U.K. Biofuels Sources Are Largely Unknown

In the first report since a U.K. mandate required that 2.5 percent of road transport fuel be supplied by biofuels, the independent agency charged with tracking the country’s biofuels resources, the Renewable Fuels Agency, acknowledged last week that suppliers have been unable to prove the production methods for 80 percent of the country’s biodiesel and ethanol.

[…] The mandate is part of a European Union directive for biofuels to supply 10 percent of the region’s fuel by 2020. European countries advocate biofuels as a tool to lower their greenhouse gas emissions – the region has vowed to cut emissions 20 percent by 2020. But two landmark studies published in the journal Science this year suggest that if natural habitats are converted to cropland, the carbon released through clearing the land may outweigh the carbon dioxide emissions the biofuels were meant to avoid.

The U.K. report said that nearly half of the country’s imported biodiesel in the April-to-May period was derived from soybeans. Nearly a third of this came from the United States and about 3 percent from tropical regions such as Brazil, Indonesia, and Malaysia (the rest was from Germany, Canada, and domestic sources). While all of the Malaysian biodiesel imports met the majority of the standards, only half of Indonesian imports met some of the standards, and no Brazilian suppliers could prove any compliance. The report said the county of origin was unknown for 50 percent of the imports.

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