Caribbean nations grapple with biofuel issues

The Caribbean, which includes the Dominican Republic and Central America, offers examples of the uncertainty many regions face in the global energy grid. If those regions have the resources, they have to ask whether biofuels are worth the investment.

“The other question is, ‘Do I want to produce ethanol for the domestic market, or do I want to export it?’ ” said Sergio Trindade, director of science and technology for International Fuel Technology in St. Louis and former assistant secretary general for the United Nations Science and Technology Committee. “It is a question whose answer depends on time.”
Investors from Brazil, Europe and United States are already buying into the biofuels industry in the Caribbean and Central American countries. A recent pact between Brazil and the United States helps some of these smaller countries get technology and know-how to make ethanol and biodiesel.

Growing, producing and using renewable fuels can help Caribbean countries become less dependent on imported oil, said Johanna Mendelson Forman, senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.

Much of that region’s oil is supplied by Venezuela, where President Hugo Chavez is known for his animosity toward President Bush. Caribbean countries have been supportive of U.S. policies, and the United States doesn’t want them to start siding with Chavez instead, Forman said.

“Chavez is trying to seek friends and allies. … The Caribbean has 22 votes at the U.N. If you get some kind of dependency with a country, you have other ways with sticks and carrots of using your dependency,” Mendelson Forman said.

But Bros, the agronomist in the Dominican Republic, isn’t working for politics. He’s working to improve incomes and lives. Bros is gathering support for growing sweet sorghum and jatropha hedges, whose oily seeds can be used for biodiesel. And he’s hoping an ethanol plant can revive the island’s dormant sugar fields.

USA Today