such venture capital funds in particular locations can birth Nigeria’s version of clean tech’s Silicon Valley. Private equity and venture capital firms with a bias for green projects should be encouraged to invest in these projects. Of course, a measure of stability would be needed to attract the necessary capital in-flight. Thus, we owe it to ourselves to ensure that the requisite socio-political environment that fosters foreign direct investment is in place in the country.
Conclusion
The emerging threat that climate change poses to the planet; the urgent need for energy stability and the implication of the impending global shift toward cleaner, non-fossil energy sources spur me to prescribe the production of bio-diesel as a national pet project. By 2020, it is expected that less demand for crude oil would detract from our present relevance in the global scheme of things. We can achieve a mastery of bio-diesel and become the global by-word for biodiesel and its associated technology. The seeming hurdles can be surmounted if the political will and far-sighted leadership are in place to see the dream through to fruition. We can consign Malaysia’s dream to the valley of wishful thinking. Since, green is the new cool, the abiding poser then is: “what better place to champion the course of green fuel than Nigeria whose national colors speak to greenness and the safety and security that it exudes?” Malaysia, not again! It is all green here.
[1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8589712.stm
[2] http://www.otal.com/commodities/palmoil2.htm
[3] http://allafrica.com/stories/201002250457.html
[4] http://www.biodiesel.org/pdf_files/fuelfactsheets/Benefits%20of%20Biodiesel.Pdf. The report was issued by US
[5] http://www.propelfuels.com/content/about_biodiesel/
[6] http://www.greenshieldofnations.org/Biodiesel_Project.html