Last Updated: Friday, 29 June 2007, 09:42 GMT 10:42 UK
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1/hi/sci/tech/6252594.stm> Charity attacks rush for
biofuels By Roger Harrabin
BBC Environment Analyst

[Filling up with biofuels in California Image: Getty Images]
The rush for biofuels could have a major environmental impactA
furious attack on the drive to grow more biofuels has been
launched by a charity supporting poor farmers in developing
countries.
The charity - called Grain - says their research shows the rush
for biofuels is causing much more environmental and social damage
than previously realised.
Biofuels from crops are being heavily promoted by the US and
Europe as a welcome solution to climate change.
In theory their emissions are much lower than from fossil fuels.
But the report from the charity Grain amplifies recent warnings
from the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that some
biofuels produce hardly any carbon savings at all.
The UN says basic food prices for poor countries are being pushed
up by competition for land from biofuels.
Name change
The Grain report says its research shows how governments and
biofuels firms in developing countries are collaborating to push
hundreds of thousands of indigenous people and peasant
communities off their land.
[Barley (Image: National Non-Food Crops Centre)]
Biofuel 'will not cause hunger'
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5406458.stm> Grain says:
"The numbers involved are mind-boggling. The Indian government is
talking of planting 14 million hectares of land with jatropha.
"The Inter-American Development Bank says that Brazil has 120
million hectares that could be cultivated with agrofuel crops;
and an agrofuel lobby is speaking of 379 million hectares being
available in 15 African countries. We are talking about
expropriation on an unprecedented scale."
It points out that one of the main causes of global warming is
agro-industrial farming itself, thanks mainly the use of chemical
fertilisers which introduce nitrous oxide into the air.
The group says the media has been spun into using the attractive
term biofuels - and wants them referred to as "agro-fuels"
instead.
The plant fuel industry accepts that there is a limit to the
energy to be obtained from crops - but believes plant fuels can
be produced sustainably on a large scale. The EU wants to see at
least 10% of road fuel derived from plants by 2020.
Oil firms believe this target is achievable using farm surpluses
combined with fuel digested by bacteria from waste - so called
second generation biofuels.
But their economic calculations do not include competition for
feedstock from power firms wanting biofuel for combined heat and
power - which produces much more energy more economically than
liquid fuel.
The UK government's climate envoy John Ashton recently told BBC
News: "The policy on biofuels is currently running ahead of the
science."

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