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    CSMonitor Features




Why Europe backpedals on biofuel
targets
Ethanol and other biofuels are boosting food prices and greenhouse
gases, says a new British report.

By Mark Rice-Oxley | Correspondent of The Christian Science
Monitor / July 8, 2008 edition

Reporter Mark Rice-Oxley discusses second-generation biofuels.

Reporter Mark Rice-Oxley




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London

Europe is signaling a retreat from its bold commitment to biofuels as concern mounts that the plant-
based alternative to gas and diesel, once heralded as a panacea for climate change, is contributing to
spiraling global food prices.

Officially, the 27-nation European Union is sticking to a target that will require 10 percent of motor
vehicle fuel to be derived from renewable sources by 2020, as part of overall efforts to reduce carbon
emissions by 20 percent.

But official backpedaling is on the rise. The British government indicated Monday it would take a



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more cautious approach following an official report that raised multiple warnings about the
technology, specifically that it contributes to high food prices and may create more greenhouse gas
emissions than it prevents.

The European Parliament meanwhile is to vote later this year on a proposal to lower the EU target to
just 4 percent by 2015, after a committee of lawmakers supported the measure Monday.

Rumblings of disaffection with biofuels have resonated from French politicians, who pooh-poohed th
10 percent target last week, to Germany, where the government has scrapped tax breaks for green
fuels.

"It would be foolhardy at the moment on the evidence that we have got to say we should go headlong
in pursuit of biofuels," Ed Gallagher told the BBC. He's the author of the British report, which called
for Britain's own targets to be reduced. "At the moment, on the evidence that we have got, getting to
10 percent is going to be very difficult without causing environmental damage and an effect on food
prices."

Adrian Bebb of Friends of the Earth adds: "The political tide in Europe is turning against biofuels.
Everyone realizes that it's a crazy idea to use valuable land to grow crops for cars and not people. We
are starting to see a pretty big retreat."

Europe was an early adopter of biofuel targets and an eager producer of biodiesel (derived from plant
oils, as opposed to ethanol which is derived from sugar and corn). In a continent that prides itself on i
green credentials, political leaders were eager to make firm commitments to technology that could hel
combat climate change and reduce Europe's dependency on energy imports.

But that determination has been sorely tested by the contention that devoting land to biofuels
compounds a worldwide food shortage that has sent prices soaring and pushed millions of people into
hunger. In a sign that global scepticism towards biofuels is growing, the G-8 nations as well as
Mexico, Brazil, China, India, and South Africa insisted Tuesday at the G-8 summit in Japan that
biofuels must be compatible with "food security."

A World Bank report leaked to a British newspaper last week estimated that biofuels were responsible
for 75 percent of the recent spike in global food prices, which have risen more than 80 percent in the
past three years.

US Agriculture Secretary Edward Schafer said recently that biofuel production has pushed up global
food prices by only 2 or 3 percent. and that biofuels had cut US consumption of oil by a million barre
a day.

World Bank President Robert Zoellick said at the G-8 meeting that both Europe and the US should
look at reducing biofuel targets. The Bush administration has a target of cutting gasoline use by 20
percent by 2017, primarily by stepping up the use of ethanol.

And yet targets remain vital to give the nascent industry a stimulus to compete with Big Oil. Giles
Clark, the editor of Biofuel Review, a newsletter in Britain, says that unless retailers are forced to
supply certain quotas of the fuel, they won't bother. "The oil majors have to be involved," he says.
"They have the forecourts [gas stations]. Why would they bother with biofuels unless there was some
leverage? So there needs to be some encouragement."

Plenty of EU officials remain convinced that biofuels should remain part of the mix. Michael Mann,
EU agricultural spokesman, says that Europe could still hit its target "without major effects on food
supplies," and argues that biofuels have less of an impact on food prices than do failed harvests and
burgeoning demand from a growing global population.



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"The amount of corn the US is putting into ethanol does have an effect on the market," he
acknowledges. "But rice, for example, has seen the biggest increase in prices and it is not used for
biofuels. Sugar is a biofuels crop ­ and its price has gone down."

Mr. Mann dismisses arguments that some biofuel production can actually generate more greenhouse
gases, saying that all EU biofuels must be at least 35 percent cleaner than fossil fuels to qualify as
such.

Other experts argue that even if Europe retreated or paused in its "dash for biofuels," the impact on
global food prices would be minimal. Abdolreza Abbassian, an economist at the Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO) in Rome, says "Unless some heavyweight like the US shifts policy, we probably
will not see dramatic changes." He estimates that the US has switched 30 percent of its corn output
into biofuels.

Experts say that the future of biofuels probably lies not in edible plants now being used, but in
nonedible crops ­ the so-called second generation biofuels.

Giles Clark says these biofuels fall into two categories: those that use the nonfood parts of plants, like
stems and straw. Others are nonedible plants such as algae and jatropha which, says Clark, "can be
grown on marginal land that wouldn't support food crops, is native to Africa, is not a food plant at all

( More environment stories )

Comments
1.Craig Sutherland | 07.08.08

The Guardian had it wrong. So says the Wall Street Journal, which reports today that the study
blaming biofuels for the increase in food prices was nothing more than a working paper meant to
contribute to a World Bank position paper on food prices. The World Bank is now on record refuting
that this unfinished paper reflects its position on biofuels.

Read the Wall Street Journal article http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/07/07/bad-juice-
ii-biofuels-maybe-not-quite-so-bad-world-bank-says/

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