Aimed at mitigating climate change, a whole slew of policies and investments in agrofuels have emerged, supported by the EU’s Biofuels Directive and a web of corporate interests. The EU set targets for 2.5% agrofuel in transport fuel by April this year, 5% by 2010 and 10% by 2020. Yet, these targets cannot be met without significant imports – the UK government’s own figures state that only 2.5% of the agrofuel target can be met by domestic production.
November 2007 saw the UK government create a Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) to oversee its Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO). The chairman stated, ‘I am looking forward to working with the oil industry, biofuel companies, environmental groups, motorists and the general public.’ The RFA’s board, however, comprises energy, oil, motoring and agrofuel interests alone – no environmentalists or members of the general public. The RFA opposes regulation in favour of ‘praising those companies who operate responsibly while openly shaming those that do not.’ These weak sustainability criteria will be unenforceable until 2011, and labour rights are likely to be exempt.
The interests promoting agrofuels across the world include oil companies (BP, Shell, Petrobras, Repsol), banks (Rabobank, Barclays), agribusiness behemoths (Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge, ConAgra, and Primark’s owners Associated British Foods or ABF), biotech corporations (Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, Monsanto), supermarkets (Tesco), energy companies (Greenergy) and many new companies capitalising on a booming market and government subsidies – US subsidies for the ethanol industry have been estimated at $7 billion. In Europe the EBB (European Biodiesel Board) a major agrofuel lobby represents sixty agrofuel producers, including agrofuel giants Cargill and ADM (Archer Daniels Midland). Its website boasts high level access to the EU.
One of the larger UK processors and distributors of agrofuels, D1 Oils Plc partnered with BP in June 2007. Working with Keygene in the Netherlands D1-BP Fuel Crops are developing strains of jatropha, an oil yielding shrub valued for its potential role in agrofuel production across Africa and in India and Indonesia. ‘D1 will act as the exclusive supplier of selected, high-yielding Jatropha seeds and seedlings to D1-BP Fuel Crops’, thereby holding a monopoly on high-yield jatropha. Sun Biofuels, another UK based agrofuel company, specialises in African jatropha plantations. Sun were granted 9,000 hectares in Tanzania, displacing eleven villages. With Sun’s projected income from a hectare of jatropha around £390, the compensation offered was revealed to be between £31 and less than £100 per person.
According to Biofuelwatch seven processing plants are already operational in the UK – two run by D1 Oils and one each by British Sugar, Argent Energy, Greenergy, Petroplus and Earls Nook. Seven more are under construction and another seven proposed.
Greenergy, the supplier of agrofuel to Tesco and Virgin, expects to source over 150,000 tonnes per annum of UK grown rapeseed as feedstock for their plant. A thousand farmers are reportedly participating in the ‘Field to Forecourt’ contract. ‘Cargill has been appointed to manage the supply of rapeseed grown under the Field to Forecourt contract and will work alongside Frontier Agriculture, a company which it jointly owns with ABF Holdings Ltd.’
Earls Nook, formerly Biofuels Corp, is working with a cluster of agribusiness, oil and genetic engineering interests (BP, ABF and DuPont). They plan to process Malaysian palm oil – one of the worst contributors to deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Working with ABF, plantations in Africa may also supply their refinery. In November 2007 ABF, which owns a 51% stake in African based sugar company Illovo Sugar, announced a 70% stake and £100 million investment in a sugar mill, an ethanol plant and electricity co-generation unit in Mali. Illovo will manage a government sponsored agricultural development (plantation) supplying 1.5 million tonnes of sugar cane a year to the plant.
Argent Energy claim to use less energy intensive biofuel, from waste animal and vegetable fats. Argent Energy New Zealand signed a letter of intent with Shell New Zealand last year; Shell is looking into algae as agrofuel in Hawaii. The proposed plant will consume 20,000 hectares if algae becomes commercially viable. So far tests in the US show that only when grown near fossil fuel power plants does algae agrofuel become viable. Far from emblematic of a post-fossil fuel economy.
