Burning biofuels may be worse than coal and oil, say experts

Using biofuels made from corn, sugar cane and soy could have a greater environmental impact than burning fossil fuels, according to experts. Although the fuels themselves emit fewer greenhouse gases, they all have higher costs in terms of biodiversity loss and destruction of farmland.

The problems of climate change and the rising cost of oil have led to a race to develop environmentally-friendly biofuels, such as palm oil or ethanol derived from corn and sugar cane. The EU has proposed that 10% of all fuel used in transport should come from biofuels by 2020 and the emerging global market is expected to be worth billions of dollars a year.


But the new fuels have attracted controversy. “Regardless of how effective sugar cane is for producing ethanol, its benefits quickly diminish if carbon-rich tropical forests are being razed to make the sugar cane fields, thereby causing vast greenhouse-gas emission increases,” Jorn Scharlemann and William Laurance, of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama, write in Science today.

“Such comparisons become even more lopsided if the full environmental benefits of tropical forests – for example, for biodiversity conservation, hydrological functioning, and soil protection – are included.”

Guardian