Biofuels – Apr 24

Click on the headline (link) for the full text.

Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage

Brown sounds retreat on biofuels
Ross Lydall, The Scotsman
… Gordon Brown, the Prime Minister, said yesterday that the UK would reconsider how far it was prepared to sign up to proposals for a tenfold increase in the use of biofuels by 2020, in response to fears this was causing a “world crisis” in the cost of food.

… it emerged yesterday that price surges have seen grocery bills in the UK rise by around £15 a week in a year.

Since Tuesday of last week, 2.5 per cent of the petrol and diesel sold at the pumps in Britain has been bioethanol or biodiesel. Under European Union targets, this is due to increase to 5 per cent by 2010, and 10 per cent by 2020.

The UK’s 5 per cent target is only half that on the Continent – and now Mr Brown has bowed to new scientific fears that biofuels may be doing more harm than good.
(23 April 2008)

How Biofuels Could Starve the Poor
C. Ford Runge and Benjamin Senauer, Foreign Affairs
Summary: Thanks to high oil prices and hefty subsidies, corn-based ethanol is now all the rage in the United States. But it takes so much supply to keep ethanol production going that the price of corn — and those of other food staples — is shooting up around the world. To stop this trend, and prevent even more people from going hungry, Washington must conserve more and diversify ethanol’s production inputs.

C. Ford Runge is Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Applied Economics and Law and Director of the Center for International Food and Agricultural Policy at the University of Minnesota. Benjamin Senauer is Professor of Applied Economics and Co-director of the Food Industry Center at the University of Minnesota.
(May/June 2007 issue)
Reader pointed out this article from last year.