• Biofuels can result in more emissions

    In last week's European Voice (Letters, 2-8 October), Javier Salgado-Leirado, the president of Abengoa, claimed that all the biofuel crops needed to reach the EU's proposed 10% target by 2020 could be grown in Europe without direct or indirect land-use change.

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    That claim was based on a study by Biofuel Matters. But Leirado did not mention that the study was commissioned by eBIO, the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, of which Abengoa is a key member. And it was written by one of eBIO’s former directors, who is the owner and only member of staff at Biofuel Matters.

    In contrast, the independent and wide-ranging Gallagher Review of the Indirect Effects of Biofuels for the UK government says that “the displacement of existing agricultural production, due to biofuel demand, is accelerating land-use change and, if left unchecked, will reduce biodiversity and may even cause greenhouse gas emissions rather than savings”. It concludes that “the introduction of biofuels should be significantly slowed until adequate controls to address the displacement effects are implemented and are demonstrated to be effective”.

    Leirado argues that “there is no accepted scientific measure” of the greenhouse gas impact of indirect land use change. The Gallagher review, on the other hand, states that “the balance of evidence shows a significant risk that current policies will lead to net greenhouse gas emissions”.

    And that is the point. The EU’s justification for its biofuels policy is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Leirado is apparently asking the EU to ignore the inconvenient truth that many biofuels, when the impact of land use change is properly accounted for, result in higher green-house gas emissions overall than the petrol and diesel they are designed to replace. Policymakers who ignore this would be gravely, and perhaps catastrophically, irresponsible.

    Nuša Urbancic
    Policy officer, low carbon fuels
    Transport and Environment (T&E)