The Father of the Philippine Biofuels Bill called on the biofuel sector to plant their feedstock only on marginal land and not to encroach on land being used to plant food crops. Aside from this, he also encouraged a ban on planting biofuels in arable and irrigated land. He suggested as well to plant biofuels in denuded mountain land. This he said in last week’s Biofuels World Conference held in the City of Makati.
He also said that:
“We must also limit the production of bioethanol gasoline replacement to sugar-planting districts, i.e., utilizing excess production of sugar, of which we have almost 300,000 tons, which will roughly translate to 400 million liters of bioethanol,”
Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri sponsored the Philippine Biofuels Bill in Congress when he was still a congressman representing the district of Bukidnon. He lobbied for it tenaciously to be passed and signed into law. In last year’s election he was able to land a seat in the Senate running under the ruling party’s slate (via COMELEC decision).
The biofuel sector has started to ramp up after the passage of the Philippine Biofuels Bill into Law last year. The Philippine Biofuels Law calls for mandatory mixing of ethanol into gasoline as well as biodiesel in the diesel supply. It also calls the formation of the National Biofuels Board which will oversee and guide the development of the Biofuel industry in the Philippines as well as its related downstream industries.
The biofuel sector is coming under fire right now due to the Philippine Food vs Fuel debate brought about by the skyrocketing prices of rice due to cutbacks in supply from the world’s producers.
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Category: Food vs Fuel, Biofuel
