Roy Eric: Biofuel Bill — First Reading 
Roy Eric: Biofuel Bill — First Reading 
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ERIC ROY (National—Invercargill) 
: 
 I am quite enthusiastic about taking part in this debate. I think this is a debate we need to have and this is a process we need to go through. We need to look at this Biofuel Bill and we need to hear what the public has to say through the select committee process and the submissions. I acknowledge the Minister of Energy David Parker who is still in the House listening to the debate. Quite frequently it has been the habit of Ministers to drop a bill into the House make a prepared speech and then have other pressing business so I just acknowledge his interest in staying here. 
There are a number of complex issues that come together and focus us on this issue of whether biofuels are part of the solution we have in terms of our response to the whole issue of climate change. I believe that they are a part and that therefore it is important that we have this debate. I also believe that New Zealand has to be in there at the developmental and experimental stages because we will gain credibility in terms of the products we sell. You see we sit at 19.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emission per head of population and the rest of the world is at 5.5 percent. I happen to believe that there is something immoral in First World countries saying that yes the planet is in crisis but that they will just hold where they are and everybody should hold where they are which means that underdeveloped countries stay underdeveloped. So we need to look for solutions. 
We have a situation now where planet Earth is combusting fossil fuels and producing over 6 billion tonnes of carbon equivalents every year and when we look at the sort of activity that is creating that we see that the transport industry is a significant part of it. It is important that when we are looking for solutions we do not just provide placebos—things that sound good such as holding international forums and making great speeches and setting in place criteria that actually make no difference. If we are looking at the transport industry we have to say that there are probably with the knowledge we have at this time three areas we can develop. There is the electric motor and probably the thing that is holding that up is that at this stage we are pretty reliant on lead-acid batteries that negate any advantage. So we are looking for further development of titanium batteries or lighter batteries and also a quicker way of charging them. There is the possibility of converting internal combustion engines to burn hydrogen fuels but there are two or three problems surrounding that. At this stage that technology is quite expensive and the sustainable forms of generating hydrogen through electrolysis in tidal waves photovoltaic cells or wave action are not developed far enough. Biofuels are actually something we can engage in almost immediately. Both our diesel engines and our internal combustion engines can get straight into utilising these fuels. So we have an advantage there and while not neglecting those other things we are off first base in terms of working with biofuel solutions. 
The concept of biofuels is not new. When the first oil shocks came along there was a company in Southland that grew oilseed rape and with only 5 percent diesel added to the oilseed rape most of the diesel engines that were either in tractors or transport vehicles would run quite well on it. They smelt a little bit like fish and chip shops but there was not any noticeable lack of power and they actually operated. Dr David Stewart at Invermay Agricultural Centre in the late 1970s about 30 years ago did a lot of work on growing biomass and digesting it under anaerobic situations to produce compressed natural gas (CNG) and that looked to have some considerable possibilities. So this is not a new thing that we are doing. The problem with CNG was that one could not actually compress it into a liquid unless one got up to about 1200 atmospheres so a very large tank was needed to make it work. Again with CNG a bit of power was lost. 
There are a variety of options that have been tried and some exciting things are happening right now. The previous speaker the Hon Marian Hobbs suggested anaerobic sewage. Right now I happen to know that both Rolls-Royce plc and Pratt and Whitney are testing jet fuel equivalents. I guess it is a kerosene equivalent that is being produced that way and some of it is coming out of Invercargill. They are actually looking at that as a jet fuel alternative. So there are some quite exciting possibilities. We have looked as previous members have said at the use of animal fats and tallow to create bio-diesels and ethanol equivalents which will replace gasoline. 
There are some traps here though and that is why we need to have this debate take the public on board and seriously consider the submissions. Although National is happy to support this bill through the select committee process and the first reading we want to see those things aired and we want to get our heads around exactly what those issues are. As I said earlier it is important if we are going to solve this that it is not either a knee-jerk reaction that might be going in the wrong direction or a placebo that does not work. 
The economics surrounding a lot of the decisions that have been made in some countries look to me to be very very questionable. A significant portion of North America’s arable land—in some states it is about 40 percent—is now going into maize production to produce ethanol. The figures on that look to be very negligible. We can read figures that say that there is from about a 7 to 30 percent gain in terms of the carbon imprint. It would seem to me to be quite impractical to try to create ethanol out of a crop that has a high requirement in energy for tillage and a high requirement for fertility in order to grow anything in any way of a decent crop. I think that the world is just now starting to notice the impact of converting significant areas of its arable land into ethanol production. In the balance of what the world is producing in foodstuffs to consumption there is normally between 110 and 120 days worth of food in the food chain. That is from harvest to consumption through shops etc. Right now it is under 50 days; it is down at about 47 days. There are obviously a lot of complex issues in that. It is maybe more that just the fact that quite a considerable amount of arable land has been taken out to put into ethanol production. But again we will get distortions if we do not approach this whole process of ethanol production or biofuel production in a way that is sensible and does not cause disruptions that put us in a worse place than where we would be if we never did it. 
There are also some exciting developments in New Zealand in the ethanol areas. I have talked a little bit about anaerobic activity on sewage to produce kerosene equivalents. I have heard and seen presentations from Genesis Energy and it has very cautionary comments to make about lurching into fertility-hungry crops to produce ethanol. Genesis has done some very interesting work on a couple of crops of  
Salix 
 willows which can be planted and harvested every 2 years and which can provide products like lignans and sugars that are not glucose-based. The economics of that look to be on. Sawgrass is another one but the future could be in harvesting gorse for all we know and we do not want to close our minds to what will actually be the answers. Who would have thought that sewage would fly a jet plane? 
The field is wide open for us but there a number of things that we need to be very clear about. We need to make sure that what we are doing is viable and not just something we are doing to mitigate against our liability to the Kyoto Protocol. We need to be sure that it will fix the problem. There are issues about the durability of engines. To replace my No. 1 tractor with a new tractor today would cost $150000. I do not want to force that to happen any sooner by being forced by legislation to burn fuels that might shorten the life of that tractor. There are compliance costs. There is the whole net gain in the carbon footprint. There are issues in the distribution of what may be new fuels. 
Change is already happening. We need to engage in it. We have a responsibility not only to look good but to find solutions. I believe we should have this process and National is certainly supporting this bill’s referral to the select committee.