Leaked data: Palm biodiesel as dirty as fuel from tar sands

There are good biofuels and bad biofuels and the worst are as filthy as the foulest fossil fuels. But the good biofuels are essential to tackling climate change

There are good biofuels and bad biofuels: the trick is telling one from the other. That's particularly difficult when trying to take account of the natural forests and wetlands that can destroyed in the drive to grow some biofuel crops. But we're getting closer, it seems, and palm oil and soy beans now appear utterly unsupportable as a source of biodiesel.

The new data comes from a leak obtained by EurActiv from the European Commission. The EC is considering what level of carbon emissions each type of biofuel causes once burned, after everything - including "indirect land-use change" - is taken into account.

It is obvious that for a biofuel to be useful in cutting the emissions driving global warming it needs to have a smaller carbon footprint than regular fuel from crude oil. So I have added the numbers for crude oil and oil from the highly-polluting tar sands for reference in the table below. The leaked biofuel numbers are, I'm told similar to several recent studies, and therefore credible.

Here's the data (the units are grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule energy of energy).

So palm oil and soy bean biodiesel is just a touch less polluting than fuel from tar sands: that's pretty damning. Maize and sugar do better than crude oil but still cause significant carbon emissions.

The better news comes from the second generation fuels (2G), particularly when the are "non-land using", i.e. when they use only waste such as straw. Factories doing this are setting up now in, for example, Italy. The "land-using" fuels are made from non-food crops, such as jatropha, but that can bring its own problems, as I saw for myself in Tanzania.

The EU's scheme for certifying biofuels as sustainable requires them to emit 35% less CO2 than regular fuel, increasing to 60% by 2018, making palm oil, soy bean, rapeseed and sunflower looking all but dead.

Palm oil biodiesel also received another blow on Friday, with the US Environmental Protection Agency suggesting it fails to meet the US requirement of emitting at least 20% less carbon than diesel from crude oil.

Robbie Blake, biofuels campaigner, at Friends of the Earth Europe, told me: "It's getting quite indisputable that the use of soy or palm oil to fuel our cars is even dirtier than conventional fossil fuels. Forests in Asia and South America are being destroyed by the expansion of plantations to meet the European market. It's a delusion for politicians to think that biodiesel will solve climate change."

The European Union's target for 10% of all transport fuels to be biofuels by 2020 has been described as "unethical" because the production of some types violates human rights and damages the environment. But the same researchers described do nothing to find alternative to the fossil fuels that currently power transport as "immoral".

So the difficult task of distinguishing good and bad biofuels remains essential, as does the research of even more promising technologies, such as algae and seaweed.

EU energy policy drives changes in UK – with mixed results

Green groups and the energy industry have embraced many of the changes, but there are grumbles

Fiona Harvey, environment correspondent

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 25 January 2012 14.58 GMT

Energy has been one of the most active areas of EU legislation: the ban on old-style lightbulbs, the introduction of renewable energy targets, an obligation to mix biofuels in petrol, carbon trading for energy-intensive businesses, the scrapping of ageing coal-fired power stations , support for pioneering new power plants that capture and store carbon dioxide, the development of smart meters and energy efficiency labels on electrical appliances.

All of these have driven changes in the UK, from the obvious such as changing lightbulbs to the more subtle such as farmers growing energy crops destined for power stations or use in petrol.

Joss Garman, a campaigner at Greenpeace, says many of the shifts have been wholly positive. "The renewables directive has driven a change in Whitehall culture to take advantage of Britain's unparalleled homegrown clean energy resources, with the opportunity to move our economy away from an over-reliance upon imported gas and coal. This can reduce our vulnerability to spikes in international fossil fuel markets."

Consumers have benefited, too, he says. "European standards for electrical appliances like fridges and lightbulbs, as well as for cars, have helped consumers get the most energy for their money – and begun to separate energy prices from energy bills. Air pollution rules for cars and power stations have driven a move towards cleaning up the energy sector and making the air we breathe cleaner and healthier."

The energy industry has embraced many of the changes, but there are grumbles. The level of prescription – not just changing our lightbulbs but dictating decisions such as whether to invest in coal, gas or offshore wind – is too great for David Porter, chief executive of the UK's Association of Electricity Producers. "Prescribing cuts across the reasons for having a market," he says.

He is also concerned about the impact of regulation on consumer prices. Carbon trading, for instance, adds to the cost of producing electricity from fossil fuels. "Quite major initiatives can be launched by the unelected officials of the European commission, without the accountability that our politicians have to live with. They are quite remote from the impact on the paying customer of the policies that they develop. Decisions made in Brussels can affect energy prices in the member states and when they do, it is the energy companies and governments that incur the wrath of the customers," says Porter.

Jonathan Gaventa, senior policy adviser at the green thinktank E3G, says the EU has failed to go far enough in some cases. "We have a single market in bananas, but not in energy," he points out.

