Argentina

Information about biofuels and bioenergy in Argentina.

Argentina is the second largest country in South America and has the highest Human Development Index level and Gross Domestic Product per capita of any country in Latin America. The Argentine government has passed major legislation promoting the use of biofuels, including a mandate of 5% ethanol, and 5% biodiesel at gas pumps and tax incentives to producers of these fuels.

Events

2009

10-12 June 2009, Buenos Aires: 4th Biofuel Summit & Expo for Sustainable Biofuels (Themes: funding, conversion technologies, renewable energy)

18-23 October 2009, Buenos Aires: World Forestry Conference 2009. (Themes: forestry, poverty)

2008

18-20 March 2009, Buenos Aires: Southern Cone Stakeholder Outreach Meeting for the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels To download the agenda, click here (Themes: biofuels, Latin America, standards, sustainability)

9-10 September 2008, Buenos Aires: Biofuels Markets Americas. (Themes: markets, technologies, sustainability)

Pros and Cons of Argentina's new biofuels legislation - The new law, passed in April of 2006, grants tax incentives to producers of biofuels and ensures a market for these fuels by mandating a certain percentage of fuel sold at gas stations to be biodiesel or ethanol. Critics say that the downside of this plan will be an increased demand for soybean production which threatens biodiversity and causes social problems of land management and ownership. [1]

Biofuel producers warn EU over "unjustifiably complex" sustainability rules, 7 November 2008 by BusinessGreen: "Eight developing countries have written to the EU warning they will complain to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) if it passes proposed legislation designed to improve the environmental sustainability of biofuels by restricting the types of fuels the bloc imports."
- "The EU is considering legislation that is intended to ban the purchase of biofuels from energy crop plantations that are believed to harm the environment and lead to food shortages by displacing land used for food crops and contributing to rainforest deforestation."
- "[E]ight countries – Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Indonesia and Malaysia – have written to the EU to protest against the proposals" in a letter that "claims that the new rules would 'impose unjustifiably complex requirements on producers' and argues that environmental criteria 'relating to land-use change will impinge disproportionately on developing countries'."[2]

Bio for All - 14 December 2006, from Grist, interview with Ricardo Carlstein, the founder of Biofuels SA.
The Environmental Costs of Biofuel - 20 April 2006, from IPS News, discusses the possible implications of the passage of a new biofuels bill by the Argentine Senate.
Argentina angling to join biofuels race - 19 October 2005, from Planet Ark, describes the status of a nascent biofuels industry in Argentina.
Biodiesel Argentina

National Biofuels Programme- website under the Ministry of Economy and Production (Spanish).
Comisión Nacional de Energía Atómica
Compañía Administradora del Mercado Mayorista Eléctrico S.A.(Cammesa)
Ente Nacional Regulador del Gas
Secretaría de Energía
Ente Nacional Regulador de la Electricidad (ENRE)

Biofuels SA - according to the company's founder Biofuels SA manufacturers and sells biodiesel reactors that produce high quality biodiesel with half the energy input of other reactors.

"In Argentina, the Biofuels Act, approved in April, imposes a requirement of five percent biodiesel or ethanol in petroleum derivatives beginning in January 2010," according to the IPS article Biofuel Boom Sparks Environmental Fears
- The article further states that this "requires 600,000 tonnes of biodiesel and 160,000 tonnes of ethanol annually for the domestic market, which would absorb eight and three percent, respectively, of national output of soybeans and maize."[3]

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