Biofuels

As part of a vast raft of ideas to reduce carbon emissions and greenhouse gases, stop global warming and save whatever we can of the huge range of life on earth, the European Community is legally committed to ensuring that a steadily increasing proportion of petrol and diesel used in road transport is sourced from renewable sources. This will mean more electric vehicles, but most (it is anticipated) will come from plant-based bio-fuels, including soy, sugarcane, rapeseed and palm oil. The advantage of plants grown for fuel is that they are renewable year-by-year, and that each litre of green biofuel burnt will reduce carbon emissions by 35% compared with a litre of traditional fossil fuel (coal, oil).



This sounds wonderful, but inevitably problems are emerging. The fuel-crops mentioned above are mostly tropical plants, and palm oil (apparently the most efficient for biofuels) can only be grown in regions like Indonesia and south-east Asia, west Africa, Brazil and the Amazon rain forest. To grow crops for biofuels to reduce greenhouse emissions, rainforests are being cut down at a frightening rate – rainforests which soak up carbon dioxide emissions as they grow. To meet desirable emission targets in Ireland, Britain and the EU, millions of acres of pristine forest are being logged, burned and converted to palm oil plantations. In Indonesia alone an area the size of Wales is being deforested every year. The orang-utan, one of our closest relatives, has been driven to the verge of extinction in Sumatra, and the survival of many tropical species of plants, insects, animals and birds is in doubt, including species only recently discovered – and probably others that we have yet to find and study.



We are now at the stage when studies are emerging which suggest that it is better to burn oil in your car than green biofuel, because of the environmental cost of producing palm oil, which is directly causing an acceleration of the loss of rainforest habitat. Burning rainforest releases greenhouse gases and reduces Earth’s natural ability to soak up carbon dioxide. A Danish study says that it would take 75-93 years for the benefits to the climate created by switching from fossil to biofuels outweigh the terrible damage caused by converting tropical forest to palm oil plantations. Apparently it will take 840 years for a palm oil plantation to soak up the carbon emitted from trees and soil by clearing forest to plant the crop.



This is a problem of horrible complexity. What is becoming clear is that palm oil is not likely to be a magical solution, despite massive lobbying by the multi-billion dollar business. Needless to say there is also evidence of corruption, violence and trampling on the rights of indigenous peoples. Can we ask those who are experts on these issues to share their expertise and perspectives with the general public? Are there crops that could be grown for fuel in the Irish climate? Certainly our farmers seem to open to chances to diversify with traditional agriculture struggling at the moment.