According to EU targets, the UK should have 10% of electricity capacity coming from interconnections with other member states, but it has achieved less than half of that, says Gaventa. More interconnectors would help the UK to use a higher proportion of renewable energy, because when the wind fails to blow it would be possible to meet demand with power from France or Norway.

Other targets have yet to be met. The EU has promised financial support for carbon capture and storage operations in the UK, but none have yet been built. Proposals for a fuel quality directive that would effectively halt the import of fuel from tar sands are yet to come into force.

Greenpeace says some of the EU's policies are counter-productive or ineffective. Doug Parr, the group's chief scientist, says: "By making it law to put biofuels in the fuel tanks of cars across Europe, they've incentivised the destruction of rainforests around the world in the name of fighting climate change. And European governments made the emissions trading scheme the centrepiece of their strategy to deal with rising greenhouse gas emissions, but it's bureaucratic and complicated, it's hard to see what changes in energy infrastructure it has really driven, and it has handed a windfall to some of Europe's most polluting industries."

The traffic is not all one way from Brussels to London. Though they may not acknowledge it, other European member states have a lot to thank the UK for on climate change.

The EU prides itself on leading the world in tackling greenhouse gas emissions, and some of that leadership has been provided by the UK, not least during the negotiations on the 1997 Kyoto protocol, spearheaded by the then environment secretary, John Prescott. Under the treaty, the UK took on one of the most stringent emissions-cutting targets of any EU member: 12.5% compared with 1990 levels. As the bloc's emissions are counted en masse under a "burden-sharing" agreement, the UK's tough target meant that some member states were able to take on less stretching commitments.

What's more, the UK is on track to comfortably exceed its targets, albeit largely because of the "dash for gas" encouraged by Margaret Thatcher as prime minister, which led to the replacement of most of the UK's coal-fired electricity generation with gas-fired power stations during the 1990s. Thanks to the burden-sharing, the UK's over-achievement makes up for the failure of several other member states to meet their obligations under the treaty. Since so much of the EU's international credibility in climate change talks rests on its backing for the Kyoto protocol, without the UK's strong showing the EU's position would be impossible and the long-running negotiations would be in even worse trouble than they are.

Rare minerals dearth threatens global renewables industry

China's near-exclusive access to terbium and yttrium sent prices soaring in 2011, potentially hobbling clean energy industry

John Vidal

guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 January 2012 16.55 GMT

Shortages of a handful of rare minerals could slow the future growth of the burgeoning renewable energy industries, and affect countries' chances of limiting greenhouse gas emissions, business leaders were told at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week.

Last year, prices of many scarce minerals exploded, rising as much as 10 times over 2010 levels before dropping back, said PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

Terbium, yttrium, dysprosium, europium and neodymium are widely used in the manufacture of wind turbines, solar panels, electric car batteries and energy-efficient lightbulbs. But because these "rare earths" are mined almost exclusively in China, it is becoming increasingly difficult and expensive to source them in the required quantities.


In a survey of some of the largest clean energy manufacturers, 78% told PwC said they were already experiencing instability of supply of rare metals, and most said they did not expect shortages to ease for at least five years. Currently, 95% of the rare earth minerals needed by clean tech industries come from China which has set strict export quotas. Last year China reserved most for its own for its domestic wind, solar and battery industries, shifting costs to the US and Europe which do not mine any of the minerals.

Scarcity of the mineral resources could affect disrupt entire supply chains and countries' attempts to meet emissions targets, said PwC. "The energy sector could face very great problems if the world turns to [renewables] in a big way. In the short term, there will be major supply problems. The availability of these metals will define the growth of these industry sectors. There are so far not many alternatives," said Rob Mathlener, author of a report that urged companies to build future strategies around recycling and reusing resources.

Last December, Janez Potočnik, the EU commissioner for the environment, warned that the waste of valuable natural resources threatens to produce a fresh economic crisis.

None of the minerals is likely to physically run out, but it can take 10 years for countries to open new mines. In the US there has been growing concerns that China dominates the supply of the materials considered crucial for the expansion of the US defence, computer and renewable energy sectors.

A series of US government reports have urged an immediate increase in production of rare minerals. By mid-2012, US mining company Molycorp Minerals aims to produce 20,000 tonnes a year of nine of the 17 rare minerals, or about 25% of current western imports from China.

Malcolm Preston, PwC's global sustainability leader, said: "It's a time bomb. Many businesses now recognise that we are living beyond the planet's means. If these industries, supply chains and economies are disrupted by shortages in supply, then the 'luxury of choice' lifestyle many in the Western world have become accustomed to, will also be affected."

Six other core manufacturing industries, including aerospace, automotive and chemicals, were all found to be experiencing shortages. According to the US Congress report published last September, world demand for rare elements is estimated at 136,000 tonnes per year, with global production around 133,600 tonnes in 2010. It is projected to rise to at least 185,000 tonnes a year by 2015.