Biofuels are contributing to environmental harm
Dave Reede/Alamy
It’s obvious, isn’t it. Plants turn sunlight into food – stored energy – so if we turn that food into fuels, we should get sustainable biofuels with zero carbon emissions, right? Wrong, utterly wrong. The growth in biofuels is, in fact, increasing emissions, and also hurting both people and wildlife. Yet instead of stopping, we are doubling down, with production rising fast. What’s going on?
If you think biofuels are a good idea, you have fallen for the egregious greenwashing surrounding them. There is a mountain of evidence showing that biofuels do more harm than good overall. The latest addition is a report by campaign group Transport & Environment (T&E), concluding that the move to biofuels has increased carbon dioxide emissions by 16 per cent, on average, compared with sticking with fossil fuels.
Why? Because growing stuff on farms is one of the biggest sources of greenhouse gases. To be fair, 16 per cent is the worldwide average, according to the T&E report. For some regions, such as Europe, it does conclude that biofuels are reducing emissions overall – but only just. And for an at-best-small reduction in emissions, we are paying the price in terms of all the other negative effects that biofuels have.
For starters, there are those big increases in food bills we have all been seeing. Turning wheat and corn into bioethanol, and vegetable oils into biodiesel, drives up demand and thus prices. It is hard to put numbers on it, but all the experts I have spoken to over the years think it is a significant contributing factor to inflation of food prices.
What’s more, biofuel crops often require irrigation, which means they are increasing water scarcity in many areas. According to the T&E report, 3000 litres of water are needed to produce enough biofuel for a car to drive just 100 kilometres (62 miles). By comparison, just 20 litres is required to drive that far in an electric car powered by solar.
Then there is the need for land. Farmland is still expanding worldwide to feed a growing population that is eating more meat. Increasing biofuel production results in even more land being needed, which means, for instance, cutting down more rainforests in Indonesia to make way for more palm oil plantations. So biofuels are helping drive the loss of wildlife and biodiversity, the other great global crisis.
The particularly perverse thing about this is how inefficient biofuel production is. If solar panels were put on land instead, the same amount of energy could be generated from 3 per cent of the area, the T&E report says. In other words, solar can slash emissions with a much lower environmental impact. Turns out we can do a better job than nature when it comes to catching sunshine.
With biofuels, by contrast, the impacts include all the same pollution issues as conventional farming, from pesticides harming people and wildlife to nitrogen and phosphorus run-off wrecking rivers, lakes and seas. Using sources of biofuels that aren’t food-based, such as waste, can reduce some of these problems. Yet by 2030, more than 90 per cent of biofuel production will still be based on food crops, according to the T&E report.
So why are countries worldwide subsidising the production of ever more biofuels? On the one hand, there is a lot of money being made from them and influential lobby groups are pushing for more government subsidies and support. On the other hand, there are countries and organisations that want to be able to tick boxes saying they are reducing emissions as required, and don’t want to know about inconvenient truths.
For instance, politicians on both sides of the divide in the US have tried to stay in the good books of the Corn Belt farmers growing maize for bioethanol. Earlier this year, biofuel-related tax breaks introduced in 2022 in the US were further extended.
Then there are the shipping and aviation industries, which see biofuels as a way to carry on as usual while claiming they are cutting emissions. The aviation industry’s criteria for so-called “sustainable aviation fuels” do at least count the emissions from increased land use, limiting the use of the most emissions-intensive biofuels. The shipping industry hasn’t yet decided whether to count land use, so its actions could be even more damaging. Shipping use alone could double biofuel use by the 2030s, the T&E report warns. This would be disastrous for all the reasons outlined above.
It has been clear for many years that producing biofuels to reduce emissions is having the opposite effect. To do even more of it is madness.
