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Biofuels 2.0

Wednesday, January 21, 2009
Posted in Global Warming | Tagged Global Warming

A new generation of biofuels is poised to come into the market. They are greener, say proponents because they can be grown on unused, ‘marginal’ land and won’t compete for our food crops. But just where exactly is all this marginal land, and whose backyard might it be? Helena Paul reports.

Recent months have seen intense debates over agrofuels - biofuels made from crops. At first they were described as a panacea, a means of addressing climate change and regenerating agriculture and rural regions in Europe and around the world, particularly in Africa. The drive to exploit the global south for production of fuels from food crops such as corn and soya was presented as a development opportunity. However, many questions have since arisen about their true value for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on food production, such as land-use change, water depletion, waste, the displacement of people, other crops and animals and the human and environmental costs enacted, have become major concerns.

In response, policy-makers have been offered ‘second generation’ biofuels. These, we are told, will not affect food production because they will not use non-food crops. Technologies will convert the whole plant or tree to fuel, not just the fruit or seed. At least that is the vision.

However, large plantation will still be required to provide the raw materials and thus, although agrofuels might not compete for food crops, they will certainly compete for land and water. Moreover the technologies may be not be commercially viable for 10-20 years.

All this has caused confusion among political decision-makers. The European Union, having decided early in 2007 on a 10 per cent target for agrofuel use by 2020, has been strongly urged to reconsider, by a wide range of organisations and scientists profoundly concerned about the impacts. But the EU has resisted doing so to date. In February 2008, in response to the growing outcry about food prices and the indirect impacts of agrofuels, especially changes in land use, the UK government invited its newly established Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) to undertake a review of such impacts.

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