Biofuels, good or bad?

2.38.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 26th Feb 2008

This week saw the first commercial aircraft (a Virgin Atlantic 747) powered partly by biofuel fly from Heathrow to Amsterdam. It used a 20% biofuel mix of coconut and babassu oil in one of its four main fuel tanks. Whilst this all sounds good the move was condemned by a number of environmental charities, I have long thought that biofuels may not be the answer - whilst they seem a good idea a hugh ammount of land is being given over to their production, either preventing other (food crops) from being produced or worse still ensure more logging takes place to provide cultivatable land.

Kenneth Richter, Friends of the Earth aviation campaigner, said: "Biofuels are a major distraction in the fight against climate change. "There is mounting evidence that the carbon savings from biofuels are negligible. If Virgin was really serious about reducing the aviation industry's impact on the environment, it would support calls for aircraft emissions to be included in the Climate Change Bill."

The World Development Movement 's Head of Policy Pete Hardstaff, said: "This is nothing more than a Virgin publicity stunt with dangerous consequences for the planet. Biofuels are generally sourced from crops that displace the production of staple foods. Consequently, food prices are rocketing as those crops are diverted from food to fuel. If this pattern continues and expands, millions of people in the developing world will see the price of staple foods soar out of their reach."

Research has found that, in some cases, converting land to biofuel production caused many times more emissions than the savings the fuels delivered. And the demand for palm oil has also been linked to human rights abuses, with conversion of millions of hectares of forests into plantations in Indonesia said to have destroyed the lives of indigenous peoples.

I note with some interest that my former employers - the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds is currently running a petition against Biofuels at http://www.rspb.org.uk/biofuelsaction for their effect on wildlife including Sumatran tigers, orang-utans and countless bird species.

From 15 April, the Government will give you no choice but to put biofuel in your car. 2.5% of all of the fuel sold at UK garages will be biofuel - already added to the petrol or diesel you put in your tank. And these plans are just the beginning. The current target is for the proportion of biofuels in our tanks to increase to 5% by 2010, and talks are underway in Europe that could lead to us being forced to use even more.

The RSPB are urging people to e-mail Ruth Kelly, the Secretary of State for Transport. The text of their email is as follows:

"Swathes of important habitat have been decimated and the survival of many species has been threatened due to the expansion of worldwide biofuels production - an expansion that has been driven by the thoughtless policies of governments around the world. In many cases what is produced does not even deliver greenhouse gas savings - some are even more polluting than the fossil fuels they are meant to replace.

There is also evidence to suggest that taking land used for growing food and giving it over to growing biofuels reduces the amount of food produced and drives up prices.

I do not want to be forced to contribute to this destruction. I urge you to suspend the introduction of the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation this April until safeguards are in place that guarantee the biofuels sold in the UK have not been grown at the expense of wildlife and habitats, and deliver real benefits in the fight against climate change.

Whilst I welcome your recent announcement to review the sustainability of biofuels targets, policy must change. Please take every opportunity to oppose the European Renewables Directive's proposal for the 2020 target for the proportion of biofuels in our tanks to be more than double the UK 2010 target. The European Environment Commissioner has already said that this could not be met sustainably."