04 October 2005
EDITORIAL: Ethanol, the promise
DON’T look now but there’s gold in that sugarcane.
Other than just being literally sweet, that crop, produced in abundance in Negros, Bulacan, Pampanga and other places (Pangasinan now hardly figures), is the wave of the future, in terms of the current nationwide search for alternative sources of energy.
Yes, we’re talking ethanol, the much-talked about additive to gasoline which comes from sugarcane.
A report from Negros says some alcohol refineries in that place are now buying standing sugarcane at an equivalent of P920 to P930 per 1 kg. A Bukidnon congressman, who grew up in sugar farming, admits with open envy for the present growers that he “never enjoyed that price for the sugar I produced (back then.)”
If this tells anything to us here in the Ilocos, who hardly plant the upright crop, it is that maybe it’s time – since the oil crisis will be with us for a long, long, long period – that we see the much brighter prospects of sugarcane as an alternative crop (to rice, that is). And start putting up those alcohol refineries now where ethanol can be produced to serve as a government -encouraged mix for the gasoline we put in our vehicles.
With world oil reserves being pumped out double time to meet the rising demand, sources may dry up faster than what has been originally anticipated. The wiser way for the Philippines to go therefore is finding alternative sources of energy before the dreaded depletion of oil supply happens and developing countries like us are left in the lurch.
As the slogan of sugar producers now goes, in reference to the energy crunch: “If we can’t dig for oil, we plant them.”
We couldn’t agree more.
Other than just being literally sweet, that crop, produced in abundance in Negros, Bulacan, Pampanga and other places (Pangasinan now hardly figures), is the wave of the future, in terms of the current nationwide search for alternative sources of energy.
Yes, we’re talking ethanol, the much-talked about additive to gasoline which comes from sugarcane.
A report from Negros says some alcohol refineries in that place are now buying standing sugarcane at an equivalent of P920 to P930 per 1 kg. A Bukidnon congressman, who grew up in sugar farming, admits with open envy for the present growers that he “never enjoyed that price for the sugar I produced (back then.)”
If this tells anything to us here in the Ilocos, who hardly plant the upright crop, it is that maybe it’s time – since the oil crisis will be with us for a long, long, long period – that we see the much brighter prospects of sugarcane as an alternative crop (to rice, that is). And start putting up those alcohol refineries now where ethanol can be produced to serve as a government -encouraged mix for the gasoline we put in our vehicles.
With world oil reserves being pumped out double time to meet the rising demand, sources may dry up faster than what has been originally anticipated. The wiser way for the Philippines to go therefore is finding alternative sources of energy before the dreaded depletion of oil supply happens and developing countries like us are left in the lurch.
As the slogan of sugar producers now goes, in reference to the energy crunch: “If we can’t dig for oil, we plant them.”
We couldn’t agree more.
