I explained recently why energy matters to the RSPB and why we want any energy revolution to take place in harmony with nature. We need to generate energy in ways that do not cause needless harm to the natural environment. Biofuels is an area on which we have been campaigning for over a decade. As Nightjar said in response to my post on Monday, biofuels policy is not an area about which decision makers should be proud. Over the years, we’ve seen laws introduced to incentivise biofuels and, just last week, laws that seek to restrict their use.
Last week, the European Parliament agreed to cap the production of biofuels from food crops like wheat and oil seed rape to 6% of the EU’s fuel mix. Intuitively the idea of using food for fuel is bizarre but, this aside, the impacts of biofuels crops on natural ecosystems can be devastating. Forests like Harapan rainforest in Sumatra are under threat from palm oil plantations while the wild pampas grasslands of South America are being ploughed up for sugar cane. Precious wildlife habitat is destroyed and vast quantities of greenhouse gases are released into the atmosphere.
To be fair, demand for EU biofuels isn’t driving this destruction directly – existing safeguards in biofuels laws prevent that – but it is doing it indirectly. As we put food crops into our fuel tanks, inevitably more food has to be produced elsewhere leading to the conversion of new, previously uncultivated land that is often rich in both wildlife and carbon.
MEPs had the opportunity in last week’s vote to put in place a mechanism that would have helped prevent this indirect land use change taking place. However, powerful biofuels industry lobbying forces swayed the vote and proposed corrective measures which now won’t come into play until 2020. In the meantime, some biofuels will continue to be more polluting than the fossil fuels they’re intending to replace. This is perverse given the prime motivation to switch to biofuels was to tackle climate change not to exacerbate it.
In these austere times, we need to take a long hard look at where we are putting our money - and ending perverse subsidies is something to which all EU Member States signed up to at the biodiversity conference in Nagoya in 2010 (see Aichi target 3). This is an argument that we have been making about the EU Budget and the Common Agriculture Policy. It is equally one that can apply to biofuels and it is clear that biofuels are not a sensible investment. A Chatham House report earlier this year revealed that £460million of taxpayers money will be spent on biofuels in the 2013/14 financial year. Across the EU this adds up to several billions of Euros in subsidies. Unlike other renewable energy technologies such as wind and solar power where subsidies help bring fledgling industries to commercial viability and then subsidies can be reduced or removed, 90% of subsidies for biofuels go to purchasing the biofuels crop. The investment in purchasing the feedstock crop will always be needed meaning there is no opportunity for moving towards to a mature self-sufficient biofuels industry.
So where should the money be spent? Well if you want to reduce the transport sector’s impact on the climate, and we do, substantial investment in highly efficient vehicles would be a start. In parallel we need significant financial resources directed to improved public transport and making walking and cycling safer and easier. Not only are walking and cycling healthy options but crucially they get people outside, in contact with nature and experiencing the wildlife on their doorstep. Now that really would be money well spent.
If you had a choice, where would you redirect the £460m of taxpayers money spent on biofuels?
It would be great to hear your views.
Walking not only gets you outside with nature, it's also a social activity. Living Streets' experience tackling barriers to walking shows that feeling part of a community is actually one of the key motivations to more people walking.
Great suggestions - I'd expect nothing less from you both! Thanks Nightjar and Redkite.
Martin, I think the secret to all this, even if quite a complex one, is carbon accounting. I wonder if people realise that Oil Seed Rape used for biofuel, on top of the subsidy, consumes 70% of the carbon it produces as fuel in the costs of growing - mainly energy hungry artificial nitrogen fertiliser. In contrast, wood chips from a local English wood consumes just 5%. Of course, that isn't the whole story as the debate over co-firing power stations has shown. The prospect that the UK might have imported tens of millions of tonnes of wood from Canada to fire our power stations is equally loony - how could the Canadians spare the wood you ask ? because, of course they have oil sands, just about the filthiest fuel on the planet. Fortunately, the Government in England in one of the few really positive win-win renewable energy initiatives went for local use of local wood through the Renewable Heat incentive where the payments are slanted towards smaller scale, local use. Still, there is a potential problem of wood that could go to 'higher uses' where the carbon is locked up longer going into energy production - but that is where we need to smarten up on carbon accounting to ensure the best use. In the meantime wood for local-use energy is starting to get management moving in our 500,000 hectares of unmanaged woodland - and lack of management is generally accepted to be the biggest problem facing our woodland birds within Britain (as opposed to on migration) But we need to get the wood moving - so my choice for a small part of that money is to go on supporting RHI, but equally important I'd like Defra to shift their attention from endless deckchair shifting - the triennial review & threats to both NE & FC, and agonising at seemingly endless length over the future of Fc land and focus hard on helping woodland owners bring their woods back into sustainable management - and maybe reverse the decline in woodland birds in the process.
Without any doubt I would spend the £460m on restoring the rain forests around the world and preventing their further destruction. This would include any other areas where the natural habitat has been destroyed by the growing of biofuels.
What a dreadful national and international mistake biofuels is. Well done to the RSPB for their dogged campaigning work in showing how misguided is the growing and use of biofuels.