The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation is coming into force today and applies to companies supplying more than 450,000 litres of fossil fuel a year across the duty point into the UK market. From now on, fuel suppliers are supposed to include 2.5% (by volume) of biofuels in their fuels. This target is supposed to increase to 5% by volume by 2010.
I say "supposed to" because the UK is doing pretty poorly in terms of biofuel sales. The sales only amounted to 0.45% by volume in 2006 and even if they nearly doubled in the first 5 months of 2007, I'd be really surprised if they exceeded 2% today. With this delay, it will also be very difficult to reach the 5% target by 2010.
Considering that the European targets are 5.75% by energy content by 2010 (which is about 7% by volume), anyone can see that whatever happens the UK biofuels sales will fall well below the 2010 European targets!
But the British government still says it is leading the way in that it is imposing carbon and sustainability reporting on biofuels (the whole point of the RTFO and its genuine originality).
Although the idea is absolutely brilliant (making sure biofuels are produced in a sustainable manner), those who are still confident in the good will of the Department of Transport are going to be very disappointed.
First of all, the target for the biofuels GHG (greenhouse gas) emission savings are 40% for this year, 45% for 2009 and 50% for 2010 but this doesn't take into account the GHG emissions from displacement (i.e. the relocation of the displaced crops on new lands, which leads to indirect land use change- including deforestation today - and might make biofuels net emitters of GHG), and the calculation methodology is quite generous with co-products allocation (which artificially makes the savings higher).
Secondly, the target percentage of feedstock meeting qualifying environmental standards is only 30% for this year (the target is 80% for 2010); the chosen qualifying standards are not necessarily very stringent and the standards themselves are vague enough for the environment to be degraded but the biofuel to be certified.
But most of all, the obligation is only to report. It is ok to say "dunno" and this will make your biofuel a certified one. It looks quite easy to have "renewable and sustainable" biofuels with such a scheme in place.
Unfortunately, this is only the reported part of biofuels in this scheme. With hunger riots all around the world and increasing food prices, the food versus fuel debate cannot be avoided.
Of course, biofuels are not the only cause for the
rise in food prices, the main reasons being the increase in fossil fuel prices
(upon which conventional agriculture is heavily dependent), the sudden increase
in meat consumption in China and India (where more and more people can afford
buying more meat and dairy products, that have more embedded cereals than their
previous diets), and the recent poor yields in key areas (e.g. droughts in Australia and Ukraine).
But even Gordon Brown acknowledged (last week) that biofuels development is aggravating the rise in food prices in a letter to the Japanese PM.
For these reasons, the RFA (Renewable Fuel Agency - in charge of implementing the RTFO) started a review on the indirect effects of biofuels. Who knows what the conclusions will be and how they will affect the current biofuel policy. But this could totally challenge the current trends in biofuels production.
But beyond biofuels, this context could be the chance for poor countries to switch from an agriculture focused on export crops (to supply our coffee, cocoa,
etc.) to a food-producing agriculture that would make them gain more food sovereignty (which would make them less vulnerable to the world market fluctuations). Rather than wasting money on GMOs and their hypothetic benefits, it is also time to work on how to sustainably increase yields of agriculture in these countries. In a word, time to rethink agriculture in holistic way!
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