Reacting to news that biofuel companies are profiting from a process known as "splash and dash" (1), Greenpeace senior forest campaigner Belinda Fletcher said:

"Shipping biofuels back and forth across the world for tax breaks is just one more example of the way this industry pretends to be green while actually contributing to climate change.

"At the moment there are no safeguards in place to make sure that these fuels are coming from sustainable sources, so they could be grown in areas of cleared rainforest in the Amazon or Indonesia, causing massive greenhouse gas emissions.

"Despite this, the UK government wants to force us to pump them into our tanks in two week's time. This is reckless - we must postpone the RTFO until proper standards are in place."

(1) The story in today's Guardian newspaper explains how, under the "splash and dash" scam, biofuel is shipped to the US where a dash of conventional fuel is added, thereby qualifying it for a US biofuel subsidy. The fuel is then shipped back to the UK to be sold in the domestic market. It is hard to trace the origins of this fuel, and much of it is though to originate in South America.

On April 15th 2008 the government's Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) comes into force. From this date every supplier in the country will be required to provide 2.5 per cent of all fuels from biofuel sources, rising to 5 per cent in 2010.

Greenpeace's input into the consultation on the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, which the government intends to use to force fuel companies to increase the amount of biofuels they supply.

But without proper safeguards and protection for forested areas, the production of these biofuels could cause an increase in carbon dioxide emissions instead of reducing them.