Pete Harrison PlanetArk 9 Nov 10;
European plans to promote biofuels will drive farmers to convert 69,000 square km of wild land into fields and plantations, depriving the poor of food and accelerating climate change, a report warned on Monday.
The impact equates to an area the size of the Republic of Ireland.
As a result, the extra biofuels that Europe will use over the next decade will generate between 81 and 167 percent more carbon dioxide than fossil fuels, says the report.
Nine environmental groups reached the conclusion after analysing official data on the European Union's goal of getting 10 percent of transport fuel from renewable sources by 2020.
But the European Commission's energy team, which originally formulated the goal, countered that the bulk of the land needed would be found by recultivating abandoned farmland in Europe and Asia, minimising the impact.
New science has emerged this year casting doubt on the sustainability of the 10 percent goal, but EU energy officials have argued that only around two thirds of that target will be met through biofuels, with the balance being vehicles powered by renewable electricity.
But 23 of the EU's 27 member states have now published their national strategies for renewable energy, revealing that fully 9.5 percent of transport fuel will be biofuel in 2020, 90 percent of which will come from food crops, the report says.
The EU's executive Commission is now considering whether to tweak legislation to take account of the emerging science.
This year's fractious quest to understand the impact of EU biofuels policy has already led to allegations of bias, court action against the Commission and warnings that the probes will kill the nascent industry.
TRADE DISPUTE
The debate centers on a new concept known as "indirect land-use change."
In essence, that means that if you take a field of grain and switch the crop to biofuel, somebody, somewhere, will go hungry unless those missing metric tones of grain are grown elsewhere.
The crops to make up the shortfall could come from anywhere, and economics often dictate that will be in tropical zones, encouraging farmers to hack out new land from fertile forests.
Burning forests to clear that land can pump vast quantities of climate-warming emissions into the atmosphere, enough to cancel out any of the benefits the biofuels were meant to bring.
The indirect effects of the EU's biofuel strategy will generate an extra 27 to 56 million metric tones of greenhouse gas emissions per year, says the report. In the worst case, that would be the equivalent of putting another 26 million cars on Europe's roads, it added.
The UK, Spain, Germany, Italy and France are projected to produce the most extra greenhouse gas emissions from biofuels, generating up to 13.3, 9.5, 8.6, 5.3 and 3.9 extra million metric tones of carbon dioxide per year respectively.
But the whole picture is far more complex.
The European Commission's energy team says shortfalls in grain can be avoided in several ways, including by improving farming yields and cultivating abandoned land.
"The EU has a sufficient amount of land previously used for crop production and now no longer in arable use to cover the land needed," said a statement from the Commission's energy department. "It makes sense to bring this land into use."
Biofuels producers also argue that European Union officials should not alter biofuel-promoting policies to take account of the new science, as it is still too uncertain.
"Any public policy based on such highly debatable results would be easily challengeable at the World Trade Organization," says Emmanuel Desplechin, of the Brazilian Sugarcane Industry Association (UNICA).
The report was compiled by ActionAid, Birdlife International, ClientEarth, European Environment Bureau, FERN, Friends of the Earth Europe, Greenpeace, Transport & Environment, Wetlands International.
(Editing by James Jukwey)
Forced use of biofuels could hit food production, EU warned
Area the size of Ireland could be lost to conventional farming as global warming accelerates, says environmental study
John Vidal guardian.co.uk 9 Nov 10;
Plans to make European motorists use more biofuels could take an area the size of Ireland out of food production by 2020 and accelerate climate change, a study has found.
The report by the independent Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP) is based on plans that countries have submitted to the EU detailing how they intend to meet their legal requirement to include 10% of renewable energy in all transport fuels by 2020.
IEEP calculations suggest that the indirect effect of the switch will be to take between 4.1m and 6.9m hectares out of food production. In addition, say the authors, opening up land to compensate for the food taken out of production will lead to between 27m and 56m tonnes of additional CO² emissions, the equivalent of putting nearly 26m more cars on the road.
The study says European countries have chosen to meet the EU renewable energy targets by importing so-called first generation biofuels from African countries or from Indonesia and Brazil, rather than by promoting the use of advanced biofuels, electric vehicles or energy efficiency to reduce the environmental impact of transport.
"The renewable energy directive was adopted to help combat climate change, however, through promoting the use of conventional biofuels with no consideration of indirect land use change impacts it has the potential to actually increase the EU's greenhouse gas emissions.
"It is vital that this situation is rectified and these impacts are urgently addressed within EU law," said David Baldock, director of IEEP.
Development groups which commissioned the report said the effect of the EU legislation would be felt around the world and urged the EU to drop the 10% biofuels goal.
"Making space for biofuel production will force other farming activity in producer countries deeper into forests," said a spokesman for ActionAid. "This displacement of farming activity will cause loss of wildlife habitats, and carbon dioxide emissions – as well as increasing food prices, hitting some of the world's poorest people hardest."
Friends of the Earth's biofuels campaigner, Kenneth Richter, said: "Using more biodiesel in our cars won't help to green transport – this research shows that when the full impact of their production is taken into account, biofuels cause more emissions than the fossil fuels they replace."
"Trees will be cleared, wetlands will be under threat and a range of species will be pushed to the brink if these proposals go ahead," said RSPB director of international operations Tim Stowe.
Europe's move to biofuels compares with a 7.6% target by 2022 in the US. Last week the US agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, said a further $500m (£310m) would be made available in subsidies to grow biofuel crops over the next 15 years . Most of the money would go to extracting fuel from non-food plants.
ActionAid claimed this year that European biofuel targets could result in up to 100 million more hungry people, increased food prices and landlessness.
The United Nations has singled out biofuel demand as a major factor in what it estimates will be as much as a 40% increase in food prices over the coming decade.
