I agree, and I’ve now written to all my MEPs with a copy of the Monbiot article, asking each to “call for an urgent suspension of the EU biofuels obligation directive and of implementary directives in member states, pending that there should be a review of biofuel sourcing and its environmental consequences”.

Let’s all do this and not wait to be told by a major NGO! MEPs' details are readily accessible from http://www.europarl.org.uk/uk_meps/ Physical letters to politicians (alas) apparently tend to be more effective than emails or faxes (for new correspondence).

UPDATE 6/06: For our new campaign website: which has a draft MEPs' letter, see here

It seems while we've been looking the other way, Colin Challen has tabled EDM 1434: "That this House welcomes the Government's announcement that it will introduce a renewable transport fuels obligation (RTFO) to increase the use of biofuels and thereby reduce carbon emissions from the transport sector; urges the Government... quickly to implement the RTFO by spring 2007; and calls on the Government to introduce the RTFO alongside the existing duty of incentive for biofuels, rather than as a replacement." already signed by Norman Baker, Peter Bottomley, Jeremy Corbyn, Andrew Dismore:

http://edmi.parliament.uk/EDMi/EDMDetails.aspx?EDMID=29843&SESSION=875

[Note: see update comment below]

Please (I) immediately fax or email your MP, citing the George Monbiot, Susan Page and Birdlife articles, asking him/her

(i) NOT to sign the very similar EDMs 1434 and 1528 if they haven't already, in view of the grave dangers arising from the inclusion of imported palm and soya oil and ethanol, arising from the EU biofuels obligation directive;

(ii) instead to raise these grave concerns with the government, and ask the government
(a) NOT to speedily implement the renewable transport fuels obligation as it stands, as some MPs have suggested;

[(b),(c), (iii) and (iv) are my suggested additions]
(b) to make the strongest protestations to the relevant EU bodies for the EU-wide removal of the incentive for imports of palm oil, soya oil and bioethanol from tropical rainforest belt countries, that results from their current inclusion as qualifying fuels in the EU biofuels directive;
(c) further to explore ways in which the UK, or the EU, can help improve protection of the world’s remaining rainforest and minimize carbon dioxide releases associated with clearances.

(iii) to sign EDM 1568 "Tropical Rainforest Destruction and Biofuel Sourcing", which encapsulates (b) and (c).

(iv) you may in your letter also wish to express grave concerns over the existing fuel duty discount by which 20p less duty is paid on most biofuels, including those mentioned above, than on mineral petrol and diesel. This is of immediate concern because of the Biofuels Corporation's Teeside plant that is shortly to open and can process palm oil among other feedstocks, and other potential suppliers of palm diesel. See in addition to above articles http://www.biofuelscorp.com/press/Interim%20Accounts.pdf and http://www.agr.gc.ca/mad-dam/index_e.php?s1=pubs&s2=bi&s3=php&page=bulle... which states “the EU…is increasing imports [of palm oil] to offset the shortage of rape-oil in response to shortages caused by increased bio-fuel consumption.” I intend to discuss this issue further with others who have expressed interest shortly.

(II) I have already expressed concern about EDMs 1434 and 1528 to FoE, who say they are very concerned and are considering submitting an amendment or new EDM in response. However, if you belong to another major NGO, you may wish to write to them also, and express concern about this EDM and that MPs clearly have not been kept well informed enough about these dangers.

LAST UPDATED: 09/02/2006

PLEASE NOTE: This action has now expired.

Please tell Gordon Brown urgently NOT to announce any acceleration of incentives for biodiesel in the March 22 Budget, as set out below.

The first recommendation is specific to biodiesel, because the situation for bioethanol is not as obvious. The text below is intended to highlight salient issues coming after considerable lobbying by industry and the NFU in favour of biofuels (see other posts).

(i) Please feel free to personalize your letter for greater impact. Other current enviro letter writing campaigns to the Chancellor are being run by Greenpeace (for a tax on gas-guzzlers) and WWF (for a carbon budget).

(ii) If you correspond by letter, or fax, you may wish to enclose and highlight salient evidence from the articles linked to above of the EU biofuels directive’s effect on the palm oil market, and the Malaysian government’s announcements;

Email: ministers@hm-treasury.gsi.gov.uk

By letter:
Rt Hon Gordon Brown MP
Chancellor of the Exchequer
HM Treasury
1 Horse Guards Rd
LONDON SW1A 2HQ

By fax: 020 7270 4580

Dear Gordon Brown,

(i) You announced in the recent Pre-Budget Report that you are consulting on the detail of implementing the Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO) for the forthcoming Budget.

Please will you NOT announce any acceleration in implementing the RTFO in the case of DIESEL in this year’s Budget, and NOT permit the RTFO to operate alongside the fuel duty discount for BIODIESEL, doing whatever results in LEAST uptake of fresh vegetable oils.

I am very concerned that the increasing EU market for biodiesel is mostly resulting in a corresponding increase in palm oil production in South East Asia, with a corresponding acceleration in rainforest destruction and peat drainage.

In addition to displacing native peoples and considerable natural heritage, this is causing huge CO2 emissions. This is dramatically counter-productive to efforts to restrain greenhouse gas discharges in time to prevent catastrophe.

Industry analysts are saying that rising EU demand for biodiesel has exceeded that available from rapeseed grown mainly for animal feed. As a result most of the excess demand is being diplaced on to imported palm oil, which is currently the cheapest source.

This is a classic disaster arising from over-free trade. The EU urgently needs to take a tougher line with the Indonesian and Malaysian governments in order to stop most further deforestation (as recommended by Friends of the Earth) and reverse the drainage of peat wetlands. The EU should act similarly with all its trading partners.