The EU, confronted with grain stocks at their lowest for twenty five years and spiralling food prices, has abolished regulations for farmers to set aside around ten per cent of farmland. Land left fallow is being returned to industrial agriculture – but not to wheat production . Oilseed rape cultivation has increased by twenty percent (100,000 hectares) in the UK. A nutrient hungry crop, oilseed rape requires high amounts of nitrogen fertiliser (c. 200kg per hectare). Fertliser run-off causes eutrophication – algal blooms in waterways – and Defra’s designated Nitrate Vulnerable Zones will increase in 2008 to cover 70% of England; up from 55% in 2002. Nitrogen-based fertilisers also release nitrous oxide (N2O) as they decompose in the soil. N2O is a greenhouse gas 296 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Agriculture accounts for around 7% of the UK’s emissions: 4.5% of which is nitrous oxide. Nitrogen-based fertilisers also depend on oil/gas for their manufacture. Fertiliser prices, as with natural gas, are rising. Wealthier farmers alone may benefit from lucrative crops, such as oilseed rape, which require high fertiliser inputs.
The EU agrofuel targets represent a tiny reduction in CO2 emissions – an overall cut of 80% in greenhouse gas emissions is required if runaway climate change is to be averted. Substituting 10% of transport fuel with biofuel by 2020 does not alter tailpipe emissions; ethanol also combusts to produce CO2. The biodiesel fantasy envisages a cut in emissions during production, with crops absorbing CO2 as they grow and thus balancing out that which they release in combustion. Yet, as research from Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has shown, significant amounts of greenhouse gases are released through changes in land use, deforestation, fertiliser. The life cycle emissions from bioethanol from maize and biodiesel from oilseed rape often exceed those of fossil fuels.
The EU is scrambling to regain lost ground. Stavros Dimas, EU’s environment commissioner, has admitted that the European Biofuels Directive introduced targets without sufficient scientific and socio-ecological assessment. Refusing a moratorium on agrofuels he seeks to focus on second and third generation agrofuels (such as waste, grasses, trees and genetically engineered crops). These still require vast swathes of land, while biotech firms will find their power over markets and the world’s ecosystems significantly enhanced.
Aimed at mitigating climate change, a whole slew of policies and investments in agrofuels have emerged, supported by the EU’s Biofuels Directive and a web of corporate interests. The EU set targets for 2.5% agrofuel in transport fuel by April this year, 5% by 2010 and 10% by 2020. Yet, these targets cannot be met without significant imports – the UK government’s own figures state that only 2.5% of the agrofuel target can be met by domestic production.
November 2007 saw the UK government create a Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) to oversee its Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation (RTFO). The chairman stated, ‘I am looking forward to working with the oil industry, biofuel companies, environmental groups, motorists and the general public.’ The RFA’s board, however, comprises energy, oil, motoring and agrofuel interests alone – no environmentalists or members of the general public. The RFA opposes regulation in favour of ‘praising those companies who operate responsibly while openly shaming those that do not.’ These weak sustainability criteria will be unenforceable until 2011, and labour rights are likely to be exempt.
The interests promoting agrofuels across the world include oil companies (BP, Shell, Petrobras, Repsol), banks (Rabobank, Barclays), agribusiness behemoths (Archer Daniels Midland, Cargill, Bunge, ConAgra, and Primark’s owners Associated British Foods or ABF), biotech corporations (Bayer Crop Science, Syngenta, Monsanto), supermarkets (Tesco), energy companies (Greenergy) and many new companies capitalising on a booming market and government subsidies – US subsidies for the ethanol industry have been estimated at $7 billion. In Europe the EBB (European Biodiesel Board) a major agrofuel lobby represents sixty agrofuel producers, including agrofuel giants Cargill and ADM (Archer Daniels Midland). Its website boasts high level access to the EU.
One of the larger UK processors and distributors of agrofuels, D1 Oils Plc partnered with BP in June 2007. Working with Keygene in the Netherlands D1-BP Fuel Crops are developing strains of jatropha, an oil yielding shrub valued for its potential role in agrofuel production across Africa and in India and Indonesia. ‘D1 will act as the exclusive supplier of selected, high-yielding Jatropha seeds and seedlings to D1-BP Fuel Crops’, thereby holding a monopoly on high-yield jatropha. Sun Biofuels, another UK based agrofuel company, specialises in African jatropha plantations. Sun were granted 9,000 hectares in Tanzania, displacing eleven villages. With Sun’s projected income from a hectare of jatropha around £390, the compensation offered was revealed to be between £31 and less than £100 per person.
