South Africa

There are very few initiatives dedicated to industrial biotechnology in South Africa. Energy and biofuels policies can serve as a case-study for upcoming policies for other bio-based products.

Policy

South Africa used bioethanol (from sugar cane) in petrol from the 1920’s until the 1960’s, when this fell away due to low international crude oil prices. Recent high oil prices have lead to major interest in investing in biofuels production.

In December 2005 the development of a national biofuels industrial draft strategy targeted at creating jobs in the energy crops and biofuels value chain was approved and an Interdepartmental Biofuels Task Team was set up.
The Biofuels Strategy aims to achieve a biofuels average market penetration of 4.5 % of liquid road transport fuels (petrol and diesel) by 2013 which will contribute 75 % to the national Renewable Energy target. This is to be based on local production, both agricultural and manufacturing, because to base such a target on imports is risky and does not really make a contribution to South Africa’s Renewable Energy target, nor provide the benefits, such as jobs, economic growth and BEE participation through the value chain.
The driver to enable the volumes is utilisation of the Petroleum Products Licensing system that will require the existing petroleum wholesalers to buy biofuels production according to their national market share. Pricing will be linked to the basic fuels price that is an import parity marker for local producer prices of fuels and is the basic element of fuels price regulation.
The Petroleum Products Amendment Act enables the Minister of Minerals and Energy to require that licensed wholesalers and licensed producers may be required to supply petroleum products made from “vegetable matter”, and complying to certain specifications before they supply petroleum products made from other raw materials.

Market access

There is already precedent in South Africa at local government and provincial government spheres of public procurement targeting more environmentally sustainable electricity and liquid fuels.