Biofuels: 'Irrational' and 'even Worse than Fossil Fuels'

Biofuels: 'Irrational' and 'worse than fossil fuels'

The UK's "illogical" usage of biofuels will cost motorists around ₤ 460 million over the next 12 months, a think tank states.

A report by Chatham House, external states the growing reliance on sustainable liquid fuels will also increase food costs.

The author says that biodiesel made from grease was even worse for the environment than fossil fuels.

Under EU law, external, biofuels are set to comprise 5% of the UK's transport fuel from today.

Since 2008, the UK has required fuel suppliers to add a growing percentage of sustainable materials into the petrol and diesel they supply. These biofuels are generally ethanol distilled from corn and biodiesel made from rapeseed, used cooking oil and tallow.

Deep fried fuel

But research study carried out for Chatham House says that reaching the 5% level implies that UK drivers will have to pay an additional ₤ 460m a year since of the higher cost of fuel at the pump and from filling up more frequently as biofuels have a lower energy content.

The report state that if the UK is to fulfill its obligations to EU energy targets the expense to vehicle drivers is most likely to increase to ₤ 1.3 bn per annum by 2020.

"It is hard to discover any good news," Rob Bailey, senior research fellow at Chatham House, informed BBC News.

"Biofuels increase expenses and they are a really costly way to decrease carbon emissions," he stated.

The EU biofuel mandates are also having extremely distorting results in the marketplace. Because utilized cooking oil is considered among the most sustainable types of biodiesel, the price for it has increased quickly. Rob Bailey says that towards the end of 2012 it was more pricey than refined palm oil.

"It creates a monetary reward to buy refined palm oil, prepare a chip in it to turn it into utilized cooking oil and after that offer it at earnings,"

"It is crazy but the rewards exist."

There are also frets that taking EU land out of production to grow rapeseed oil in specific is creating more environment issues than it resolves. The more fuel of this type that is taken into cars the bigger the deficit developed in the edible oils market. This had actually resulted in increased imports of palm oil from Indonesia, often produced on deforested land.

"Once you take into consideration these indirect effects, biofuels made from vegetable oils in fact result worldwide in more emissions than you would get from utilizing diesel in the very first location," stated Rob Bailey.

"Plus you are asking drivers to pay more for the fuel - it makes no sense, it is a totally irrational technique."

Biofuel benefits

The European Biodiesel Board (EBB), which represents the industry, external throughout the EU, said it understood the problems triggered by the required. But it believes that biofuels have lots of positives.

"Blaming biofuels for all the difficulties worldwide is a bit too overstated," stated Isabelle Maurizi, job manager at the EBB.

"It has actually brought lots of benefits. It has enhanced the security of our diesel; it has decreased EU dependency on animal feed imports, thanks to the rapeseed we grow for biodiesel."

"If there was no biodiesel farmers would just make their land idle - no food, no feed!"

As the UK hits the 5% of liquid fuels mark, the federal government deals with some hard decisions on how to progress on this problem as it faces tripling the costs for vehicle drivers by 2020.

Insiders suggest its choice would be to attempt and get arrangement in Brussels on the effects of indirect expenses which may constrain what counts as biofuel. However getting contract from nations with powerful farming sectors who benefit from the current plan will be hard.

"When you have a lobby which consists of the farming sector and the oil sector it is very difficult for Governments to make a U-turn," said Rob Bailey.

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