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Top UK scientist says biofuels are scam
Jonathan Leake and Steven Swinford, Sunday Times
THE government’s policy of promoting biofuels for transport will come under harsh attack this week from one of its senior science advisers.
Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.
Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department.
He will tell the seminar that promoting the use of biofuels is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions.
Clift’s comments will amount to a direct challenge to Miliband, who has published a strategy promoting biofuels. It coincides with a surge of anger among environmentalists over the weak pledges on climate change that emerged from last week’s G8 summit.
The audience on Thursday will also include Howard Dalton, Miliband’s chief scientist at Defra, who is expected to speak in defence of biofuels.
Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops.
“We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.”
(10 June 2007)
The Great Biofuel Hoax: Touted by Politicians and Industry, “Green” Energy Comes with a High Price Tag
Eric Holt-Giménez, The Indypendent (NYC Independent Media Center)
Biofuels invoke an image of renewable abundance that allows industry, politicians, the World Bank, the United Nations and even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to present fuel from corn, sugarcane, soy and other crops as a replacement for oil that will bring about a smooth transition to a renewablefuel economy. Myths of abundance divert attention from powerful economic interests that benefit from this biofuels transition, avoiding discussion of the growing price that citizens of the global South are beginning to pay to maintain the consumptive oil-based lifestyle of the North. Biofuel mania obscures the profound consequences of the industrial transformation of our food and fuel systems – the agro-fuels transition.
The Agro-fuels Boom
Industrialized countries have unleashed an “agro-fuels boom” by mandating ambitious renewable fuel targets. Renewable fuels are to provide 5.75 percent of Europe’s transport fuel by 2010, and 10 percent by 2020. The U.S. goal is 35 billion gallons a year. These targets far exceed the agricultural capacities of the industrial North. Europe would need to use 70 percent of its farmland for fuel. The United States’ entire corn and soy harvest would need to be processed as ethanol and biodiesel.
Northern countries expect the global South to meet their fuel needs, and southern governments appear eager to oblige. Indonesia and Malaysia are rapidly cutting down forests to expand oil-palm plantations targeted to supply up to 20 percent of the European Union biodiesel market. In Brazil – where fuel crops already occupy an area the size of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg and Great Britain combined – the government is planning a fivefold increase in sugar cane acreage with a goal of replacing 10 percent of the world’s gasoline by 2025.
The rapid capitalization and concentration of power within the agro-fuels industry is breathtaking.
…The agro-fuels transition is not inevitable. There is no inherent reason to sacrifice sustainable, equitable food and fuel systems to industry. Many successful, locally focused, energyefficient and people-centered alternatives are presently producing food and fuel in ways that do not threaten food systems, the environment or livelihoods. The question is not whether ethanol and biodiesel have a place in our future, but whether or not we allow a handful of global corporations to impoverish the planet and the majority of its people. To avoid this trap we must promote a steady-state agrarian transition built on re-distributive land reform that re-populates and stabilizes the world’s struggling rural communities. This includes rebuilding and strengthening our local food systems and creating conditions for the local re-investment of rural wealth. Putting people and environment – instead of corporate megaprofits – at the center of rural development requires food sovereignty: the right of people to determine their own food systems.
Eric Holt-Giménez is the executive director of Food First/Institute for Food and Development Policy, Foodfirst.org. This article was first printed in Food First Backgrounder, Summer Issue, Volume 13 #2.
(8 June 2007)
Malaysia defends palm oil production
Charles Clover, Telegraph
Malaysia, one of the world’s leading growers of palm oil, has hit back at allegations that Europe’s growing use of “green” fuels will increase the destruction of rainforests and great apes, such as the orang utan.
Malaysia and Indonesia account for 85 per cent of the world’s production of palm oil
The oil palm has been grown in Malaysia since the 1870s
In March, EU leaders agreed to set a binding climate change target to make biofuel – energy sources made from plant material – account for 10 per cent of all Europe’s transport fuels by 2020.
But the European Commission has since admitted that the objective, which aims to cut carbon dioxide emissions, may have the unintended consequence of speeding up the destruction of tropical rainforests and peatlands in South-East Asia – actually increasing, not reducing, global warming.
Peter Chin, Malaysian minister of plantation industries and commodities, offered a solution to this problem in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
He favours the certification of palm oil from established plantations under internationally-agreed standards.
He also argues that palm oil is actually a superior fuel to rape seed, maize and soya – grown for biofuels in Europe and America – from an environmental point of view.
An independent study commissioned by the Malaysian government has shown that palm oil requires an input of only 30-40 per cent of fossil fuels to produce a given amount of energy compared to an input of up to 60 per cent fossil fuels in the process of making biofuels from maize, rape seed or soya.
(10 June 2007)
All aboard Branson’s bio train
CNN Money
Billionaire Richard Branson’s commitment to combat global warming got on track Thursday as Europe’s first scheduled passenger train fueled by vegetable oil left London for North Wales. Branson’s Virgin Trains is running one of its trains on a 20 percent biodiesel blend for a six-month trial, and the British entrepreneur said his whole fleet might eventually be converted to run on biofuels. ..
Britain’s trains currently run on red diesel, a fuel taxed at a discounted rate of 7.69 pence ($0.15) per liter, while the biodiesel blend would attract a duty of 54.68 pence. ..
The fuel will be provided by Britain’s largest biofuels supplier, Greenergy. The firm’s chief executive officer, Andrew Owens, told Reuters that Greenergy was also working with three other train companies to find biodiesel blends for their locomotives. “They all have different types of engines,” he said.
(7 June 2007)
See RailNews for more detail or Paul Upham in The Guardian for some tire-kicking.
CNN errs in saying
Branson has committed to spending all the profits from his airline and rail business to combat global warming.
In fact Mr Branson has committed to putting Virgin plane & train profits into developing clean fuels, not the same thing at all.
Biofuel boondoggle: US subsidy aids Europe’s drivers
Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor
Fast-rising worries over global warming have created a biofuel boondoggle.
Called “splash and dash,” “touch and go,” or an unfair trade practice, it features biofuels traders who exploit a US tax credit, European drivers who get cheaper diesel fuel, and American taxpayers, who are footing the bill.
It also illustrates a cautionary tale of how government incentives, no matter how well-intentioned, can sometimes be subverted into windfalls for the few.
“You have US taxpayers providing a very nice tax incentive, and they’re not receiving any energy-security benefit or added fuel to the marketplace or benefits to US development in return,” says Joe Jobe, chief executive officer of the National Biodiesel Board, which represents US biodiesel producers.
So far, the subsidies involved are relatively small – conservatively estimated at $30 million last year – but they’re rising fast. And while efforts to close the loophole are under way in Congress, they’re complicated by competing interests. ..
(8 June 2007)
