Biofuels failing 'green' standards

Posted by jamie — 7 August 2008 at 1:37pm - Comments

From today's Guardian:

"Less than a fifth of the biofuel used on UK roads meets environmental standards intended to safeguard human rights and guarantee carbon savings, figures released today show.

"The Renewable Fuels Agency says just 19% of the biofuel supplied under the government's new initiative to use biofuel to help tackle global warming met the green standard. For the remaining 81% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say where it came from, or could not prove that it had been produced in a sustainable way."

But even this "green" standard is misleading, as it ignores the side-effects of biofuel production such as massive deforestation:

"The standard does not include carbon emissions from indirect effects such as changes in land use caused by biofuel planting, which experts have warned could cancel out their environmental benefits."

Article tagged as: biofuels, climate change, deforestation, forests, renewable fuels agency
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The standards are listed in a document on the RFA website (pdf) but they're only voluntary. Perhaps all those 'unknown' answers in the RFA's report are coming from sustainable sources (although I very much doubt it) but there's no way of knowing. Until the standards are toughened up and become mandatory, there's going to be a big question mark over a large percentage of the biofuels currently being used.

Biofuels can be a small part of the solution to our energy problems, but they're not going to be able to satisfy our current rates of consumption - it would require an absurd amount of the Earth's surface to grow all the crops required. A financial mechanism to help forest nations preserve their resources is an excellent idea, one many people (including Greenpeace) are currently working on as part of the next stage of the Kyoto process.

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By jamie - 29 August 2008 at 4:29pm

The standards are listed in a document on the RFA website (pdf) but they're only voluntary. Perhaps all those 'unknown' answers in the RFA's report are coming from sustainable sources (although I very much doubt it) but there's no way of knowing. Until the standards are toughened up and become mandatory, there's going to be a big question mark over a large percentage of the biofuels currently being used. Biofuels can be a small part of the solution to our energy problems, but they're not going to be able to satisfy our current rates of consumption - it would require an absurd amount of the Earth's surface to grow all the crops required. A financial mechanism to help forest nations preserve their resources is an excellent idea, one many people (including Greenpeace) are currently working on as part of the next stage of the Kyoto process. web editor gpuk

By jamie - 29 August 2008 at 4:29pm

About Jamie

I'm a forests campaigner working mainly on Indonesia. My personal mumblings can be found @shrinkydinky.

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