Less than one-third of the biofuel used on UK roads meets government environmental standards intended to protect water supplies, soil quality and carbon stocks, according to new figures.
The Renewable Fuels Agency says that just 31% of the biofuel supplied under the government’s initiative to use fuel from plants to help tackle climate change met its green standard. For the remaining 69% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say where it came from, or could not prove it was produced in a sustainable way, the figures show.
In April 2008, suppliers began mixing biofuel into all petrol and diesel supplies under the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO), and by 2009-10 – the time period to which these latest figures relate – biofuels accounted for 3.3% of UK transport fuels. Suppliers were supposed to ensure that 50% of biofuels met government environmental standards, but the target is not mandatory and was not met.
Several suppliers, including BP, Total, Morgan Stanley and Chevron, also failed to meet targets on reducing greenhouse gas emissions and providing data on the source of their biofuels.
The Renewable Fuels Agency’s chief executive Nick Goodall said: “We’ve seen some progress from suppliers in meeting the challenge of sourcing their biofuels responsibly, but in many cases it has been disappointingly slow. Too many are lagging behind and dragging overall performance down. With mandatory sustainability criteria due to be introduced with the [European] Renewable Energy Directive, companies currently missing all three targets need to make a step change in performance.”
Scientists and campaigners have warned that biofuels could cause more problems than they solve, with concerns over the destruction of tropical forests and impact on global food supplies.
As a whole, suppliers exceeded the target of 45% reduction in greenhouse gases compared to petrol and diesel fuels – achieving 51% savings. However, these figures do not include carbon emissions from indirect changes in land use, such as forests and grasslands being turned over to cropland, which experts have warned could cancel out the environmental benefits of biofuels and even accelerate climate change.
The majority of UK biofuel is imported. Biodiesel from soy was the single biggest source (31%) in 2009/10, with a large increase in Argentinian soy compared to the previous year, something that Friends of the Earth biofuels campaigner Kenneth Richter calls a “huge cause for concern”.
“This report shows us that current biofuels policies are unsustainable ” he says. “Additional demand for crops like soy and palm oil only creates extra pressure for agricultural expansion in producer countries, which in many cases leads to rainforest being cut down to make way for plantations.”
There are also concerns about the impact of biofuels on food prices. The United Nations has singled out biofuel demand as a major factor in what it estimates will be as much as a 40% increase in food prices over the coming decade.
The Renewables Fuel Agency published the Gallagher review into biofuels in 2008, which recommended that the government slow the introduction of biofuels until more was known about the possible negative impacts.
Ministers responded by reducing the rate at which the RTFO’s biofuel targets will increase, so that the total biofuel content in petrol and diesel will reach 5% in 2013-14. A separate EU plan aims to include 10% biofuel in transport fuel by 2020.
