CCC conference

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Agro/Biofuels- a climate disaster in the making
Biofuelwatch working withGlobal Forest
Coalition, Global Justice Ecology Project, Grupo
de Reflexion Rural (Argentina), FERN, Watch
Indonesia, Rettet den Regenwald e.V., Econexus,
Munlochy Vigil, and Noah (Friends of the Earth
Denmark), Corporate Europe Observatory, and Gaia
Foundation and World Rainforest
Movementintroduced by Dr Andrew Boswell,
biofuelwatch and UK Green Party councillor
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Summary

• US / EU Policy WHY?
• Voices from the South
• Food, social, land disruption
• Neo-colonial agenda
• Do Agrofuels save or create more emissions?
• 2nd generation
• Food security
• The climate context

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Exponential Growth
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US / EU Policy going off the graph
EU 10 by 2020 (1 now)
US 20 by 2020 (4 now)
2010
2020
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Mega-scale Agrofuel drivers

• Government and corporate subsidy and promotion
• Fits Business as usual policies and paradigms
• Year-on-year economic growth
• Avoid unpopular demand reduction politics
• Short term energy security fix
• Less pressure on Oil hotspots Mid-East/Iraq
• Stabilising Oil price?
• EU / US Oil independence
• New global mega-industry
• agribusiness, biotech, and chemical sectors
• refining, tankage and shipping sectors
• commodity markets (eg Palm Oil, sugar)

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Massive land-use change in global South, and
crop commodity traffic
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• Step change in agriculture and global biosphere
  use
• Limited (or No) environmental and scientific
  scrutiny

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• Hundreds of NGOs in Latin America, Asia and
  Africa have spoken out against large-scale
  biofuel monocultures.

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from a declaration by Latin American NGOs

• We want food sovereignty, not biofuelsWhile
  Europeans maintain their lifestyle based on
  automobile culture, the population of Southern
  countries will have less and less land for food
  crops and will loose its food sovereigntyWe are
  therefore appealing to the governments and people
  of the European Union countries to seek solutions
  that do not worsen the already dramatic social
  and environmental situation of the peoples of
  Latin America, Asia and Africa.  

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Sawit Watch, Indonesian NGO

• Palm oil for biofuels increases social conflicts
  and undermines land reform in IndonesiaIt is
  unavoidable that, as a consequence of Europe's
  biofuels policy, the land rights of indigenous
  peoples and local communities will be
  relinquished further, and that food security will
  be undermined and lands for agricultural purposes
  and subsistence livelihoods will diminish.

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Environmental Rights Action/Friends of the Earth
Nigeria

• It is a push by industry to make another
  scramble for Africa, grab the land and continue
  with business as usual. The industrial
  bio-energy push to do increased bio-energy demand
  will be nothing other than an effort at extending
  the frontiers of neo-colonialism in its continued
  march on the back of the fabled market forces

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Landless Movement of Brazil (MST)

• We can't call this a bio-fuels program. We
  certainly can't call it a bio-diesel program.
  Such phrases use the prefix bio- to subtly
  imply that the energy in question comes from
  life in general. This is illegitimate and
  manipulative. We need to find a term in every
  language that describes the situation more
  accurately, a term like agro-fuel. This term
  refers specifically to energy created from plant
  products grown through agriculture.

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Biofuel Refugees

• U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues
  recently highlighted biofuels
• 5 million people at risk in West Kalimantan,
  Indonesia
• 60 million worldwide
• Pushed off land, culture destroyed, refugees go
  to big city slums
• 'The speed with which this is happening we don't
  really realize in our part of the world because
  the technology we have today and the economic
  resources that are at stake are so big, it
  happens overnight. Ida Nicolaisen, UNPFII

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Emission trickery
Exporting emissions from Northern transport to
Southern agriculture and landuse
NB Soil Peat not included
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Do Agrofuels save emissions?

