Blogposts tagged 'Biofuels'

Despite the gloom coming out of the EU climate talks at the end of last week (and the non-event that UN discussions on the same topic in Poznan appear to have been), there is one ray of hope shining from Brussels in the form of the Renewable Energy Target which will set binding goals for EU governments on sourcing energy from renewable sources.

It's been a tough road, not least because of ex-business secretary John Hutton's attempts to weaken the deal. Then it looked like some countries - Italy and Poland were the ringleaders - were going to knobble the agreement by demanding it be reviewed in 2014 but a compromise was put forward and a deal has been reached.

The Lego replica of Kingsnorth power station complete with 'Stop Climate Change' banner © Hans Bricks

Not one, not two but at least three climate change-related happenings popped up around the country yesterday, many of them carried out by Climate Camp attendees. Although the camp is primarily focused on coal and the proposed new power station at Kingsnorth, today's activities also highlighted other climate threats such as aviation and biofuels. Here is just a taste of what's been happening:

Not so long ago biofuels were billed as a silver bullet that could cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector. But, as recent studies have confirmed, many are worse for the climate than the fuels they replace and they are also contributing to price rises for food. This week the government-commissioned Gallagher review on the indirect impacts of biofuels has been released and confirms that chasing current EU and UK biofuels targets is unsustainable. You may think that the government would have been more prudent before setting mandatory targets for the use of biofuels, but in fact currently there is no sustainability criteria attached to them, leading to the use of highly questionable fuels.

Offshore wind - 3,500 new turbines by 2020?

Although the PM has taken a few verbal pastings from us over the past few months on key climate issues like airport expansion and new coal-fired power stations, in a new speech today he did much to redeem himself by announcing an ambitious plan to ensure Britain generates 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

To be sure, the government has promised as much in the past and failed to deliver, but there seemed to be something different about today's Renewable Energy Strategy Consultation - some meat on the bones which indicated that the plan might just be more than empty rhetoric. The government is consulting on ambitious plans designed to allow the UK to meet its share of an overall EU target to generate 20 per cent of energy (electricity, heat and transport) from renewables within 12 years.