Memorandum submitted by Calor Gas Ltd
The Government favours biofuels but is aware
of the controversial factors which still surround them: whether
they are encouraging imports rather than home production; whether
they are sustainable or create environmental problems (requiring
heavy use of nitrogen fertilisers and long-distance transport;
and whether they will drive up food prices). There is to be a
report assessing these factors by April 2008. This report should
be carefully analysed not least because the Building Regulations
raise the possibility that the fuel factor for heating fuel could
be improved if it were to incorporate a percentage of biofuels.
Leaving aside the issue of having to redesign the technology of
oil tanks, and the expensive retrofitting of technology that such
a policy would entail, there are question marks over the green
credentials of biofuels.
On the food prices front, an early straw in
the wind may be the recent "pasta strike," reported
by the BBC on 13 September 2007. Consumers' associations in Italy
had asked people to refrain from buying or eating pasta for the
day, in protest against recent price increases. The price for
durum flour, the main ingredient for Italian pasta, has risen
from 0.26 euro per kg (£0.18) to 0.45 euro per kg in the
last two months. Global warming and the growing use of durum wheat
as a bio-fuel are blamed for the steep rise in pasta prices.
Eric Johnson, Editor of Environmental Impact
Assessment Review and Russell Heinen of SRI Consulting writing
in "Chemistry and Industry" (23 April 2007) pose the
simple question: "Do biofuels really reduce global warming?"
SRI compared rape oil as the primary feedstock in Europe for biofuels
with petroleum diesel refined from crude oil. They derived an
answer that they admitted was "politically incorrect."
About two-thirds of the emissions of greenhouse gases from rape
oil-derived diesel occur during the farming of the crop since
cropland emits N2O—a greenhouse gas with a GWP of 200-300.
Fertiliser and tilling also generate significant carbon emissions.
Their analysis found that rape-oil derived diesel and petroleum
diesel emit almost the same global warming potential in total
per unit of energy delivered. The journal, "Atmospheric Chemistry
and Physics" as reported in The Times on 22 September 2007
reports on research that rapeseed and maize biofuels produce up
to 70% and 50% more greenhouse gases respectively than fossil
fuels. Dr Franz Conen of the University of Basel commented: "It
is to be hoped that those taking decisions on subsidies and regulations
will in future take N2O emissions into account."
An organisation called "Biofuel Watch"
monitors the effect of biofuels on climate change. Deepak Rughan,
the organisation's spokesman has said: "If you add in all
the various factors involved in actually growing and manufacturing
biofuels, then the latest scientific research shows that biofuel
use results in between two and eight times the carbon emissions
you get from burning fossil fuels . . . What's not taken into
account are the emissions caused by destroying natural ecosystems
to create farmland—deforestation or the removal of the sensitive
peat ecosystems of south-east Asia." There is a massive carbon
cost that is being externalized from all our equations.
George Monbiot, a respected environmental commentator
is frank about biofuels: "The governments using biofuel to
tackle global warming know that it causes more harm than good.
Biofuel is worse for the planet than petroleum." In the Guardian
on 27 March 2007 he warned that biofuels were, "A formula
for environmental and humanitarian disaster . . . I warned . .
. that biofuels would set up a competition for food between cars
and people. The people would necessarily lose: those who can afford
to drive are richer than those who are in danger of starvation
. . . Since the beginning of last year, the price of maize has
doubled. The price of wheat has also reached a 10-year high, while
global stockpiles of both grains have reached 25-year lows."
It is because of concerns that the benefits of biodiesel do not
outweigh the risk to crop resources that National Express Group
has suspended its trials of biodiesel on buses.
RECOMMENDATION
— Government support for biofuels appears
to be in advance of the proof of their sustainability: we think
that biofuels, if carefully sourced, may have a future role but
Government must first establish unequivocally that biofuels bring
significant long term environmental benefits and in what context.
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