Motorists will end up paying up to £2 billion more on forecourts in 2020- according to a new study- if the government increases the proportion of biofuels in petrol to 10 per cent as planned under EU renewable energy targets.
Current biofuel policies will not just cause environmental problems, but will actually drive fuel prices higher and drive hunger in developing countries the new research commissioned by the charities ActionAid and Friends of the Earth (FOE) suggests.
A study undertaken by the Global Subsidies Initiative, this plan could result in an extra 13 million tonnes of CO2 emissions every year in the UK and increase the the cost of fuel by the equivalent of an additional litre on every full tank.
The charities also express concern that the EU transport policies are causing problems in developing countries, where people have been pushed off their land to make room for biofuel crops, increasing local food prices and driving hunger.
The research is released in a week that has already seen a lot of bad publicity for the biofuels industry. Data from the leaked from the European Commission (EC) earlier this week, suggests that some sources of biofuels are nearly as polluting as tar sand oils (see story) while the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently announced that palm oil biofuel had failed to meet its GHG standards under the Renewable Fuel Standard (see story).
Meredith Alexander, ActionAid UK’s Head of Policy said: "The UK must scrap its biofuel targets. Motorists, the environment and poor people in developing countries will bear the brunt of this ill-conceived directive. Prices at the pump will be higher and so will CO2 emissions. Increased biofuel production will have disastrous consequences as food prices are forced up and millions of people go hungry and lose their land."
Kenneth Richter, Friends of the Earth’s Biofuels Campaigner said: "The Government keeps talking about bringing down costs but here we are paying billions for biofuels that do nothing to boost our economy and nothing to tackle climate change.
"This money would be better spent on improving our train and bus services, promoting cleaner cars, and making cycling a much safer option for short journeys – saving people cash every day."
As well as hitting consumers’ pockets hard, biofuels are bad for business – by 2020, the charities’ research estimates that a typical UK lorry driver will be spending as much as £1,400 extra per year on diesel.
