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The biofuels debate blazes on
By Lisa Jackson

Despite the crunch, news just announced predicts that for the first time in months the price of petrol and diesel may be going down by several pence a litre!

Nowadays, prices change like the weather without any apparent logical reason – though it’s probably more about city suits playing monopoly on the trading floor rather than being related to the actual cost of oil, but that’s just my humble opinion! But really, we must look at the bigger picture – whilst we all grumble about the cost of getting from A to B and feel a momentary stab of guilt as we board that plane for foreign climes, this is in fact just the tip of the iceberg of what is probably going to be the largest and most devastating dilemma of the 21st century.

With fossil fuels rapidly diminishing, populations increasing and global warming gathering pace from the western world’s rapid and incessant push towards industrialisation and consumerism, the battle is now on for the earth’s available agricultural land to grow crops for fuel as well as food.

The world’s governments, together with leading renewable and sustainable energy organisations, believe that the answer to our looming fuel crisis lies in the production of biofuels. Some people now already choose to run a modern diesel car on a combination of forecourt diesel and supermarket vegetable oil, but there are in fact serious pros and cons to growing, producing and burning biofuels.

There are two types of biofuel available – biodiesel comes from oil-rich crops such as soy, rape and palm, and bioethanol is produced from starchy crops like maize, wheat, sugar cane and beet. This is good news because it means that land which is not suitable for one type of crop is often perfect for something else. Not only this, but they are almost carbon neutral – ie. burning them returns to the atmosphere the same amount of carbon that is present in the grown plant. The downside of growing these crops on a massive scale to fuel cars, aeroplanes and industrial vehicles, however, may well be more damaging to the environment than our current reliance on fossil fuels.

Valuable rainforests in Indonesia and Malaysia are being rapidly cleared to create thousands of hectares of palm oil producing land. Not only does deforestation release the greenhouse gas CO2 into the atmosphere, exacerbate extreme weather conditions, cause extinction to plant and animal species and desecrate the landscape, but it is predicted that around 60 million forest dwellers will be forced to live in poverty in urban slums.

Bioethanol sounds a more attractive prospect and in fact the UK’s largest bioethanol producing plant in Teeside will soon be operational. With huge government funding this refinery will produce about 400 million litres of fuel from one million tonnes of wheat every year. Sounds good doesn’t it, but with only three UK car manufacturers currently selling FFV (Flexible Fuel Cars) able to run on E85 – the fuel made from the correct mix of bioethanol and petrol – I’m starting to feel that there might be an elephant in the room! Ford, Volvo and Saab all produce FFVs but in fact last year Volvo only sold 170, Ford 150 and Volvo a rather ludicrous 34. Not surprising really, considering that E85 isn’t readily available on the UK forecourt – Morrisons is currently the only national selling it and only at 19 of its pumps countrywide. Unless E85 becomes more widely available, there can’t be any incentive for car manufacturers to make vehicles which run on it. In Scandinavia, Volvo’s sales of FFV’s outstrip regular cars, mainly because their foresighted government offers cash incentives, grants and favourable taxation rates to FFV purchasers. Maybe something Ruth Kelly should take on board!

One of the most salient environmental arguments against bioethanol is the heavily debated dilemma of using human and animal crops to grow fuel instead of food, causing hunger and poverty not only in developing countries but possibly even the western world. Climate change is producing more droughts, which should we become reliant on crops for fuel, could cause both food and fuel shortages. Valuable water is required to grow crops, and as rich and poor countries all jump on the bandwagon to make money from biofuels, the most productive land which should be set aside for food crops will no doubt be used for fuel. South America and Africa have already earned themselves a reputation as “the middle east of biofuels” as they start to depend on fuel crops for their economic survival.

Vegan organisations have long campaigned that giving up meat and animal products could be the answer to the world’s food shortages. The inefficiency of using land to grow animal feed instead of food for humans and the huge discrepancy between the amounts of food consumed by the animal in contrast to the meat it provides, is horrendously wasteful and should be viewed as a blueprint for the same happening with biofuels. They say that a carnivore riding a bicycle has the same carbon footprint as a vegan driving a 4×4, well maybe now the only solution is for us all to become vegan cycling enthusiasts!

So next time you’re filling up your car, stop and think about the real consequences of every journey you make and the enormous implications of our car and air journeys. How ludicrous it is to use valuable growing land to grow crops for fuel, whilst using huge quantities of the same stuff to import and export the crops themselves backwards and forwards across the globe in what is surely just another global money-making exercise, destined to make the rich richer and the poorer more ingrained in poverty and threatening the planet’s very survival.

Lisa Jackson co-ordinates Ethical Junction’s EJ PR an ad-hoc, budget press release service and she is also the founder of Eurydice PR.