Government argues against EAC calls for moratorium on biofuels targets
Wed 07 May 2008
View all news
In its response to the Environmental Audit Committee's report on biofuels, the Government argues against the case for a moratorium on biofuels targets.
The Government argues that targets have been set at an ‘appropriately cautious level’ and that without them an opportunity to make carbon savings from biofuels would be missed. The Government says it would also mean reneging on an earlier commitment on the back of which investment decisions have been made.
The Government says that it recognises that the environmental performance of biofuels can vary considerably according to such factors as where and how the feedstocks are grown. It acknowledges that the current scientific consensus suggests that the best biofuels can offer greenhouse gas savings of around 80% compared to fossil fuels but that the worst offer no greenhouse gas savings at all, and can have damaging social and environmental impacts.
The Government says that it is therefore essential to develop mandatory sustainability standards for biofuels. (The full Government response, and the EAC's rejoinder is accessible through the associated link.)
Meanwhile, the UN Secretary-General's office and the EC's Agriculture Commissioner have also recently contributed their thoughts to the wider biofuels debate.
A senior adviser to the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the United States and Europe should cut back on production of biofuels because they are hurting food supply at a time of rising prices. Jeffrey Sachs, a prominent US academic said: "(Biofuels programmes) were understandable at a time of much lower food prices and larger food stocks but do not make sense now in a global food scarcity condition."
The EC's Agriculture Commissioner, Mariann Fischer Boel said in a speech organised by the European Policy Centre in Brussels that biofuels seem to have become a 'scapegoat': "The storm of media comment about them has become louder and louder, to the point where it's now difficult to hear real debate above the shriek of the wind. But we must all make ourselves heard in the wind, otherwise good policy-making will be the victim," she said.
The Commissioner said that biofuels were not an agriculture policy but "one piece of the jigsaw...an important piece. They are a necessary piece".
Related Links
< Back to news list