British Green Groups Aiming at Blair Biofuels Plan

British Green Groups Aiming at Blair Biofuels Plan



May 2007 - A coalition of some of Britain's biggest 
green groups Wednesday launched an advertising campaign attacking what 
they are calling "environmentally destructive biofuels." The groups want 
changes in the Blair Government's proposal requiring that biofuels make up 
a percentage of all UK transport fuels starting in 2008. 
A coalition including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Royal Society 
for the Protection of Birds and WWF, is warning that the government risks 
implementing a poorly thought out biofuels policy that creates more 
problems than it solves. 
Their ads feature a fuel pump held to the head of an orangutan. "Tell the 
government to choose the right biofuel," it says, "or the orangutan gets 
it." 
The British environmental groups are concerned that orangutan habitat will 
be cleared to produce biofuels. 
Biofuels can be used in place of petrol, or gasoline, and diesel. Because 
biofuels can be produced from crops, they could reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions and can play a role in reducing emissions from transport. 
But the environmental groups fear that the demand for biofuels created by 
the government's proposed standard would lead to the clearing of the 
tropical rainforests of Indonesia - the last stronghold of the endangered 
orangutan. 
The government's proposal, known as the Renewable Transport Fuel 
Obligation, RTFO, could, in its present form, "damage the climate and 
destroy some of the world's last remaining rainforests," the groups said 
in a statement Wednesday. 
The RTFO means that by 2010, five percent of all transport fuel sold in 
the UK will come from a renewable source. The measure is predicted to save 
one million metric tons of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide each year by 
2010. 
Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman said, "The Obligation will play a key 
role in making road transport fuels greener. In carbon terms, it's 
expected to be the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road by 
2010." 
The coalition says the RTFO could, "lead to biofuel production causing the 
destruction of rainforests and wetlands, not only threatening endangered 
habitats and species but also releasing far more carbon into the 
atmosphere than could ever hope to be saved by replacing fossil fuels." 
British Transport Minister Stephen Ladyman 
The Department for Transport says the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation 
will be one of the main policy instruments in the transport sector to 
reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to increase the use of renewable 
fuels, helping to meet Britain's international obligations under the Kyoto 
Protocol and the EU Biofuels Directive. 
It will also contribute to the diversity and security of the UK’s 
transport fuel supply, and will offer new opportunities to the UK’s 
biofuel and farming industries, the government says. 
The obligation will require road transport fuel suppliers either to ensure 
that a specified percentage of their sales is made up of fuels from 
renewable sources, or to discharge their obligation in other specified 
ways. 
The obligation does not differentiate between different renewable 
transport fuels. Obligated suppliers will be able to meet their obligation 
by supplying any combination of bioethanol, biodiesel, biogas and any 
other renewable road transport fuel. 
The level of the obligation will be equivalent to 2.5 percent of total 
road transport fuel sales in 2008/9, rising to 3.75 percent in 2009/10 and 
five percent in 2010-11 and beyond. 
The RTFO is intended to create a strong and stable market for biofuels, 
and, in the longer term, other renewable fuels, in the UK. By the time the 
level of the RTFO reaches five percent, it will have created a demand for 
2.5 billion liters (660.4 million gallons) of biofuel a year. 
The Department for Transport estimates this could save as much as a 
million metric tons of carbon a year, which would be the equivalent, in 
carbon terms, of taking a million cars off the road. 
But the coalition says the the environmental costs would outweigh the 
benefits of the policy. 
"A rush for biofuels could considerably accelerate the destruction of 
habitats and loss of wildlife in areas where it already at considerable 
risk," said Dr. Mark Avery, conservation director at the Royal Society for 
the Protection of Birds. 
"The contribution forests are making to tackling climate change, as well 
as harboring rare wildlife, is more than enough to make their protection a 
priority," he said. "Without environmental standards, biofuels are a green 
con." 
Traffic piles up on the Tyne Bridge, Newcastle, England. 
The coalition is demanding that the obligation be tightened up so that 
biofuel producers must meet minimum greenhouse gas and sustainability 
standards, with environmental audits of the whole life-cycle of the fuels, 
from growing the crop to burning it in the car. 
"The risks are so great that biofuels should be the last option to reduce 
transport emissions, not the first," said Ed Matthew from Friends of the 
Earth. "Not only has the government got its priorities wrong, its biofuels 
proposals are so weak that they are in real danger of increasing global 
warming emissions, not reducing them. The word is incompetent." 
The coalition's ads ask members of the public to write to government and 
demand tough, compulsory standards. 
Dr. Douglas Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said, "In its current 
form, this proposal is complacent. It could see biofuel production 
wrecking the climate rather than helping it, at a time when scientists are 
warning us that we need to slash emissions to avoid dangerous global 
warming. The government must sort out this botched plan or risk losing the 
value that biofuels could offer." 
John Alker, senior public affairs officer at WWF-UK said, "A climate 
change policy that potentially increases rather than cuts CO2 emissions is 
clearly a nonsense. Biofuels could offer part of the solution to climate 
change - but government needs to get this policy right in order to do so." 

       
      

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