• What is the whole life-cycle?
• Built on Fossil Fuels
• Intensive agriculture fossil fuel based
  fertilisers, farm equipment, Nitrous oxide
  emissions (300 CO2), soil carbon emissions
• Feedstock transport, shipping
• Refining (coal, gas fired plants!) process
  chemicals
• Lifecycle studies dont scale up

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Savings in isolation?

• Corn Ethanol 13 savings Berkeley 2006 study
• Patzek actually 50-100 more CO2 for ethanol
  than for fossil fuels
• Deforestation biodiesel
• Peat drainage long term timebomb
• 2-8 times as much CO2 biodiesel cf fossil

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Peat Destruction 1

• Drainage the dry peat - oxidises and emits
  carbon dioxide.
• Very rapidly in the tropics, and is often
  accelerated by wildfires.
• Peat fires in South-east Asia can burn millions
  of hectares in one dry season and can last for
  weeks, sometimes even months, burning thick
  layers of peat and covering the region in thick
  smoke.
• Of the 21 million hectares of peatland in
  Indonesia 9 million hectares are drained and are
  decomposing or even burning.

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Peat Destruction 2

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Any Savings are diluted at system level

• THE DILUTION FACTOR - 1 biofuels today
• Assume 10 C emissions savings litre for litre
• Total saving 0.1 saving globally
• Most optimistic 2020 5 BFs 0.5 savings
• Same savings can be made by
• Each driver driving 0.5 less (ie 50 miles for UK
  driver)
• Each driver goes 2 mph slower
• Tyres inflated properly
• gt20 transport sector savings can be achieved in
  10-20 years
• Sustainable transport, modal shift, social
  planning - work-home relocation etc

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What about second generation?

• Ligno-cellulosic
• Use stalks and other plant parts
• Plus massive GM tech
• Cf First generation simple chemistry

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Extra Energy Steps (1)
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Extra Energy Steps (2)

• Break down lignin

• 500,000,000 years evolution
• Biological splitting atom?
• Plants protective structure

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Full spectrum GM

• GM is being developed
• For plants
• Weakened lignin (floppy trees)
• Processing
• GM enzymes, yeasts, fungi
• Synthetic Biology
• Biohazards on unprecedented level

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The deep cuts we really need
160 140 120 100 80 60 40 20
UK emissions
2010 Govt. target 20 reduction
The GAP which must be closed
2050 Govt. target 60 reduction
---- Government target ____ Friends of the
Earth Big Ask 3 annually ____ George Monbiot
near linear gt4 (90 by 2030) ____ George
Monbiot 7 front-loaded (90 by 2030) ____
George Monbiot 10 front-loaded (90 by 2030)
1990 2000 2010
2020
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• 2nd generation cant deliver deep cuts to
  transport emissions. Even if it could, they
  would not be soon enough

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Food security

• The US case
• Direct food / fuel competition
• World grain reserves lowest in 30 years - 14mt
  used to fuel US cars in 2006.
• 60 rise in grain price in 2006 - Speculators
  entering market
• Jan 2007 Mexican food protests
• Diversion of US corn to ethanol
• Global South
• Cash crops /Exports vs. local food supply

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The Climate Context

• 1st generation biofuels
• Very little climate benefit
• Often a climate disaster
• Eg Indonesian peat lands
• Deforestation tropics
• Yet being delivered massively before
• 2nd generation biofuels
• 15-20 years to develop
• BUT emissions must be cut now
• Biohazards (even now in RD)
• Deforestation boreal and temporate
• ? ? Transport sector DEMAND REDUCTION

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What you can do

• Show solidarity with communities in the global
  South
• Sign up to the biofuelwatch yahoo group - send a
  blank email to biofuelwatch-subscribe_at_yahoogroups.
  com
• www.biofuelwatch.org.uk ALERTS and RESOURCES
• UK government consultation on RTFO
• sign a petition to Tony Blair
• write to Tesco
• Ugandas Mabira rainforest - sugar cane
  plantations
• Email us at info_at_biofuelwatch.org.uk if you would
  like to get more involved in the campaign.