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Biofuels failing 'green' standards
Posted by jamie on 7 August 2008.
From today's Guardian:
"Less than a fifth of the biofuel used on UK roads meets environmental standards intended to safeguard human rights and guarantee carbon savings, figures released today show.
"The Renewable Fuels Agency says just 19% of the biofuel supplied under the government's new initiative to use biofuel to help tackle global warming met the green standard. For the remaining 81% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say where it came from, or could not prove that it had been produced in a sustainable way."
But even this "green" standard is misleading, as it ignores the side-effects of biofuel production such as massive deforestation:
"The standard does not include carbon emissions from indirect effects such as changes in land use caused by biofuel planting, which experts have warned could cancel out their environmental benefits."
Tags:
fresh air to electric
my freinds and i have designed a generator that is powerd by fresh air and generates electricity , haveing sent the design to the energy secretary we seem to have come up against a brick wall , any helpfull comments would be appreciated , email ianhirst@hotmail.com
response to Biofuels failing 'green' standards
was there more information on what exactly the green standard is. the 81% could have come from a multitude of sources including re-cycled oil and algae production. this article simply states that they could not prove where it had come from. what percentage of the worlds bio-fuel is produced on land claimed from existing forest anyway?
the press is always keen to focus on the destruction of the rain-forest and the rise in food prices. bio-fuel at present is not perfect but it is a step in the right direction and there are allot of organizations dedicated to "green" sustainable bio-fuel production.
deforestation is a problem and the developed world should offer a financial alternative to the land owners and governments not to cut down trees, such as issuing carbon credits to keep there forests pristine. not to say they should hold their forest to ransom but they do need an incentive not to utilize such an asset when most developed countries such as the uk have already cut down their forests long ago.
bio-fuel deservers a chance and needs the support of everyone.
RTFO biofuels standards
The standards are listed in a document on the RFA website (pdf) but they're only voluntary. Perhaps all those 'unknown' answers in the RFA's report are coming from sustainable sources (although I very much doubt it) but there's no way of knowing. Until the standards are toughened up and become mandatory, there's going to be a big question mark over a large percentage of the biofuels currently being used.
Biofuels can be a small part of the solution to our energy problems, but they're not going to be able to satisfy our current rates of consumption - it would require an absurd amount of the Earth's surface to grow all the crops required. A financial mechanism to help forest nations preserve their resources is an excellent idea, one many people (including Greenpeace) are currently working on as part of the next stage of the Kyoto process.
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