Jack Rosebro suggests that a second look at biofuels is occuring in Europe. He bases his observations on remarks made by European heads of state following the European Council’s annual Spring Summit, which was held last week in Brussels.
The European Commission had had aspirations to boost the use of biofuels in European transport to 10% of total use by 2020. They may well need to revise such expectations if williing to address new concerns about biofuels.
From the viewpoint of sustainability, almost all biofuels used today result in more greenhouse gas emissions than conventional fuel. Furthermore, “increased biofuel production is already impacting food costs and water supplies.” And, greater cultivation of food and fuel crops accelerates deforestation, which reduces the biosphere’s carbon sinks. There is a multiplier effect from fuel crops that results in an intensification of man-made greenhouse gas production even when use of the fuel by the transportation sector produces fewer emissions than standard fuel.
European Union officials have looked at biofuels with some interest since at least 2001 and in 2002 set an initial target of 5.75% biofuels for the transport sector, to be attained by 2010.2 However, biofuels made up just 1% of transport fuel by 2005. In March 2007, following growing concerns over energy security and climate change, EU leaders proposed raising the target to 10% by 20203 (earlier post). That target was contingent on the expected development of so-called “biofuels 2.0” via technological breakthroughs; in other words, sustainable biofuels at competitive prices:
The binding character of this target is appropriate, subject to production being sustainable, second-generation biofuels becoming commercially available, and the Fuel Quality Directive being amended accordingly to allow for adequate levels of blending.
Despite significant concerns expressed by the EU’s own Economic and Social Committee (earlier post), as well as many NGOs, the proposed 10% target was folded into an EU directive on the “Promotion of the Use of Energy From Renewable Sources”, a draft of which was released on 23 January 2008, in part because an April 2007 assessment of the effects of biofuel production4 had found:
…the impact on land use in the EU-27 is relatively modest. About 15% of arable land would be used.
That assessment, however, did not consider the effects of biofuel production outside of EU member states. Yet negative effects of biofuel demand from the West were already apparent elsewhere by 2007.
The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), for example, had originally estimated in 2002 that 98% of Indonesia’s ancient rain forests would be gone by 2032, caused largely by logging and the operation of pulp plantations. But by 2007—the year that the EU proposed to increase its future dependency on biofuels to 10%—UNEP found that the rainforests were likely to disappear a decade sooner, with lowland forests vanishing as well, due to an accelerated rate of deforestation coupled with “recent widespread investment in oil palm plantations and biodiesel refineries.”5
The rainforests of Indonesia are some of the last remaining habitats of orangutans. The preservation of biodiversity is, by coincidence, a priority of the European Council, which took the opportunity at last week’s summit to encourage Member States and the European Commission “to strengthen efforts aimed at halting biodiversity loss by 2010 and beyond.” Deforestation such as that suffered by Indonesia is considered to be among the most aggressive drivers of climate change, second only to the anthropogenic production of greenhouse gases.
The potential for biofuels to reduce greenhouse gas emissions—as compared to conventional fuels—has also been called into question by a range of reports. In December 2006, a study of agricultural land made from drained peatlands in Southeast Asia concluded that the production of biodiesel from palm oil can, in some cases, create up to ten times more carbon dioxide than conventional diesel fuel.6 And last September, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) issued a report titled “Biofuels: Is The Cure Worse Than The Disease?”7 (earlier post), which noted that the effects of first generation biofuel technologies on food prices and the environment “suggest that the potential of conventional technologies might be closer to current production levels.”
Three sustainability criteria for biofuels:
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Land with high carbon stocks should not be converted for biofuel production;
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Land with high biodiversity should not be converted for biofuel production; and
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Biofuels should achieve a minimum level of greenhouse gas savings (carbon stock losses from land use change would not be included in the calculation).
