Press release. For immediate use, 10 March, 2008
Renewables chiefs hit back at biofuels critics
The huge row raging across Europe over biofuels shows no sign of abating.
Recently, Dorette Corbey – rapporteur in the European Parliament for the European Union’s Fuel Quality Directive – claimed that certain EU biofuels targets are unattainable.
Now the UK’s chief scientist, various renewable energies groups, and even the UN have got in on the act.
European leaders have agreed that, by 2020, one-fifth of the Union’s energy will come from renewable sources and, within that figure, 10% of all transport fuels will be sourced from biofuels.
Dutch Socialist Corbey says that the latter target is unrealistic: “We need to make sure that biofuels do not have a detrimental affect on air quality, for example. The second generation of biofuels are not yet in practice and, currently, there are not enough good ones. “There is a feeling among some MEPs that a 10% target is too high.”
Speaking ahead of the World Biofuels Markets expo in Brussels this week, Corbey’s comments come amid a flurry of discussions about biofuels, their effectiveness for reducing emissions and their impact on food prices.
A global issue
Last week, Josette Sheeran, head of the UN World Food programme, told the European Parliament that world food prices could keep rising until 2010.
And the UK government’s chief scientist, Professor John Beddington, claimed that the potential impacts of food shortages were “the elephant in the room” while predicting that a 50% increase in food production will be needed by 2030.
Prof Beddington added: “It’s very hard to imagine how we can see the world growing enough crops to produce renewable energy while at the same time meet the enormous demand for food.”
Supporters hit back
But supporters of biofuels were swift to hit back. Clare Wenner, head of the London-based Transport Biofuels Renewable Energy Association, claimed that current production of biofuels “uses about 1% of global land available for agriculture” (the figure is slightly higher across Europe), and that “there is a real danger that blaming biofuels will become a kneejerk reaction that stops us from dealing with the much larger issue of food and energy needs for the next 50 years”.
Wenner’s views were echoed by Oliver Schaefer, policy director of the European Renewable Energy Council, who blamed rising food prices on the changing diets and growing middle-class demands of countries such as China and India.
And Nadim Chaudhry, organiser of the World Biofuels markets conference, added his views. “Biofuels is a lively and growing issue and much rides on urgent decisions being made by politicians and also on the innovation of industry chiefs and scientific research. There will be plenty of representatives from all sides in Brussels this week, and that can only be healthy.”
www.worldbiofuelsmarkets.com
ENDS
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Tony Mallett
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tony.mallet@gmail.com