Biofuels

In theory biofuels appear to reduce overall carbon emissions, but in practice they are much less environmentally friendly than their boosters claim. Although growing plants absorb carbon from the atmosphere, the whole process of turning a seed into fuel is very energy-intensive. Modern farming uses large inputs of fertilisers, as well as fuel for running machinery and transport. Turning a crop into biofuel that can be used in an engine also requires a lot of energy. All of this produces additional carbon emissions and means that biofuels are often not much better for the atmosphere than the fossil fuels they seek to replace, especially as more fuel needs to be burned to travel the same distance (because they are less efficient than fossil fuels). Some biofuel crops (e.g. sugar cane) do produce much more energy than is needed to grow them, but making ethanol from maize may actually take 30% more energy than it generates as a fuel – and it is maize-based ethanol that US policy is backing so heavily.

The increased production of biofuels presents a growing environmental threat. If biofuels are to meet a significant part of our energy needs, vast areas will need to be devoted to crops such as oilseed rape, maize, sugar cane and oil palms. These monocultures are very bad for biodiversity, denying wildlife and native plants places to live. And as the crops will not be grown for human consumption, it is likely that there will be greater use of pesticides, herbicides and genetically-modified crops – all very bad for the natural environment. The greatest environmental threat will be in the developing world, where profits from biofuel production provide strong incentives to cut down the remaining rainforest areas to create sugar cane or palm oil plantations – a process which can already be seen in Brazil and Indonesia.

Attempting complete independence from other countries is impossible and undesirable – the world is now too interconnected and interdependent. Our prosperity rests upon being able to trade goods and services widely with people in other countries and attempts to retreat from this free market will impoverish us as well as them. Nor are the USA and its western allies scarily dependent upon just one source for their fossil fuel needs – new countries like Angola, Nigeria and Canada have all become major energy suppliers in the past decade. In any case, America’s demand for energy is so great that there is no possibility of achieving energy independence through biofuels. Trying to produce enough ethanol domestically would mean replacing food farming with biofuel crops – meaning the USA could no longer feed itself, and so would become heavily dependent upon food imports instead.

Using agricultural land to grow biofuel crops means that less crops are grown for human consumption (or for feeding livestock). This pushes up the price of food for everyone but especially affects the poor, both in developed countries and in the developing world. Already Mexicans have found the price of their staple tortillas has risen sharply, as American maize is diverted to subsidised biofuel plants in the Mid West. The prices of sugar and palm oil have also experienced steep increases recently. If biofuel production is promoted even more this trend will continue, contributing to increased poverty, malnutrition and suffering. Given that our energy needs can be met by fossil fuels, it seems immoral to divert our agricultural resources unnecessarily.

Biofuels will not guarantee a glorious future for farmers, either in the west or in the developing world. Oil prices have swung very widely over the past twenty years, and may well collapse again in the future, especially as investment in new production has been encouraged by recent high prices and so more oil is likely to come on stream in the next few years. Changes in the international situation could also reduce the “security premium” paid for fossil fuels since 2001. If oil prices sink back even to the (historically high) level of $50 a barrel, then biofuels will look much less economic and farmers will go bust as a result.

And agriculture in the developing world is held back by the web of tariffs and subsidies the rich world uses to support its own farmers, not by market failure. Truly freeing the market in commodities such as cotton, grain and sugar would do much more to bring prosperity to many desperately poor countries than any promise biofuels may seem to offer. After all, if the USA or the EU really wanted to promote biofuels they would reduce their high tariffs on imports of cheap Brazilian sugar-cane ethanol rather than pay their own farmers to produce biofuel from much less efficient maize or rapeseed.

Biofuels are only competitive with fossil fuels because they are heavily subsidised, especially in the USA where the farming lobby has promoted ethanol out of pure self-interest. Subsidies on biofuels at federal or state level cost American taxpayers something like $5.5 to $7.5 billion each year. More costs will come if auto makers are forced by governments to build engines which can run on higher proportions of biofuel, as these will be passed on to the consumer in the form of more expensive vehicles. Overall, all this subsidy and investment will be useless if the price of oil returns to its long-term average over the past 30 years, which will make biofuels uneconomic and ruin many farmers and industrial investors.

Biofuel technology may improve, but this is not guaranteed and it may require more use of genetic engineering than the public is willing to tolerate. Even if the industry does live up to its boosters’ optimistic promises, biofuels are still not the right focus of our energy policy. They may be a little better than fossil fuels, but they will never realistically replace them entirely, and their promotion takes attention away from more worthwhile approaches. Not only do biofuels let the auto industry continue with business much as usual, they also provide a cover for the fossil-fuel industry by prolonging the life of the oil economy. A much better approach would be to concentrate on reducing our use of energy more radically. This could be achieved through conservation measures, improved fuel efficiency standards, new types of engine, replacing much private vehicle use with public transport provision, better town planning, etc.