The first two criteria appear to be unenforceable, as “high carbon stocks” and “high biodiversity” are left undefined. The last criterion is telling: according to the Directive, if a high-density carbon sink such as an old-growth forest is cut down to make way for a low-density, intermittent carbon sink such as a soybean field, any so-called greenhouse gas savings would be calculated as if the rainforest never existed. Furthermore, no criteria exist to ensure that the production of biofuels does not erode food supply. However, the draft directive indicates that public consultations on the three criteria prior to their publication was positive:
In the responses, there is general support for such criteria from most respondents, with many proposing further reinforcements to the scheme.
In truth, last January was rocky for proponents of biofuel expansion in Europe. On the ninth of that month, seventeen NGOs, including Friends Of the Earth Europe and Greenpeace Europe, sent a letter to one of the European Commission’s most ardent biofuels enthusiasts, energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs, noting that the biofuels directive lacked standards to prevent the destruction of carbon sinks to create biofuel feedstocks, or to prevent social impacts:
The scramble to supply European markets [with biofuels] is already causing frequent land disputes, forced evictions… and poor working conditions.
On the fourteenth, EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas admitted in a BBC interview broadcast that “we [the Commission] have seen that the environmental problems caused by biofuels and also the social problems are bigger than we thought they were.”
A few days later, an unpublished working paper by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) was leaked to the media. In the document, EU scientists wrote “…the uncertainty is too great to say whether the EU 10% biofuels target will save greenhouse gas or not.” Rob Vierhout, secretary general of the European Bioethanol Fuel Association, or eBIO, retorted that “it has always been the agenda of the JRC to discredit biofuels ever since they started their Well-to-Wheel project with the oil and car industry.”
Concerns about the effect of increased biofuel production on food, water, and greenhouse gas production have not swayed Commissioner Piebalgs, who proclaimed yesterday on his official blog:
I myself drive an ethanol-powered Saab 9-5 and certainly I would not even think of it if I had the slightest suspicion that I’m contributing in any way to global warming, or, even worse, to an international genocide. This is why I consider that it is essential to regain a sense of proportion in this debate and try to have a discussion on this issue that is less intemperate and one-sided.8
It is not known whether or not Piebalgs has studied last week’s report “Climate change and international security”9 (earlier post), which was produced at the request of EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana and released to the public just prior to the summit. The report painted a grim portrait of future agricultural production and access to water in many parts of the world, including key trade partners with Europe, if the effects of climate change prove to be significant.
Although Solana’s report raised red flags by examining the potential effects of warming regions exclusive of the burdens of biofuel production, there is widespread concern that the worldwide agricultural sector could be deprived of arable land needed to meet rising food demand, at a time when global warming is already causing desertification in many areas.
Some of the most strident opposition to biofuels has come from the UK, which has already passed a law mandating that at least 5% of commercially available transport fuel be biofuels. Many of that country’s NGOs refer to biofuels as agrofuels, rejecting the prefix “bio” as a misleading association of fuel with life. Popular environmental writer George Monbiot of The Guardian called for a five-year moratorium on biofuels immediately after the EU’s 2020 biofuel target proposal moved forward last year.
And building on the call for “caution in the expansion of global biofuel demand” in Part I of the UK’s King Review of Low-Carbon Cars, Part II10 (earlier post) has advocated “moving the short-term focus back from biofuels to automotive technology” and “revising the EU Fuel Quality Directive [from which arises the 10% biofuel target] downward.”
The EU presidency rotates next to France in July. With regard to biofuels, France’s Europe Minister Jean-Pierre Jouyet said “it will belong to the French Presidency to see where we go on this but there is no definite position for the moment. A review has not been excluded.” If the directive is finalized, it will be submitted to the European Parliament as legislation.
