The EU recently missed an opportunity to end the most wasteful green programme of our time – one which costs billions of pounds annually in the U.K. and causes at least 30 million people to go hungry every year. By failing to agree a cap on the use of biofuels, the Council of Ministers has given tacit support for a technology that is bad for both taxpayer and environment. Legislation will now be delayed until 2015.
Studies show that as land is dedicated to energy crops, land for food is simply taken from other areas – often forests – leading to substantial CO2 emissions. And processing biofuels emits CO2, drastically reducing benefits.
In the EU, crop-based biofuels have replaced 5 per cent of fuel used in transport. If the biofuels were emission-free, that would reduce emissions by 5 per cent – totalling about 59 million tons (Mt) of CO2 each year by 2020.
But a 2013 study by the International Institute for Sustainable Development shows that deforestation, fertilisers and fossil fuels used in the production of biofuels would emit about 54Mt of CO2. A full 92 per cent of the carbon dioxide “saved” is just emitted elsewhere.
-tk-