According to Biofuelwatch seven processing plants are already operational in the UK – two run by D1 Oils and one each by British Sugar, Argent Energy, Greenergy, Petroplus and Earls Nook. Seven more are under construction and another seven proposed.
Greenergy, the supplier of agrofuel to Tesco and Virgin, expects to source over 150,000 tonnes per annum of UK grown rapeseed as feedstock for their plant. A thousand farmers are reportedly participating in the ‘Field to Forecourt’ contract. ‘Cargill has been appointed to manage the supply of rapeseed grown under the Field to Forecourt contract and will work alongside Frontier Agriculture, a company which it jointly owns with ABF Holdings Ltd.’
Earls Nook, formerly Biofuels Corp, is working with a cluster of agribusiness, oil and genetic engineering interests (BP, ABF and DuPont). They plan to process Malaysian palm oil – one of the worst contributors to deforestation and greenhouse gas emissions. Working with ABF, plantations in Africa may also supply their refinery. In November 2007 ABF, which owns a 51% stake in African based sugar company Illovo Sugar, announced a 70% stake and £100 million investment in a sugar mill, an ethanol plant and electricity co-generation unit in Mali. Illovo will manage a government sponsored agricultural development (plantation) supplying 1.5 million tonnes of sugar cane a year to the plant.
Argent Energy claim to use less energy intensive biofuel, from waste animal and vegetable fats. Argent Energy New Zealand signed a letter of intent with Shell New Zealand last year; Shell is looking into algae as agrofuel in Hawaii. The proposed plant will consume 20,000 hectares if algae becomes commercially viable. So far tests in the US show that only when grown near fossil fuel power plants does algae agrofuel become viable. Far from emblematic of a post-fossil fuel economy.
The EU, confronted with grain stocks at their lowest for twenty five years and spiralling food prices, has abolished regulations for farmers to set aside around ten per cent of farmland. Land left fallow is being returned to industrial agriculture – but not to wheat production . Oilseed rape cultivation has increased by twenty percent (100,000 hectares) in the UK. A nutrient hungry crop, oilseed rape requires high amounts of nitrogen fertiliser (c. 200kg per hectare). Fertliser run-off causes eutrophication – algal blooms in waterways – and Defra’s designated Nitrate Vulnerable Zones will increase in 2008 to cover 70% of England; up from 55% in 2002. Nitrogen-based fertilisers also release nitrous oxide (N2O) as they decompose in the soil. N2O is a greenhouse gas 296 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Agriculture accounts for around 7% of the UK’s emissions: 4.5% of which is nitrous oxide. Nitrogen-based fertilisers also depend on oil/gas for their manufacture. Fertiliser prices, as with natural gas, are rising. Wealthier farmers alone may benefit from lucrative crops, such as oilseed rape, which require high fertiliser inputs.
The EU agrofuel targets represent a tiny reduction in CO2 emissions – an overall cut of 80% in greenhouse gas emissions is required if runaway climate change is to be averted. Substituting 10% of transport fuel with biofuel by 2020 does not alter tailpipe emissions; ethanol also combusts to produce CO2. The biodiesel fantasy envisages a cut in emissions during production, with crops absorbing CO2 as they grow and thus balancing out that which they release in combustion. Yet, as research from Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen has shown, significant amounts of greenhouse gases are released through changes in land use, deforestation, fertiliser. The life cycle emissions from bioethanol from maize and biodiesel from oilseed rape often exceed those of fossil fuels.
The EU is scrambling to regain lost ground. Stavros Dimas, EU’s environment commissioner, has admitted that the European Biofuels Directive introduced targets without sufficient scientific and socio-ecological assessment. Refusing a moratorium on agrofuels he seeks to focus on second and third generation agrofuels (such as waste, grasses, trees and genetically engineered crops). These still require vast swathes of land, while biotech firms will find their power over markets and the world’s ecosystems significantly enhanced.