Policy recommendations

  • The European Union must ensure that its Energy Policy will not harm the food security of the urban and rural poor in developing countries, whose daily survival is threatened by substantially higher food prices. It should draw up a strategy to ensure the urban and rural poor are compensated for higher food prices before installing mandatory levels of biofuels;
  • The European Union should abolish its domestic subsidies and import tariffs for biofuels, in order to allow developing countries to profit from the trade opportunities biofuels offer;
  • The European Union should draw up comprehensive sustainability criteria for biofuels, including more ambitious standards for greenhouse-gas reduction a slight decrease of emissions as compared to fossil fuels is simply not enough and the protection of biodiversity and carbon-rich ecosystems;
  • The European Commission should include social criteria in its review of the Biofuels Directive to guarantee that the rural populations who live off marginal lands and forests are not hurt by expanding agricultural production;
  • The European Union should stimulate local processing and the use of sustainable biofuels in developing countries. Small-scale farmer cooperatives should be stimulated to prevent the benefits from biofuel production from only falling into the hands of large-plantation owners.

Case: Biofuels

23-04-2008 Debate on biofuels offers food for thought

23 April 2008

While the issue of biofuels figured on all front pages of leading international newspapers, the former chapel of the Faculty School of Economics of Maastricht University offered the right atmosphere for a debate on the pro’s and cons of the wide scale production of biofuels.

Upon invitation of Maastricht Debates, PvdA Maastricht and the Evert Vermeer Foundation on the 22nd of April 2008, Mr. Mark Woldberg (Marketing manager of Nedalco) and Professor Rudy Rabbinge (Wageningen University) took up the challenge to discuss the complicated relationship between food security and biofuels. André Postema (vice-chair of Maastricht University) acted as chair person.

Postema invited the guest speakers to introduce some facts and figures on biofuels. According to Rudy Rabbinge, countries are taking refuge to biofuels for several reasons. First of all, as is the case for the United States of America, production of biofuels is stimulated to diminish dependence on fossil fuels. The reduction of CO2 emissions is another motivation. Finally, if you have the disposition of ample land for agriculture, it might seem a wise idea to use it to produce energy crops. However, all of these arguments only hold true for the case of Brasil. The production of biofuels in European countries is far less efficient and therefore seems an unwise idea since it takes far more land to grow biofuel crops than for example flowers or fodder.

Apart from this, Rabbinge also saw an (indirect) relationship between rising food prices and the increasing demand for crops to be used for the production of biofuels. Only in the case of small scale production of non-food crops such as jatropha, he believed the production of biofuels to be positive for developing countries.

Nedalco is one of the oldest Dutch industries producing alcohol by fermentation from mostly sugar crops. Still, only some 2 percent of Nedalco’s production is currently used for the production for biofuels, mainly rest products of the core production of alcohol. As Woldberg stated: ‘drink the best, drive the rest’. Given the current pace of technological development, Woldberg predicted an increase of Nedalco’s production of biofuels in the coming years.

Especially the United States are currently heavily investing in new techniques to improve the efficiency of the production of new, so-called ‘2nd generation’ biofuels. Therefore, Woldberg hailed the EU’s directive to have a 10 percent use of biofuels in 2020, since it offers industries an incentive to further invest in Research&Development of biofuels.

Regarding the nexus between food and biofuels, Woldberg disagreed with Rabbinge as well. Without disregarding the difficulties people in developing countries suffer from rising food prices, Woldberg blamed mostly speculation, a change in diet, decreasing food stocks and to a lesser extend rising fertilizer prices for the increase of food prices. According to Woldberg, only 1 percent of all agricultural land is used for biofuels. Blaming biofuels for the surge in food prices would therefore be highly unlikely.

All of these arguments sometimes seemed to dazzle the audience. They showed themselves to be very critical of the current biofuels production, but also argued a decrease of CO2 emissions should be reached by using less energy. Ample food for thought. Just one of many conclusions of the debate could be that sustainability and biofuels could very well go together, but all depends on the use of land, water and labour used to produce them.