The RSPB is criticised today on the website of Farming Today following interviews of both RSPB and BirdLife experts on programme features dealing with food prices, biofuels and set-aside. We stand by our comments because we believe that biofuels, though by no means all bad, are currently not up to the job of helping tackle climate change.
The production of some biofuels could be increasing not cutting greenhouse gas emissions – because of the emissions produced when land is logged, ploughed up or drained, and those from the use of fertilisers on energy crops.
The Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation which comes into force next month will not solve these or other environmental problems. Even minimum safeguards guaranteeing sustainability and emissions cuts are excluded until 2010 and 2011 so there will be no proof that the biofuel we buy from next month is genuinely green, or that it isn't doing environmental and social harm.
And even the UK government has admitted that proposed carbon and sustainability standards, whether compulsory or voluntary, will not prevent biofuels policies harming the climate, vulnerable communities or the wider environment, through displacement of food production or via price rises in world commodity markets.
Future biofuels could and should help tackle climate change but British-produced biofuels could be no better than those produced and imported from abroad because manufacturers will have no obligation to prove their fuel is green.
Read comments and listen again to Farming Today here
More on the RSPB’s biofuels campaign here