In a recent conversation I was reminded about Union Spirit which is one of things that reveals your age if you remember it. It was sold years ago as a substitute for petrol; or was it an additive? I don’t remember. What I do know is that it was ethanol made from sugar cane right here in this province. Now, I’m told, not one of the ethanol plants in the country is located in KZN and they all use maize. In an article on the webpage of SA Good News written in September 2006, the man who had the idea of converting maize into fuel by the name of Hannes Haasbroek (I’m not sure if he was the first or only person to have conceived the idea), is lauded in such words as “The fertile fields that that appear to stretch unbroken across Free State Province, South Africa’s Heartland and Breadbasket, may well prove the epicentre of an economic revolution as significant as the discovery of gold and diamonds more than a hundred years earlier.” “The plan is deceptively simple:” proclaims the author, “turn food into fuel.”
And this has now happened, in smaller quantities in South Africa than elsewhere across the globe perhaps. However simple it may be to “turn food into fuel” it is distinctly problematic, as events have proved, when there is insufficient food. What has also transpired, undetected by Mr Haasbroek, is that the current price of oil has created a far more pressing imperative for the use of alternative sources of energy than the environmental issues which originally motivated the use of bio-fuels.
Isn’t there something very ironic about the fact that we were producing a bio-fuel here over fifty years ago? I don’t understand the chemical technology involved, nor the reason for Union Spirit to have been discontinued. It so pre-dates the internet that a Google search was fruitless. It was suggested, however, that the production of ethanol from sugar cane was outlawed and is still not permissible by law. Yet it is big business in Brazil. In 2007, in an article in the Business Report, it was speculated that Brazil could replace ten percent of the world’s petrol with the bio-friendly sugarcane-based ethanol in twenty years. As it is, Brazil is the second largest bio-fuel producer in the world, but, unlike the US which is top of the pile and uses staple food, Brazil uses B and C grade sugar and bagasse for the ethanol production. The top grade is reserved for domestic use and export and the country remains the world’s largest sugar producer and exporter. Moreover, sugar cane is regarded as one of the best products to be converted into energy.
From what I can recall of the build-climate-vegetation-human resources style of standard seven geography (as nurtured for years by ‘Man’s Environment’), the “heartland” so glowingly referred to by SA Good News is prone to quite regular drought and maize production is not secure from year to year. There have been bad years on the coast as well, but, generally, the sugar cane crop is rather more reliable than the maize and is not quite so critical for nourishing our people. Its lack of such critical stature seems to have been borne out quite eloquently by the extent of cane lands that have been given over to property development.
In writing this article I am aware of the fact that I may be way off beam. Perhaps turning sugar cane into ethanol, though profitable in Brazil, is not an option here. Perhaps there is some danger involved in the process that accounts for the cessation of the production of Union Spirit which, I suppose, fell away because more sophisticated motor cars required petrol and this was cheap enough. I recall two-and-six a gallon at some time in my later youth.
As in some other spheres, I think we have a tendency to accept circumstances as being beyond our control. It’s as if our decision-making is confined within the boundaries proscribed by these circumstances. Yet this is not the best business model which, surely, is to effect changes to the circumstances. Here we have rising fuel and food prices, but no conscious intervention to control either – they are due to circumstances beyond our control. Well, are we not able to obtain oil from a producer that is not bound by the OPEC price? Will our home-made fuel, like that of Sasol, be priced on a par with the imported variety for ever? Will government reap the richer rewards of higher consumer prices and import duties without considering that if the percentages were lowered, even temporarily, the state would not lose revenue, and the prices could be lowered? Can someone help me understand these things?
Andrew Layman: PCB CEO
This article appeared in The Mercury on the 11 June 2008
