Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
feedstocks required to produce the biofuels to meet this target unless food-
crops are replaced by biofuel crops.
4
For example, the United Kingdom
could produce enough feedstocks to meet the 2 per cent target by cultivat-
ing oilseed crops in less that 1 million hectares of arable farmland, which
could be available by using part of the set-asides, part of grasslands under
i ve years old (which are considered arable land) and without replacing
a signii cant proportion of the food-crops. However, to produce enough
feedstocks to meet the target of 5.75 per cent, the United Kingdom will
require around 2 million hectares of arable farmland, which in a country
with total arable land of just 5.8 million hectares
5
(of which about 1.2
million hectares is grassland under i ve years old), is not feasible without
signii cantly altering the production of food-crops and the agricultural
landscape. The area of the set-asides is only about 0.5 million hectares, so
using part of this land will not contribute a signii cant proportion of the
total land required to produce the feedstocks. Thus, the only alternative
would be to import the biofuels and/or biofuel feedstocks from countries
outside the EU - mainly from countries like Indonesia and Malaysia (for
biodiesel) and Brazil (for bioethanol).
The EU Strategy for Biofuels (European Commission, 2006), and the
Biomass Action Plan (European Commission, 2005) call for 'supporting
developing countries' to develop internal and export markets for biofuels,
making sure minimum sustainability standards are met in their cultiva-
tion. The potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts from the
cultivation of biofuel feedstocks and the production (and consumption)
of biofuels are similar in the developing countries to in the EU. However,
increasing demand for biofuels from the EU and other developed coun-
tries is expected to not only provide opportunities for developing countries
to benei t from their production and export, but also to generate nega-
tive environmental and socioeconomic consequences, especially where
there are few laws in place to ensure sustainable production of biofuels.
Although the biofuels progress report refutes the claim that Europe's
biodiesel consumption has caused tropical deforestation in palm-oil-
producing countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia, and suggests that the
global palm oil demand is mainly driven by the food market (European
Commission, 2007b), the increasing use and demand for such oils, not only
for foods but for biofuels in the West as well as in fast-growing economies
like China and India, is likely to be responsible for tropical deforestation
both in the Brazilian Amazon and in Indonesia (Casson, 2003; Monbiot,
2004, 2005; Mortished, 2006b). Hence, even if the EU restricts its import
of biofuels and biofuel feedstocks to those produced meeting its sustain-
ability criteria, other large-scale importers such as China may not apply
similar restrictions. Unless the countries producing biofuels have in place
