Zambia is planning to replace petrol with 99.9% ethanol as a fuel to propel petrol driven vehicles. Their SURYA Energy plant in Katuba, Central Province, is expected to produce the commodity, according to a recent report on the social media. It is likely that other production plants will also get established to complement the efforts of SURYA Energy.
Ethanol driven vehicles should have been familiar territory in Malawi, except that we dilly dallied to take the leap, as a result of which we have not made any progress in switching over to this alternative energy source. If truth be told, we have actually retrogressed from what the situation was during the Kamuzu Banda era. We used to buy blended petrol with up to 20% ethanol in it.
Three or four years ago, our local ethanol producer, Presscane, came up with a mechanism for calculating the ethanol price in anticipation of rolling out the selling of this alternative fuel to the public. They got no response from the government and the project stalled.
Some people have expressed the fear that the ethanol production plants in Malawi currently have a very low capacity and cannot produce enough of the commodity to go round. My view is that we should still introduce the commodity and give our people the chance to use blends of petrol and ethanol, with the possibility of using pure ethanol.
The take up will not be universal immediately. Malawians being what they are, they will want to observe other people run on ethanol for some time, which period will be counted in years rather than months, before they are convinced that it is a viable alternative. In any case we can start with blends such as 20:80 or 40:60, ethanol to petrol, or indeed any blend that will not require great amounts of ethanol, initially.
Switching to ethanol is probably the best that can happen to Malawi in the present economic circumstances. To begin with, our dependence on the imported fossil fuels will be reduced, with the result that our forex will be saved. Two commodities, both starting with “f”, fuel and fertiliser, put a great deal of pressure on Malawi’s forex reserves. Ethanol will help the economy breathe by easing this pressure.
Secondly, ethanol production will create many job opportunities along its value chain. We shall have sugarcane growers springing up all over the country, with a ready market for their produce. Distributors will also get busy to get the sugarcane to the production plants. Moreover, the ethanol factories will need to employ more people as they scale up their production to meet the growing demand. Biofuel production has the unique potential to create many jobs indeed, which is what Malawians have been promised and are eagerly looking forward to getting.
As we switch to ethanol, we should also switch to biodiesel as an alternative to diesel. Unlike petrol engines, which require a little tweak before they can run on ethanol, no change to a diesel engine is required to for it to switch to biodiesel. In fact, almost any vegetable oil can run a diesel engine. The only problem is that the viscosity of the oil will tamper with the nozzles in the engine. To reduce the viscosity to a manageable and standard level, the vegetable oil needs to undergo a chemical reaction known as trans-esterification. A by product of this reaction is glycerine.
Not only would biodiesel production result in an alternative fuel to diesel, but it would also yield glycerine, a product which can be traded on the market. This will add more value to the value chain and result in more jobs being created.
It has been argued that biofuel production would take up so much of the arable land that it would put food production in jeopardy. My response to this argument is that we have had tobacco taking up a lot of land but our food production was never compromised. One of the crops that yields much oil that can be converted into biodiesel is jatropha. It is a crop that can grow even on marginal lands. It poses little threat to food production.
We can never go wrong with biofuels. The benefits to be had from biofuel economy are too many to be thoroughly articulated in a single article like this one.
I am mindful of the fact that electric vehicles are now upon us. The world will, in the next decade or two, change over from vehicles propelled by fuels to those run on electric power. Until that happens, I propose that we switch to biofuels like our colleagues in Brazil have done.