The Unintended Consequences of Biofuel

Michael Ramirez on Biofuel

News Item: An appeal to slow down on biofuel

Last Friday an advisory panel to the European Environment Agency issued an extraordinary scientific opinion: The European Union should suspend its goal of having 10 percent of transportation fuel made from biofuel by 2020.

The European Union’s biofuel targets were increased and extended from 5.75 percent by 2010 to 10 percent by 2020 just last year. Still, Europe’s well-meaning rush to biofuels, the scientists concluded, had produced a slew of harmful ripple effects – from deforestation in Southeast Asia to higher prices for grains.

Key Graphs:

• But the rush to meet biofuels targets has put our “need” to drive a car to the mall in direct competition with the need to eat in some of the poorest countries in the world.

• A global analysis performed by forestry experts at the Australian International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, a scientific study group, found that biofuels were “in conflict with the reduction of deforestation” and also had negative effects on farming intensity and food security.

• It also concluded that the rush to make biofuels from crops like corn, soy and rapeseed did not do much to reduce global greenhouse gasses anyway, producing an “ambiguous effect on greenhouse gas emissions.” This is partly because of land use changes like the clearing of forests and partly because the process of converting plants into fuel takes a lot of energy itself.

The law of unintended consequences.