Footnotes
1 Euractiv, March 14, 2008: “EU signals possible retreat on biofuels”
2 Council of the European Union, November 2002: Directive 2002/…/ EC of the European Parliament and of the Council on the promotion of the use of biofuels or other renewable fuels for transport (draft)
3 European Commission, January 2008: “Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council on the Promotion of the Use of Energy From Renewable Sources” (draft)
4 European Commission, April 2007: “The impact of a minimum 10% obligation for biofuel use in the EU-27 in 2020 on agricultural market”
5 UNEP and UNESCO, February 2007: “The Last Stand of the Orangutan. State of Emergency: Illegal Logging, Fire and Palm Oil in Indonesia’s National Parks”
6 PEAT-CO2 assessment of CO2 emissions from drained peatlands in SE Asia
7 OECD, September 2007: “Biofuels: is the cure worse than the disease?”
8 Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, 14 March 2008: “Biofuels: good or evil” (blog)
9 Council of the European Union, March 3, 2008: “Climate change and international security”
10 Her Majesty’s Treasury, UK: The King Review of low-carbon cars, part II: recommendations for action
3 Comments
The Oil Drum commentator onedip went out on a limb and made a case for sugarcane ethanol. “Of course it is no panacea, no energy alternative at this point is one, but it can help bridge the gap and promote even raise levels of income on some desperately poor countries.”
onedip makes four points:
The Oil Drum contributor Euan Mearns responded to Andris Piebalgs, the European Energy Commissioner, first commenting on his blog pursuant to the theme of EROEI and energy efficiency, then moving the debate to the Oil Drum and the key issue of bio-fuels.
Andris Piebalgs drives a Saab 9-5 that runs on bio-ethanol. By my estimation, the energy efficiency of this vehicle is a meagre 5%. Andris no doubt believes he is doing the right thing and I believe he cares a great deal about European energy. And yet he is driving one of the least energy efficient vehicles ever produced – and he is a physicist. How on Earth have these totally bizarre circumstances come about?
Euan Mearns warns against an obsession with CO2 emissions that loses sight of energy efficiency. The following is quotations from Andris Piebalg’s blog, followed by Euan Mearns’ commentary.
Variations in EROEI with CO2 conserved assuming the energy input to bio fuel production is from fossil fuel.
Oil palm: not a silver bullet against global warming
A recent report from Colombian oil palm growers points out their interest in certifying by means of a distinctive stamp, the environmental quality of crops and products, such as oil and biofuels that they export to the European Union. The announcement took place after the publishing of an article on The New York Times (January the 15th of 2008) announcing a possible ban on the import of these products due to the environmental damage they produce.
Several studies have discredited what, according to biofuel producers, are the environmental earnings derived from their usage, as the supposed reduction of greenhouse gas emission due to the reduction on fossil fuel usage. The growing of cereals –as the article keeps on– for transforming them into biofuels can lead to a considerable environmental damage. Not only because of the chopping down of native vegetation to plant grains instead, but also for the usage of fossil fuels as diesel in tractors used to harvest them. Moreover, these crops demand nitrogen fertilizers which involve mainly natural gas and huge quantities of water for their production.
Already, the deforestation and drying out of peatlands, -ecosystems formed by the accumulation of organic matter from plants with an increased moisture retaining capacity- in Southeastern Asia, mainly to grow palm, accounts for up to 8% of the global annual carbon dioxide emissions, said Adrián Bebb, member of the “Friends of the Earth” environmental group.
In Indonesia, according to The New York Times’ report, more than 18 million hectares of forest, or 44 million acres, have already been cleared for palm oil developments. Environmental groups say these developments are endangering wildlife species as the orangutan and the Sumatran tiger, besides placing enormous pressure on indigenous communities whose survival depend on the sustainability of the forest.
The Real Society, a British scientific academy, declared that requirements for using a certain biofuel percentage are not enough and that instead, specific goals should be traced for reducing fossil fuel emissions.
According to the National Federation of Biofuels, the reason of the ban emerges from the old rivalry between soya growers, especially from the United States, and palm growers from developing countries, as the Asians, African and Latin Americans, who have begun influencing the global biofuels market.
For “Fedecombustibles”, a Colombian biofuels federation, there is no reason to be alarm since Colombia is prepared for these kind of situations and even seems be a step ahead of the new provision that might be imposed by the European Union". The Federation also acknowledges that such measure goes against practices used in Indonesia for enlarging cultivated area with oil palm, which extended from 2.5 to 6 million hectares in just ten years (1995-2004), a process resulting in forest destruction, high carbon dioxide emission and rural population’s displacement."
