Current European and UK policies on biofuels are unethical, concludes a new report released today from the Nuffield Council on Bioethics.
During an 18 month inquiry, the council found that policies such as the European Renewable Energy Directive encourage unethical practices and are weak in protecting the environment, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and avoiding human rights violations in developing countries. They also include few incentives for the development of new biofuel technologies that could help avoid these problems.
The council recommends temporarily removing the legal requirements for biofuel use in Europe until safeguards have been put in place to prevent their use causing environmental and social problems both at home and abroad. However the council does not suggest that the measure should be permanent, and reports that new biofuels could help resolve many of the issues surrounding first-generation, food source biofuels.
“Biofuels are one of the only renewable alternatives we have for transport fuels such as petrol and diesel, but current policies and targets that encourage their uptake have backfired badly,” said Professor Joyce Tait, who led the inquiry. “The rapid expansion of biofuels production in the developing world has led to problems such as deforestation and the displacement of indigenous people. We want a more sophisticated strategy that considers the wider consequences of biofuel production.”
In its report Biofuels: ethical issues, the Nuffield Council recommends that there should be a set of overarching set of ethical conditions for all biofuels produced in and imported into Europe to ensure sound environmental and human case for biofuel use.
“These ethical conditions should be enforced through a certification scheme – a bit like the Fair Trade scheme for cocoa and coffee,” said Professor Tait. “This would create a market for environmentally sustainable and ‘human rights friendly’ biofuels.”
“We appreciate the difficulties in applying firm ethical principles in the real world, but existing biofuels policy is failing. We can set the standard in Europe and encourage the rest of the world to follow suit. This is a global problem that needs a global solution.”
The European Renewable Energy Directive states that 10 per cent of transport fuel must come from renewable sources by 2020. In the UK a similar measure requires 5 per cent of transport fuel to come from renewable sources by 2013-much of this is currently met through the use of biofuels.
Biofuels currently make up 3 per cent of UK road transport fuel and this is expected to increase. Most of the UK’s biofuel comes from Argentina, Brazil and Europe. Last year, only a third met the environmental standards set by the UK’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation.