(ii) I would like the government to stop further growth in road vehicle miles and aviation. Biofuel incentives are not acceptable as a substitute for this. For one thing, the world simply does not have enough arable land to power all current road journeys from available biofuels AND feed everybody.

Yours sincerely,

[name]
[current postal address]

Almuth (and Jim), the info you're supplying is very very important, and it needs to be made more public. It would be great to get a briefing paper together as you say you're working on, Almuth - everything broken down and explained - then make it available online (on the forum and elsewhere). I'm afraid I've not followed this campaign as assiduously as I'd have liked, and a point-by-point summary explanation would be very useful. I also worry that the intricacies of this issue make it difficult to sell: mention biofuels and the instinctive response from most people is 'oh, they're pretty good aren't they'. I can see it all becoming rather like the nuclear debate: greens themselves becoming divided over the problem, and more heat generated from the debate than light!

Hopefully by presenting it all clearly from the offset a proper awareness of the issues can be encouraged.

Almuth - well done you for going at this issue. It's a very major one, with some seriously dubious money at the back of it. I was glad to see a piece slamming Palm Oil plantations' destruction of Asian rainforest on BBC News last night - (complete with orphaned Urang Utans !) so the opposition is spreading wholesale. WRT your report, the first thing I'd suggest is don't rush it. - on the grounds that it's better to have it really accurate in a couple of months than shot down for anomallies next week Over at PeakOil.com biofuels have been debated since 2004 and there's still very little definitive data come to light - as you've found, the scientific evidence (particularly on EROEI) is scarce, contradictory and normally lacks any serious account of the biomass production impacts. As a starting point I'd take the fact that we've been making wine and distilling ethanol for millenia as evidence that it can be made sustainably, albeit on a small scale. Similarly, methanol (CH3OH) was first made commercially in 1680, and was extracted from the flue gas of charcoal making.. Again, this can be done sustainably using coppice rotation for feedstock (and BTW native moderate-rotation coppice holds the highest biodiversity of any European ecosystem). The question is over to what extent production of either of these fuels (and their derivatives) can usefully be scaled up to make any significant impact on liquid fuel supplies. By "usefully" here I mean without the depletion of biodiversity, of soils, of water security and of food security, while also significantly cutting net CO2 emissions, and costing little more than $60/bbl oil equivalent, and not dispossessing native landholders. Beside sacrificing rainforest for SUVs' palmoil biofuel,, much is also being lost of course to corporate agribusiness (beef, soya, maize etc), as well as to campesino holdings. But if the the ethanol trade really takes off, biomass for ethanol will greatly raise demand for arable land, thus accelerating forest clearance, as well as heavily impacting food security. Given that up to one third of current global CO2 output is from present forest clearance, and food security is already being catastrophically impacted in some regions by climate destabilization, the very idea of the EU importing arable & palm oil biofuels looks criminally incompetent. You may have seen Colin Chalen's article in the Independent where he remarked that owing to the climate issue, - "economic growth as we know it is dead". What he did not mention is the looming prospect of peak oil eroding the easy affordability of fossil oil & gas even for currently wealthy nations over the coming decade. This is to my mind the real driver for the biofuels push recently, and it means we face a far far greater task in blocking malign biofuels than we'd otherwise have done. From this perspective we do have an unusually potent campaigning opportunity of not having to "just say no" but of clearly distinguishing between the unavoidably malign Agribusiness Biofuels option, and the potentially highly benign Coppice Woodland for Methanol option. Methanol does not to my knowledge automatically entail heavy NOx pollution, and forms a very clean-burning fuel for SI-ICE & CI-ICE engines, and for gas turbines, and for fuel cells. In terms of the land use issue coppice woodland can of course be grown on non-arable land, being the steeper and northfacing slopes and in the uplands, practically wherever trees will grow. My interest is not simply in this option's potential to fund the reforestation of much of the ~30,000 sq mls (7.8mha.s) of the UK's deforested uplands, (with village-scale refineries to minimize wood-haulage) yielding firewood, charcoal, woodgas, methanol, power and local heating. it is also about using this option to help end the developing world's imposed energy dependence, whereby it is spending around half of its annual foreign currency earnings to pay for imported fossil fuels. For this reason, I'd strongly suggest that you avoid tarring methanol from woodland with the same brush as used on arable biofuels! I'd well agree that forest methanol could be done very badly (though from a CO2 perspective it would still be better than arable biofuels) which is why I see a need for the setting of standards over what production techniques will be accredited for importation by the EU.. That campaign for Coppice Methanol production standards is perhaps somewhere down the road, which is why for the moment I urge you to avoid attacking the option in principle. Hoping these ideas may be of interest to you - I should be glad to converse via email if you like - regards, Billhook PS - Just in case you should wonder, I do aspire to owning a bit of coppice one day - [edit: as a commons with the local community ] but I've no relations with, or holding in, any commercial methanol company [edit: or forestry company] whatsoever.

Thanks for all your work on this, Almuth.

It is interesting that the scheme was initially approved solely on EU-based production. This is certainly a point I will make in future letters to MEPs.

The most important aspect of our campaign is that we emphasise it is the sourcing that creates the problem, not biofuel per se. On that note, we need to clarify amongst ourselves which exactly are the sustainable production options, then lobby to limit sourcing to those sources. It is no good just to stop palm oil in biofuels, then have another equally bad source popping up.

This is also important for the name of any campaign. How about "Campaign for Sustainable Biofuels", or some such?

I found the following good introductions on the energy balance of bioethanol:

On Berkeley Uni finding 13% benefit from corn bioethanol, and "East Coast - West Coast dispute": www.nature.com/news/2006/060123/full/060123-13.html

Sheffield Hallam Uni study for British Sugar on energy balance from wheat and sugar beet bioethanol: and also see
www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1362428,00.html