Biofuels are manufactured from plants or biomass. What could be greener? Biomass can be burned for heat and power or made into biodiesel from new or used vegetable oil or bio-ethanol by fermenting, for example, straw.  Biofuels appear to be renewable and carbon neutral, as burning them simply releases carbon dioxide the plant used during its life. However, greenhouse gasses are emitted during manufacture.

This would explain their popularity. As the American President recently cited, we can break our addiction to oil and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The industrialised world can solve the spectres of global warming, peak oil and our dependence on Middle East oil without having to reduce our transport. At the same time the majority world can increase trade and make poverty history.

It sounds fantastic, almost too good to be true. It is. In order to tackle climate change the EU introduced the EU Biofuel Directive, which demands that by 2010, 5.75% of our fuel should come from biofuel, even though only half of this target can be met from crops grown in Europe. The Directive did not look at any environmental effects of importing biofuels from the tropics.

Palm oil from Asia and soya oil from Brazil is many times more efficient than the most efficient European crop. Malaysia and Indonesia will destroy their rainforests to grow palm oil for biodiesel sold in Europe. 

The destruction of rainforests is linked to about a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions from all human activities. That’s five times Kyoto! CO2 emissions from Asia’s peat fires account for as much as a further 15%. The conversion of rainforest to oil palm plantations in Asia and soya oil in the Amazon has a drastic affect on biodiversity, water supplies and the human rights of indigenous people.  

So could Europe mitigate this global disaster? If current set-asides grew biofuels, Europe could reduce its CO2 emissions by 0.3%. This might lead to catastrophic loss of wildlife.  Closer to home, for the UK to convert from fossil fuels to biofuels we would need 4_ British Isles. Recycling chip fat should be promoted. Unfortunately this would only satisfy 0.3% of UK transport.

Biofuels present us with a moral dilemma. 40% of global land is now devoted to agriculture. James Lovelock has said - “if we burn crops grown for fuel this could hasten our decline. Agriculture already uses too much of the land needed by the Earth to regulate its climate and chemistry.” The UN Millennium Assessment Report warns of the catastrophic impact on all ecosystems of increasing agriculture. Expansion of the biofuel market, will compete with agricultural land, or intensify land use or expand the area of land used for agriculture.

The timing could not be worse. Global grain consumption now exceeds production. World grain reserves are at their lowest level since 1972. Rising grain prices will endanger the lives of the world’s poor. Global warming will reduce agricultural output. The UN has predicted, in a globally warmed world, by 2050, 7 billion people could face water scarcity. The population of the world is predicted to rise from 6.3 billion to 9.3 billion by 2050.

Those worse affected by global warming will be in the majority world. Should they be condemned to starvation so that we can feed our cars? If no-one exceeded the 70 mph speed limit, we would not need the EU Directive of 5.75% biodiesel in our tanks.

For more information visit www.biofuelwatch.org.uk
To get involved or comment, email biofuelwatch@yahoo.co.uk.

This article has been printed with permission of the author and Vision 21 who carried it in their The Edge magazine issue 43 September 2006.