Rising Food Prices Forces United Kingdom Government Biofuels Rethink

[Steve Last]

Biofuels were being seen as the sustainable answer to both global warming and a means to take the sting out of rising fuel prices.

However, a report to be published on Monday 6 July 2008, is expected to force the Prime Minister Gordon Brown to rethink his support for using crops to keep Britain's cars and lorries running.

Unexpectedly rapidly rising world food prices look set to force Gordon Brown to take U-turn over the use of crops such as corn, rapeseed, palm and soya to produce fuel as an alternative to petrol and diesel.

A second and related report will also, the Independent Newspaper believes, force the UK government to revise its policies on food and the environment inevitably opening Mr Brown to the charge from environmental groups that he will be going soft on the Government's green agenda.

In the first report the Prime Minister will be been warned in a report by Professor Ed Gallagher, head of the Renewable Fuels Agency, that the rush for bio-fuels has made a "significant" contribution to the soaring cost of food on the global markets. Corn ethanol and biodiesel derived from vegetable oil were being widely being seen as important ways of creating fuel and combating carbon emissions which contribute to global warming, until these recent food cost increases.

Substantially increased use of biofuel was an important plank in Mr Brown's, and European environmental strategy. The UK government introduced targets in April in Britain requiring all petrol and diesel to contain 2.5 per cent of bio-fuels with the intention of doubling it to 5 per cent by 2010.

The policy has also been further developed in Europe where the EU has been debating a 10 per cent target by 2020. Professor Gallagher's report will say the production of fuels from "biomass" - non-food crops - may be sustainable but it challenges the targets for producing fuel from other crops normally used for food.

Greenpeace said biofuels initially "looked good on paper" but the Gallagher review would conclude that the risks are too great to impose higher targets.
The campaign group has called for a moratorium on targets, subsidies and tax breaks for bio-fuel consumption until it was clear that these fuels could be produced from sustainable sources.

Oxfam said: "It is clear that any additional pressure on limited land resources has the potential to drive further agriculture clearance of forests or other habitats and to drive up food prices."

The vast majority of the European biodiesel was made from rapeseed oil, said Oxfam. "As we divert more and more rapeseed crop into fuel, European industry is buying increasing supplies of edible oils from overseas including palm oil.

A second report by the UK Cabinet Office strategy unit is intended to launch a debate over how Britain uses its land more effectively to produce more food.

I would think that the UK Friends of Biogas view would be that it is too soon to say that biogas cannot be sustainably grown without causing rising prices or food shortages. A second generation of biofuel crops now needs developing which need little or no herbicide, pesticide, or fertilizer and can be grown on the poor ground in areas not developed for food production and not of environmental importance, (eg desert margins).

In any event biogas from waste biomass is NOT what is being criticsed in any of these reports.

[Steve Last]

Sidney,

Thanks for confirming my view on the second generation crop potential.

Why in Europe are we so wedded to using food crops when with some innovation crops like switchgrass might be used on marginal land?

Do you have any suggestions how our government and pressure groups might better respond to the media on this and our own Ed Gallagher be more willing to promote second generation biofuels?

[Sidney Clouston]

As the World Turns.

The name of a Soap Opera with so much drama was aired on American Tv for many years and one issue after the next was played out. The "Spin" Doctors in the media are quite
active in a similar fashion. Most Science and Technology readers are well aware of the
Second Generation of Feedstock and existing processes for them. Tree plantations and
Grasses as well as other agricultural waste is used and used on existing forest lands or
marginal growing areas that do not necessarily displace food crops.

My Research Group has sent Switchgrass Seed to Africa for a demonstration, where we
may be inclusive of the poor to grow the feedstock by a Contract Growing contract. We
consider the fifteen year life of the roots to sequester carbon and the harvested grass that
would have a greenhouse gas (GHG) emission to be neutral in it's footprint due to the new grass growing and sequestering that emission. That means a positive reduction in GHG.
That means an income for the poor which is one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) of the United Nations and that income can help the poor reduce hunger by the
purchase of food grown somewhere where it is smart to do so.

If automobiles switch to some flex fuel motor like GM makes or Ford with the E-85 that
would mean a 85% reduction in demand for finite fossil fuel that would be replaced by
the renewable fuel with a zero or less than zero carbon footprint.

Let us get real about the cost to benefit for this vs. oil.