Not one, not two but at least three climate change-related happenings popped up around the country yesterday, many of them carried out by Climate Camp attendees. Although the camp is primarily focused on coal and the proposed new power station at Kingsnorth, today's activities also highlighted other climate threats such as aviation and biofuels. Here is just a taste of what's been happening:
"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."
The Gallagher Review is a major study commissioned by the UK Government on the 'indirect' or 'displacement' impacts of biofuels on carbon emissions from land use change and on food security. It is being conducted by the Renewable Fuels Agency - a new body set up to administer UK biofuel policy. This briefing describes what biofuels are, explains the difference between direct and indirect impacts of biofuels and the implications for biofuels policies in the UK and EU.
Posted by jossc — 26 June 2008 at 5:23pm
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Offshore wind - 3,500 new turbines by 2020?
Although the PM has taken a few verbal pastings from us over the past few months on key climate issues like airport expansion and new coal-fired power stations, in a new speech today he did much to redeem himself by announcing an ambitious plan to ensure Britain generates 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.
To be sure, the government has promised as much in the past and failed to deliver, but there seemed to be something different about today's Renewable Energy Strategy Consultation - some meat on the bones which indicated that the plan might just be more than empty rhetoric. The government is consulting on ambitious plans designed to allow the UK to meet its share of an overall EU target to generate 20 per cent of energy (electricity, heat and transport) from renewables within 12 years.
Posted by jamie — 15 April 2008 at 6:39pm
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So, today the Renewable Transport Fuel
Obligation (RTFO) comes into effect and we'll all be using more biofuels as a
result. Regular readers will know that this exciting piece of legislation will
see 2.5 per cent of our petrol and diesel coming from food crops, and that we have
been asking everyone to send emails to transport secretary Ruth Kelly asking
her to postpone the RTFO. Now we need to see that she abandons so if you
haven't expressed your concern about this already, you can still do so.
Plan is too weak to stop environmentally damaging crops being pumped into British tanks
14 April, 2008
The introduction of the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) tomorrow could seriously undermine the UK's claim to leadership on climate change and increase emissions from the transport sector, according to Greenpeace.
The group claims that new rules to oblige motorists to pump biofuels into their tanks will drive rainforest destruction and could actually accelerate global warming.