Although a great variety of stamps and certifications exist, they offer only a partial guarantee; none of them certifies that oil palm products imported and consumed in Europe fulfill the international standards guaranteeing the fundamental rights of those working or inhabiting production areas. None guarantees that land for palm oil cultivation has been acquired rightfully, so putting a stamp on their products will merely be a decoration that will not remedy the social and environmental burden derived from oil palm intensive cultivation, unless all, governments, growers, processors and buyers really work together towards this target.
During the second semester of 2007, the Colombian Ministry of Agriculture ordered the restitution of a 18000 hectares farm to the peasant communities in the oriental plains of the country, communities that are being expelled from them by illegal armed groups. It is not hard to believe that these lands, already sowed with palm, will have to be sold at ridiculous prices to whoever is currently occupying them unless its owners, peasants, are able to pay large sums of money for the improvements done, "sale" that will “legalize” the holding of those lands.
Added to the environmental questioning and communities displacement resulting from the intensive cultivation of oil palm, there is a much more serious issue: the impact on the right to food of a large number of people, which has arisen recent and strong pronouncements from specialists and organizations, among them Jean Ziegler, the United Nations special Rapporteur on the Right for enough and healthy Food.
We cannot forget that 854 million humans suffer from serious malnutrition around the world, every 5 seconds a child aged less than 10 dies from hunger and every 4 minutes someone goes blind due vitamin A deficiency.
The CBC, (Coordination Belge pour the Colombie) together with the HREV (Human Rights Everywhere) hired a study entitled “The flow of palm oil Colombia-Bélgica/Europa: A study from a human rights perspective” by Fidel Mingorance, which contains a detailed analysis on the implications of biofuels production in Colombia. Due to their relevance, some paragraphs have been transcribed literally from this document.
This publication, directed to Belgian audience, unveil commercial practices related with biofuels’ production, not widely well-known but with a strong influence on populations and lands that are seek to improve by growing oil palm. This shows how responsibility does not only lay on the Colombian government and growers, but also on European buyers ignoring the death, destruction and displacement sequels emerging from oil palm developments and production in our country. This is the real reason behind prohibiting and demanding a quality stamp, a late act of contrition from those promoting and financing these developments in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
Colombia exports mainly raw oil, which accounted for 71% of overall exports in 2005, since its refining is cheaper in Europe than in Colombia. Refining a ton in Colombia will cost US$60 while the cost in Europe will be a bit lower than 40 dollars.
COLOMBIA: A BIT OF HISTORY
"In Colombia, government promoters of an agroindustrial model of large developments, marketing areas, and publicity of the big palm companies affirm that with the palm oil, everybody wins. Win the State finances, win the managers and wins the whole society, since, they explain, the cultivation brings great social benefits, the peace and the national development, besides benefitting the health of the final consumers and the climate of the planet."
In July of 2005 the former Prime first minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, came to Colombia. In 1981, he found, according to the former Colombian Ambassador Sergio Naranjo, a nation whipped by the drug traffic and the guerrilla, with small rates of growth and a poverty index of 50%. And by the end of 2003, upon concluding his term, the poverty index was of 6%, with export rates of $127 thousand million dollars and growth rates 7% above rates over the past years."
Ambassador Naranjo highlighted the relevance of learning from Malaysia on how they ended up with the guerrilla through authority and discipline by applying a strategy that involved implementing 5 thousand plantation hectares with 500 families in guerrilla’s high pressure areas. These families had farmed the land, registered revenues and enjoyed from economic and social development, which has moved them to fight together with the institutions to defeat the guerrillas". Almost 3 years later, neither the guerrilla has been eliminated, neither peasants have become rich and the peace remains an illusion.
According to the ex-ambassador, Biodiesel production acquires strategic importance for Colombia due to the peace processes, culture substitution and social reinsertion processes to future."
