Biofuel policies under attack
Mon 18 June 2007
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Warnings have been issued by a campaign group, Corporate Europe Observatory, and several senior advisers to the UK Gvernment about the biofuel targets and policies being implemented in many countries around the World.
A brief released by the Corporate Europe Observatory demanded a moratorium on biofuels, warning of the link between a growth in the biofuel market and higher food prices, a reduction in biodiversity and deforestation. It also criticised the European Commission's January proposal of a mandatory 10% usage of biofuels in EU road transport by 2020, claiming that this prioritises industry and energy security over climate change issues. Furthermore, it warned that the biotechnology industry will use the planned growth in biofuel production to sneak GM crop production into the EU on a large scale.
The Commission's energy spokesman acknowledged that interests other than a reduction in emissions were partly responsible for EU biofuel policy. "But for certain we have to make sure that all biofuels are sustainable," he told ENDS.
Meanwhile, Sir Nicholas Stern, the UK Government adviser whose report last year addressed the economics of climate change, has also made sceptical comments on biofuels. In an interview with the Financial Times on 18 June, he conceded that biofuels could help to reduce emissions levels, but warned that the production of certain fuels could have serious consequences for food supplies. He also doubted that sugar and corn-based fuels would be able to meet demand on their own.
"You don't have to be very knowledgeable to know that sugar is highly water-intensive and needs fertile land," said Stern. Instead, he suggested that the biofuels market focus upon crops that can grow in areas where food production is not suitable: "the key thing is to grow it on marginal land, [of] which [there] is a lot in central Asia, western Brazil, around the Sahara, and in parts of Indonesia".
However, he did claim to be "a lot more optimistic than a year ago" about the potential of second-generation biofuels, as well about the efforts of the international community in tackling climate change in general.
Even stronger warnings are expected be made shortly by one of the Government's senior science advisers. The Sunday Times has reported that Roland Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, is expected to tell a meeting at the Royal Academy of Engineering that the promotion of bioethanol and biodiesel is a 'scam' that legitimises deforestation while increasing, rather than reducing emission levels.
Clift, who sits on the scientific advisory council of DEFRA said recently that the land cleared for biofuel crops "will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction". He is also likely to attack UK plans to grow rapeseed as a biofuel crop, pointing to research that suggests that the nitrous oxide generated by this will be even more harmful than the CO2 emissions it replaces.
Meanwhile, another senior adviser, this time for the Department for Transport, has also criticised the government's biofuel strategy, claiming that it will have no impact on the UK's CO2 emissions. In a speech to the Institute of Engineering and Technology's climate change committee, he told his audience that "we would need to plant a land area twice the size of Britain to get enough biofuel crops to halve our emissions. The numbers simply do not add up."
Roger Kemp, who is professor of engineering at Lancaster University, denounced the government's 'false belief' that solutions to climate change can come through technical advancement. "Underlying all this is the assumption that we have to preserve the mobility and freedom to travel that we now enjoy at all costs. However, when you look at the science of climate change it is clear there are no such simple solutions. Humanity has to accept that."
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