12/06/07--Leading UK Scientist Says Biofuels Are A Scam

LONDON--The government’s policy of promoting biofuels for transport will come under harsh attack this week from one of its senior science advisers. Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.

Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department. He will tell the seminar that promoting the use of biofuels is likely to increase greenhouse gas emissions. Clift’s comments will amount to a direct challenge to Miliband, who has published a strategy promoting biofuels. It coincides with a surge of anger among environmentalists over the weak pledges on climate change that emerged from last week’s G8 summit. The audience on Thursday will also include Howard Dalton, Miliband’s chief scientist at Defra, who is expected to speak in defence of biofuels.

Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops. We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.” Clift will also condemn plans to produce British biodiesel from rapeseed, pointing to research showing the crop generates copious amounts of nitrous oxide – an even more powerful global warming gas than CO2. The attack comes as the government increases its support for biofuels. Next year it will introduce a requirement for 3% of all fuel sold on UK forecourts to come from a renewable source.

Across the EU the renewable transport fuels obligation will increase this to 5% by 2010, with the British government pushing for a target of 10%. Miliband wants British farming to diversify into biofuels. “It is an important part of our vision for a diversified farming sector,” he said in a recent speech. The UK Biomass Strategy published last month is, however, also critical of turning crops into transport fuels, pointing out that this is the least efficient way of using them. It says that it is most efficient simply to burn them. Clift is not the only government science adviser calling for a rethink on biofuels. Roger Kemp, who advises the Department for Transport on energy use in transport, told a conference last week that using biofuels in transport would have no impact on cutting emissions. In his submission to the Institute of Engineering and Technology’s climate change committee he warned that Britain produced 200m tonnes of CO2 a year in transport emissions.

On current trends that will double by 2045 – whereas the government has pledged to reduce transport emissions to around 90m tonnes by that date. “We would need to plant a land area twice the size of Britain to get enough biofuel crops to halve our emissions,” said Kemp, professor of engineering at Lancaster University. “The numbers simply do not add up.” Kemp and Clift point out that the surging global interest in biofuels derives from a “false belief” among politicians that there must be a technical solution to climate change. Kemp said: ”Underlying all this is the assumption that we have to preserve the mobility and freedom to travel that we now enjoy at all costs. However, when you look at the science of climate change it is clear there are no such simple solutions. Humanity has to accept that.”