For his part, President Álvaro Uribe said he considers “it is very important to establish a council, a group of the Colombian and Malaysian business communities, to further strengthen up these bonds". And he added that Colombia and Malaysia agree in most of their priorities, amongst which reaching high development levels in the rural areas is included.
Likewise, Uribe reminded that investment possibilities in our country agriculturally speaking are very important for both nations, as for example oil palm cultivation. "You, -Mahathir bin Mohamad – explained us, for example, that your country has a million sowed hectares with oil palm, and may not have more lands for extending these plantations. Colombia has near 300 thousand sowed hectares, but it is a country full of opportunities. If you see this country as a whole, you can perfectly see that there are huge possibilities of sowing six million hectares more with oil palm”, accentuated the President.
We have 6 million hectares available for sowing, “without having to cut a single tree or a cultivated hectare”, said also the Minister of Agriculture Felipe Arias. If the 300.000 hectares nowadays cultivated have caused the amount of murders and displacements which urged the European demand and linking of an important number of palm managers to judicial processes, is not hard to conceive the ferocious competition that would unloosed for property of over 3.5 million more fertile hectares, where there is no need to invest much in adaptation, infrastructure, pipelines, drainage, fertilizers, etc., and for the 2.5 less profitable million hectares, besides the soil deterioration, water contamination and massive dislodgment of peasants that the extensive sowing dreamed by the President and his friends would cause.
The Malaysian perspective, is not as flattering as they say. The devastating effects of oil palm’s intensive cultivation in this country are well-known today; the agricultural diversity and water quality have diminished as consequence of the extended use of fertilizers, pesticides and machinery. Oil palm’s intensive cultivation is responsible for 87% of deforestation taking place between 1985 and 2000 in that country, thus transforming the “green dream” in a true environmental nightmare.
Carlos Murgas Guerrero, ex-minister of Agriculture and President Pastrana’s advisory, inspired by his official visit to Malaysia, was the one introduced the Malayan model strategic alliances nowadays applied in Colombia, model for whose results the European Union is now embarrassed.
"This pattern can be generalized in a 5 phases sketch:
1. Attack or paramilitary conquest.
2. Illegal appropriation of lands. Steal or buy by means of armed intimidation.
3. Palm field.
4. Oil palm development complex = Plantations + Processing machinery.
5a. Oil flow towards national and/or international markets.
5b. Territorial domain.
This is a resume of the different processes that are being developed in oil palm areas around the country, but is entirely applicable in particular to the new plantations that are developing during the present decade(1 out of 5).
In previous processes, as those in Santander or Tumaco, the pattern had begun with already established palm complexes, where palm managers were the ones who conformed or invited and financed paramilitary groups as private security bodies to fight against guerrillas. Instead, in Casanare, palm plantations expanded at the same rhythm as paramilitary actions, both expansions being overlapped. The ones perfectly adjusting to the pattern are plantations in Chocó, where paramilitary were the ones inviting palm managers to settle down in those areas under their control"
Regarding this, Carlos Daniel Merlano, one of the farmers linked to the process, declared in an interview granted to EL ESPECTADOR that: "By the end of 90’s, armed confrontations between the FARC and the illegal paramilitary group “Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia”, AUC, turned the area into a battle field which generated displacement. Precisely in that area, palm farmers arrived and brought community together. Their only concern has been transforming this region into a prosperous place through oil palm and its final product, the Biodiesel. The Constitutional Court repealed the law 1021 of 2006 on Forestry Incentives, arguing that timber areas and palm farm communities were not aware of its scopes.
On the other hand, late yield crops as the oil palm, require a considerable initial investment for their preparation and maintenance for the first four or five years, time during which they are unproductive. "The peasants don’t usually have enough financial resources as to maintain themselves until the first harvest arrives. Nevertheless, the number of small peasants has increased during the last years as expenses for these first years are now being covered by state resources, which means that they become debtors and should enrolled, with no other alternative, to productive alliances with the big companies, which thus get a captive market.
