Blogposts tagged 'Renewable Fuels Agency'

Biofuels failing 'green' standards

Posted by jamie - 7 August 2008 at 12:37pm - 6 Comments

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."

Article tagged as: biofuels, climate change, deforestation, forests, renewable fuels agency

Gallagher Review: Put the brake on biofuels

Posted by saunvedan - 8 July 2008 at 3:18pm - 4 Comments

Biofuels

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.

Article tagged as: biofuels, co2 emissions, food security, renewable fuels agency

Media Brief – Gallagher Review to be published early July

Publication date:  7 July, 2008

The Gallagher Review is a major study commissioned by the UK Government on the 'indirect' or 'displacement' impacts of biofuels on carbon emissions from land use change and on food security. It is being conducted by the Renewable Fuels Agency - a new body set up to administer UK biofuel policy. This briefing describes what biofuels are, explains the difference between direct and indirect impacts of biofuels and the implications for biofuels policies in the UK and EU.

Download the report:
Article tagged as: biofuels, co2 emissions, food security, renewable fuels agency
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