If you missed Biofuels Day, as it was christened by the Renewable Energy Association and Ceres, then you must have been on another planet!   more »

Negative coverage of biofuels has continued during the last two months, and the Government has announced that the Renewable Fuels Agency will review the long-term sustainability of biofuels,. Hopefully this review will demonstrate that, with the right checks and balances in place, biofuels can make a positive contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions from transports fuels. After all we have to do something, as Clare Wenner of the Renewable Energy Association (REA) says: “Doing nothing is not an option.”

In the lead-up to the introduction of the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) on April 15^th, REA has launched an information campaign to bring some balance to the debate. You can see the website for this campaign at www.biofuelsday.co.uk.

December 2007 seemed to be a quiet time as far as anti-biofuels media coverage was concerned, but January has already made up for it with coverage of the Royal Society report and the Environmental Audit Committee report published today. The Times headlined its story on the Royal Society report “Biofuel growers ‘must be curbed to save habitats’”. It goes on to say that 5 per cent of fuel in the UK will have to come from biofuels from April, which must slightly dent the credibility of the story.

The BBC gave much more balanced coverage, but still entitled their online piece “Biofuels are not ‘magic bullet’”. You can find the piece here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7187361.stm.  A quote from Jeremy Woods of Imperial College London at the end of the article includes the fact that less than 1 per cent of palm oil imported into the EU is used for biofuels.

Today’s report by the Environmental Audit Committee is perhaps more worrying. Very often the media coverage does not reflect the balance of content in the studies or speeches they are reporting. Many studies are simply reporting that biofuels can contribute to combating climate change, but that this needs to be done in a sustainable way. Neither government nor the industry would disagree with this.

However, today’s report calls for a moratorium on biofuels: http://www.parliament.uk/parliamentary_committees/environmental_audit_committee/eac_210108.cfm

The Telegraph’s reporting is likely to typical: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml;jsessionid=KPGJ2WI0YIDUNQFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/earth/2008/01/21/eabiofuel121.xml  and is entirely accurate.

Speeches at the All Party Parliamentary Renewable Transport Fuels Group last week by Jim Fitzpatrick MP, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport, and Professor Ed Gallagher, Chairman of the Renewable Fuels Agency, were upbeat and positive. They spoke of commitment as well as a robust approach to policing the RTFO. However, when parliamentary committees come out against biofuels in this way, we must expect that the public will be wondering whether the introduction of the RTFO in April is such as good thing after all!

 

This slightly strange items on biofuels on Monday's One Show on the BBC ranged between talking about deforestation to produce ...   more »

More evidence of the industry striking back at recent negative publicity with this letter from the biofuels industry to the ...   more »

For those who have been hoping for a bit more balance in the biofuels debate, there is an excellent letter ...   more »

I spent Thursday and Friday last week (November 1^st and 2^nd) at the National Non-Food Crops Centre’s ...   more »