Are Biofuels Another Inconvenient Truth?

Biofuels have been widely touted as a solution to redressing the world’s overdependence on oil and a significant part to resolving the climatic crisis  particularly in the developed world. But according to new report by Oxfam, the fascination with biofuels may not be a solution to either the climatic or oil crisis and is instead fueling a third crisis: food.

According to the report, interest in biofuels has intoxicated rich country governments to the extent that they are foregoing difficult but urgent decisions about how to reduce consumption of oil.

Sadly, the cumulative effect of the over-dependence on biofuels as a solution to the energy crisis is being felt in developing countries.

“The most serious costs of these policies – deepening poverty and hunger, environmental degradation, and accelerating climate change – are being ‘dumped’ on developing countries,” states the report titled “Another Inconvenient Truth: How biofuel policies are deepening poverty and accelerating climate change”

While biofuels may offer some genuine development opportunities for developing countries the potential economic, social, and environmental costs are severe. So developing countries need to ensure that the production of biofuels caters to the needs of local populations without damaging the environment.

The report argues that increasing aggregate demand for agricultural land will drive the expansion of farming into critical carbon sinks such as forests, wetlands, and grasslands, triggering the release of carbon from soils and vegetation that will take decades and in some cases centuries of biofuel production to repay, at a time when emissions need to peak and fall within the next 10 to 15 years.

“Consumption of oil in rich countries is so huge that for biofuels to be a significant alternative requires massive amounts of agricultural production,” states the report.

According to the report, if the entire world supply of carbohydrates (starch and sugar crops) was converted to ethanol, this would only be able to replace at 40 per cent of global petrol consumption. Global oilseed production would be unable even to reach a 10 per cent share of diesel consumption.

The focus on biofuels has also seen an increase in the conversion of agricultural cropping with crops that favour biofuel production becoming more lucrative for farmers across the world..

Thirty per cent of price increases are attributable to biofuels, suggesting biofuels have endangered the livelihoods of nearly 100 million people and dragged over 30 million into poverty, says the report.

Oxfam asserts that the true attraction of ethanol and biodiesel for rich-country governments is that it is an avenue for continued support to agriculture.

The Oxfam report calls on rich countries urgently to dismantle support and incentives for biofuels in order to avoid further deepening poverty and accelerating climate change.

Specifically, states the report, rich countries should: introduce a freeze on the implementation of further biofuel mandates, and carry out an urgent revision of existing targets that deepen poverty and accelerate climate change; dismantle subsidies and tax exemptions for biofuels and reduce import tariffs; tackle climate change and fuel security through safe and cost-effective measures, prioritising regulation to enforce ambitious vehicle-efficiency improvements.

On the other hand, developing countries should prioritise bioenergy projects that provide clean renewable energy sources to poor men and women in rural areas – these are unlikely to be ethanol or biodiesel projects.

In addition, developing countries should consider the costs as well as the benefits involved in biofuel strategies: the financial costs of support, the opportunity costs of alternative agriculture and poverty reduction strategies, and social and environmental costs, states the report.

Photo Credit: bjamin at Flickr on a Creative Commons License