MIXING BIOFUELS WITH FOSSIL FUELS TO BECOME COMPULSORY

This year, it will become compulsory for fuel companies in Mozambique to mix biofuels (ethanol and bio-diesel) into the petrol and diesel they sell to their clients.According to Energy Minister Salvador Namburete, regulations on the mixture, establishing percentages and deadlines, have been deposited with the secretariat of the Council of Ministers (Cabinet), and are expected to be approved shortly.Namburete made this announcement in Maputo on Friday, at the ceremony launching a viability study on the project for Sustainable Development of Bioenergy in Mozambique. With the new regulations, he added, the government intends to stimulate the production of biofuels.“We want to create a market, to show investors that a market exists”, he said. “The mixture of biofuels with fossil fuels will be compulsory from a certain moment and is intended to induce production. The regulations are a way of stimulating investment in the market”.Speaking at the ceremony, the under-secretary general for energy and high technology in the Brazilian Foreign Ministry, Andre Amado, said that in Brazil, one of the largest biofuel producers in the world, all petrol sold must be 25 per cent ethanol, and all diesel is five per cent biodiesel. Mozambique will be the first country to benefit from a project for the Sustainable Development of Bioenergy, resulting from a partnership between the Brazilian government and the European Union.However, both Brazil and the EU are calling for a prudent approach to developing biofuels, warning that such production must be sustainable and must respect the environment. Hence the need for a viability study, which will be undertaken by the Brazilian Getulio Vargas Foundation, together with Mozambican technical staff. The study is intended to ensure alignment of the new programme with the strategies and policies already defined by the Mozambican government, and to create national capacity for the sustainability of the initiative.The study enjoys financial support to the tune of 800,000 US dollars provided by Vale-Mozambique, the Brazilian company developing an enormous open cast coal mine in the western province of Tete. Work on the study will begin in March.Several biofuel initiatives are already under way in Mozambique. For example, the publicly owned fuel company Petromoc has set up ECOMOZ (Renewable Alternative Energy). Since 2007, the ECOMOZ processing unit has produced over a million litres of biodiesel, based on coconut oil.