Within such big companies we can find, among many others, Unilever, Cargill, HJ Heinz, Nestlé, Colgate Palmolive, L’Oreal, Avon, Max Factor, etc, besides numerous companies with interests in the chocolates, foods, chemicals, fertilizers and agricultural supplies, fuels market, banks and financial services". Practically the whole industry has been touched by the oil palm market.
The law 1133 of 2007, article third, first paragraph, states verbatium as follows: "For all, it must be understood that direct financial support or incentives are selectively and temporarily delivered, within the exercise of a public policy, being under the national government’s power, to objectively select the area that will benefit from the direct financial support or incentive and the value thereof, as well as to determine within these, the requirements and conditions to be met by those aspiring to become beneficiaries”.
The financial support or incentives mentioned by the law 1133 add up to 900 thousand million pesos within 2007 and 2008, adjusted as minimum by the Consumer Price Index (CPI) for each term", which means, around a billion pesos designated to the implementation of the Agriculture Sure Income program (AIS: for its acronym in Spanish), (around 500 million dollars) a quite attractive number for those interested in promoting the productivity and competitiveness, reducing inequality and getting the agricultural sector ready for facing the challenge of economic globalization” stated as this law’s purpose, but hardly within the reach of common peasants or the displaced afrocolombian population".
SOMETHING IS WRONG
The good intentions manifested by the President, the Ministers and palm managers, has ended up in a chain of events that is now holding “against the wall” a considerable number of palm managers, 23 who are being accused by the General Attorney’s Office of usurping lands helped by the illegal armed groups operating in the area.
“At the discretion of the investigating body, these actions have resulted in criminal behaviors such as conspiracy to commit a crime and forced displacement. With an aggravating factor: the Prosecution investigates how, in some cases, public and private documents were adulterated to acquire ownership of land. Similarly, investigators found that the promoters of the oil palm’s agrobusiness project in the Chocoan Urabá also ignored environmental regulations in effect, perturbating the ecological system of the rivers Curvaradó and Jiguamiando”
"The controversial paramilitary demobilization process and the non-less controversial ‘Justice and Peace Law’ has added another important factor at this stage of the palm pattern. In some of the reinsertion projects, it is intended for demobilized people to work in palm plantations as economic integration that will take them out the war. Sometimes, it is proposed not only that victims and victimizers work together “for the sake of reconciliation”, but, in some cases, the victims have to work as employees at the farms that were once theirs but that were violently stolen by the same paramilitaries now reinserted. "
"The demobilization process involves an injection of public money for the development of new palm plantations in areas of strong paramilitary presence. Through productive projects as “Families Rangers” or programs mostly funded by the USAID23 agency linked to the demobilization or replacement of illicit crops, they are expanding oil palm plantations in Santander, Magdalena, Bolivar, La Guajira, Nevada, Cesar, Nariño, Atlantic, Norte de Santander, Cordoba, Antioquia and Choco."
Neither crops for biofuel production or these are bad by themselves, but for the conditions under which they developed, the legal-politic-paramilitary actions undertaken to appropriate land, the displacement of peasants, the competition between fuel and food sharpening to inconceivable hedges the lack of food for millions of people, the environment lies upon which profitable business are justify and impose that will end up enriching a few while extinguishing native forest and wild life from those “benefited countries”
From our ability to fully understand all kinds of impacts from the biofuel’s boom we are living nowadays, depends that we can take full advantage of its benefitial while mitigating and controlling the negative impact that its production and combustion have. Oil palm: not a silver bullet against global warming
Resources:
1. Farmers rejects possible ban of UE
2. Europe May Ban Imports of Some Biofuel Crops
3. The dossier of the farmers
4. the flow of the palm oil Colombia-Bélgica/Europa
5. Former first Minister from Malaysia visits Colombia
6. President Uribe proposes managerial commission of Colombia and Malaysia
C. Fernando Márquez M.
Colombian Society of Drivers
CEO
http://www.sca.com.co
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[...] partners, will be quality-assured from environmental, climate and social perspectives. This and other such assertions have come about after the European Commission stated that biofuels need to be sustainable, rather [...]