High economic growth and increased industrial production in Thailand has resulted in higher energy requirement, particularly for fossil Fuel. Low fossil fuel prices have been a major factor that helped promote its economic development. Over the last 5 year, however, world oil prices have been rising steadily. This is one of the main reason that the Thai government has recently increased it’s a support to promote energy efficiency and alternative energy. In particular, ethanol (or ethyl alcohol) is an alternative type of energy that can be produced from agricultural raw materials such as sugarcane and cassava [12, 13,14, 15]. The Thai government has set the target to produce and use ethanol at least 9 million litres per day by 2065 to reduce the cost of importing fuel, with the expectation to increase income for farmers and to reduce green house gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion.
Global warming is affecting climate change, which is mainly due to increase of greenhouse gas emissions. The report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicates that the Earth’s surface temperature has risen rapidly averaging 0.2 degrees per decade over the past 40 year. Water scarcity is expected to occur more quickly and severely than anticipated.
In recent years, Thailand experienced a severe drought in the agricultural sector causing a decline in yields. As a result the government promoted the cultivation of sugar cane and cassava for energy. Given that these crops require a large amount of water to grow and water is also a scarce resource, the information water usage for bioenergy production is essential for an effective energy policy [16]. A tool that has been used to assess water needs for production is the water footprint (WF) which was introduced by Hoekstra (2002). The WF can assess water need for crop production.
The objective of this study is to assess WF of sugarcane and cassava in northern Thailand. The result can be used to prepare guideline for the management of water resource for bioethanol production.