Energy matters: a focus on biofuels

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.