The EU's dead-end approach to climate-proofing Europe's transport
sector: The More Gas You Guzzle the Greener
You Are
Biofuels are flavour of the month for
car-makers and politicians keen to be seen as green without directly
addressing the problem of ever-rising transport emissions. The
buzz has also caught on strongly in the EU. On 10 January, the
European Commission presented its new energy and biofuels blueprint.
It can be summed up in just seven words: bad news for people and
the climate.
The Commission's paper proposes that
ten per cent of transport fuels (excluding aviation fuel) across
the EU should come from biofuels by 2020. These will come from
a variety of crops, including rapeseed, maize, sugar beet and
grains, palm oil, sugar cane and soya. Some of these biofuel crops
will be grown within the EU, but there is limited capacity here
– so the larger the European demand for this ‘green’ fuel, the
larger the share grown in the Global South. As the Commission
has set a target in proportion to overall transport fuel use,
increases in fuel use would increase this volume still further.
With transport fuel currently the fastest growing source of emissions
increases in the EU, the demand for biofuel imports from the South
will be substantial.
This is particularly worrying because
there is growing evidence that existing EU demand for biofuels
is spurring forest destruction and the conversion of biodiversity-rich
ecosystems across the world, from South America to Southeast Asia.
In Cameroon, for example, the largest
oil palm plantation SOCAPALM is expanding at the expense of forests
traditionally used by local populations. This expansion lies at
the root of land conflicts involving Bagyeli, Bulu and Fang populations
whose land has been confiscated without compensation. Jobs created
at the plantations – which rarely employ local people - are often
temporary, without labour contracts, health or accident insurances,
and the wages are extremely low: an unskilled worker earns a little
more than one euro (about 65p) for a 12 hour work day. Agrochemicals
and run-off from the refinery pollute the neighbouring streams,
further curtailing local people’s livelihood.
In addition to putting local people's
livelihoods in jeopardy and causing further deforestation and
conversion to intensive agriculture, many a biofuel will also
have increased, not reduced greenhouse gas emissions in the process
of production and processing. A recent environmental impact study
of palm oil grown in South East Asia by the conservation group
Wetlands International showed that their use in Europe would generate
up to 10 times more CO2 than the equivalent emissions from burning
fossil diesel.
The Commission report mentions such
threats only in passing and instead praises biofuels as an opportunity
for Southern economies. It fails to acknowledge that the gains
from such an export-oriented biofuels market will benefit few
in the South, while many will be faced with loss of their traditional
lands to monoculture plantations and increasing prices for staple
foods. Since biofuel targets in the EU would promote the production
of biomass in the global South, the EU could be responsible for
reducing the area of land devoted to food production, so eroding
local and international food security. Like EU targets, the US
biofuel targets have been criticised for requiring an excessive
proportion of the corn crop (20 per cent in 2006). US demand for
biofuel from corn has already increased the world grain deficit,
raising prices for staple foods such as tortilla in Mexico.
The Commission proposal is also silent
on another key issue: the biotech industry’s interest in promoting
biofuels. The genetically modified varieties of several crops
now used as biofuel crops (including maize, soya and oilseed rape)
have met strong resistance to their use as food, especially in
Europe. The industry hopes that by promoting them as biofuels,
these crops will gain acceptance.
Growing transport volumes are the real
issue that the EU energy strategy should be tackling. Investment
in well-designed and affordable public transport schemes is essential,
but the EU blueprint makes no mention of these. The paper leaves
no doubt that ‘energy security’, not climate change or reducing
the EU's environmental footprint, is the primary objective of
increasing biofuel use in Europe’s transport sector. That may
explain the lack of attention to measures within the transport
sector that could bring about much greater climate change gains.
Speed limits and a better power-to-weight ratio for new cars and
trucks could result in the same savings; and even greater savings
could be achieved by adopting fuel-efficient tyres and reducing
fuel consumption through smaller engines in passenger cars. And
this all before we get into fuel savings from substituting individualised
transport systems through smart public transport schemes. The
Commission discards all these options as marginal and not worth
pursuing. It prefers risky biofuel imports that are likely to
undermine climate and environmental policies over climate-proofing
the EU’s transport sector. No wonder, then, that over sixty environmental
and social justice organisations are already calling for a halt
on EU biofuel targets.
By Jutta Kill, FERN, e-mail: jutta@fern.org,
www.fern.org, www.sinkswatch.org
This article will appear in the Issue 150 of Red Pepper, March
2007, “Temperature Gauge",
http://www.redpepper.org.uk/
* Sign an Open Letter against EU biofuels
targets at www.biofuelwatch.org.uk
