As biofuels imports increase in the United Kingdom, policymakers remain largely uninformed about the true environmental and social costs of producing these fuels, posing a significant challenge for efforts to mandate their sustainable use.
As biofuels imports increase in the United Kingdom, policymakers remain
largely uninformed about the true environmental and social costs of
producing these fuels, posing a significant challenge for efforts to
mandate their sustainable use.
In the first report
since a U.K. mandate required that 2.5 percent of road transport fuel
be supplied by biofuels, the independent agency charged with tracking
the country's biofuels resources, the Renewable Fuels Agency,
acknowledged last week that suppliers have been unable to prove the
production methods for 80 percent of the country's biodiesel and
ethanol.
As more countries worldwide implement similar biofuels mandates, the
ability to require suppliers to prove the source and sustainability of
their "renewable fuels" will be key for biofuels to replace fossil
fuels without causing more environmental damage.
The U.K. government set a goal that 30 percent of the country's
biofuels must meet environmental and social standards by the end of
this year. The standards are meant to ensure that production of the
fuels' feedstock does not result in biodiversity losses, carbon
leakage, soil degradation, pollution, or violations of workers' rights.
During the first month of the biofuels mandate - April to May of this
year - only 19 percent met the standards.
"There is no obligation to provide this information yet. There's no
penalty...so obviously they are not getting a lot of information," said
Barbara Bramble, a senior international affairs advisor at the
U.S.-based National Wildlife Federation.
The mandate is part of a European Union directive for biofuels to
supply 10 percent of the region's fuel by 2020. European countries
advocate biofuels as a tool to lower their greenhouse gas emissions -
the region has vowed to cut emissions 20 percent by 2020. But two landmark studies published in the journal Science
this year suggest that if natural habitats are converted to cropland,
the carbon released through clearing the land may outweigh the carbon
dioxide emissions the biofuels were meant to avoid.
The U.K. report said that nearly half of the country's imported
biodiesel in the April-to-May period was derived from soybeans. Nearly
a third of this came from the United States and about 3 percent from
tropical regions such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia (the rest was
from Germany, Canada, and domestic sources). While all of the Malaysian
biodiesel imports met the majority of the standards, only half of
Indonesian imports met some of the standards, and no Brazilian
suppliers could prove any compliance. The report said the county of
origin was unknown for 50 percent of the imports.
The Renewable Fuels Agency has also been tasked with tracking the
greenhouse gas emissions avoided by using biofuels in place of fossil
fuels. For the 87 million liters of biofuel used in the U.K. during the
April-to-May period, this usage avoided 42 percent of the emissions
that would otherwise have been released through fuel burning, the
report said. However, this figure excludes emissions from indirect land
conversion, such as the removal of grasslands or forests to produce
biofuels. "The Agency has recommended that indirect effects are
included in future sustainability reporting and is working with the
government to identify a way to do this," a press release said.
In response to the report, several environmental groups repeated their
growing opposition to the U.K. biofuels mandate. "The shocking
admission that we are unable to identify the origin of nearly half the
biofuels used in the U.K. means that the government cannot assure the
British people that the biofuels in their petrol tanks have not
destroyed rainforests," said Asad Rehman, biofuels campaigner for Friends of the Earth-UK.
European politicians are showing signs that they may relax the region's biofuels mandate,
in part due to suspicions that competition for farmland from the fuels
contributed to the sharp rise in food prices this summer. Countries are
also preparing more stringent "sustainability criteria."
As more suppliers face hard questions about their biofuel production,
this will likely improve the poor compliance reflected in the U.K.
report. "Britain will get more information as they increase
production," Bramble said. "It is really good that they're asking these
questions now when [the mandate] is a very small amount."