EU Admits Biofuels Mistake, Will Same Mistakes be Made With Carbon Trading?
The EU has at long last admitted that it’s policies on biofuels were a “mistake” and is implementing a policy review to redress the issue. Environment minister of the European Commission Stavros Dimas admitted that certain environmental and social problems associated with biofuels had not been foreseen.
Our view is that the impacts of many green initiatives are actively ‘not foreseen’ in the rush to appease the mighty green lobby and vote winner.
Biofuels are the perfect illustration of poorly considered knee-jerk reactions to climate change which threaten to make our world worse, not better. We sincerely hope that this may serve as a reminder and example as the world considers further significant changes with the potential for negative impacts.
In the case of bio-fuels, research has shown that the benefits of growing crops for fuel is quickly diminished - produce diverted to biofuel supply is replaced by using additional land for crop production, often leading to further deforestation. In any case, the energy intensity of growing and processing biofuels leads to marginal net emissions savings. Policy makers would do better to take note of research which has shown that using equivalent amounts of land to plant trees absorbs more Co2 than can be saved using biofuels.
However, not satisfied with damaging the world’s food supply, EU policy makers are now turning thier attention to industry.
New proposals are being debated among member states which require further caps on industry from 2013 onwards. Existing carbon credit allowances will be tightened and additional industries will be forced into the scheme. Fears abound that higher costs will force many industries to relocate outside of the EU as competition against low wage regions increases.
Unlike biofuel policies, industrial relocations are almost impossible to reverse. We sincerely hope something is learned from the biofuel experience.
A recent commitee meeting for argiculture in the Canadian Senate (December 2007) discussed bio-fuels with a climate change expert. The subject included a report that German ethanol producers were trying to purchase food crops in Canada to meet their country’s mandate for ethanol production as they could not produce enough crops in country to meet the needs of the existing subsidized production facilities.
If this is how you reduce foreign dependencies for fuel no wonder they are re-thinking the strategy.