Biofuels not Really a Help With Climate Change?

The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has for the first time acknowledged the risks of uncontrolled biofuels development, a skepticism that has slowly emerged into the mainstream scientific community, say academics.

IPCC's Working Group II report, released this morning in Yokohama, Japan, indicates that the U.N. scientific body on climate change has loosened its 2007 position that defines biofuels as a mitigation strategy for reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The report affirms that the science that has raised questions around the sustainability of biofuels in the last six years, said Jeremy Martin, a senior scientist in the Union of Concerned Scientists' Clean Vehicles program.

"I think that's switched from being something novel and controversial to something that is common sense," he said.

A table from the report was leaked last week in which authors list the potential negative risks of development. These issues include indirect land-use change, the conflicts between land for fuels and land for food, water scarcity, loss of biodiversity and nitrogen pollution through the use of excess fertilizer.

Sixty-two countries have biofuel targets or mandates. Environmental and anti-poverty groups like Oxfam and the Environmental Working Group have long opposed biofuel mandates because the groups believe they push up prices for food. Government-backed biofuel programs allow fuel crops to compete with food crops for resources like water and land, they say.

Although Martin is conscious of biofuels' potential to compete for land and emit pollution, he does not reject them outright. He is supportive of the federal renewable fuel standard, the United States' biofuel mandate to produce 36 billion gallons per year by 2022, and has backed the expansion of E85 pumps, stations that supply 85 percent ethanol fuel.

"It would be a mistake to read this report as a repudiation or an about-face," he said. "Biofuels are not going to go away, so rather than looking for a thumbs-up/thumbs-down assessment, policymakers need to be smart about the scale and specific sources of biofuels when they make and implement policies to reduce impacts and manage risks."

link.