..A must read for for every US voter and concerned citizen.. challenges the reader to explore new possibilities and new mindsets that will ultimately be required if the world is truly ready to make a change.. amazon.com US onlyThat the Commission is starting to publish its work is a welcome step. To date it has not been transparent enough. It has failed to respond to MEPs' questions about its work on indirect land-use change, allowing deadlines to lapse. It has also delayed publication of critical reports on biofuel, including a study by its own research unit in 2007-08. More recently, one independent contractor was so unhappy with how the Commission represented its work that it drafted a footnote disclaiming the conclusions on biofuel. One Commission department has argued against publishing critical studies, because they give ammunition to critics of biofuel.
Study casts doubt on benefits of growing crops for biofuels
can create more greenhouse gases than it saves.Doubts have been cast on the EU's biofuel policy in the wake of a European Commission study suggesting that growing biofuel crops may cause moregreenhouse-gas emissions than it saves.
Using biofuel in relatively small amounts can yield savings in greenhouse-gas emissions, but growing larger quantities might mean that "the environmental viability of biofuels is at risk", according to the study, which was published by Commission's trade department last week.
The EU's law on renewables of 2008 sets a target of deriving 10% of transport energy from renewable sources by 2020. Since biofuel, in its various forms, is the most immediately available source of renewable energy in the transport sector, this suggests a significant increase in biofuel use. But green campaigners are concerned that the target will drive up demand for 'unfriendly' types of biofuel.
Indirect land-use change
The Commission's trade department study explores the unintended consequences of growing biofuel crops on the use of farmland, a phenomenon known as "indirect land-use change". The benefits in reducing greenhouse gas emissions are undermined when, for example, the use of agricultural land to grow biofuel crops displaces food production onto land that was previously forest or grassland.
The study makes a striking assumption that biofuel will make up only 5.6% of the EU's road transport fuel in 2020 – significantly less than the 10% that national government leaders called for at the March 2007European Council.
Even with a 5.6% target, the researchers still expect a net carbon saving. But the study found that greenhouse-gas savings diminish as biofuel production increases. An increase in biofuel use from 4.6% to 6.6% would "increase sharply the average emissions", says the study.
Importantly, the study finds that there is no constant proportional relationship between increasing biofuel production and changing patterns in land use.
Instead, there is a tipping point: when biofuel production reaches a certain threshold, the demand for land increases more quickly. When demand for biofuel is fairly low, a farmer may turn to readily available spare land to grow biofuel crops. But as biofuel production expands, that stock of accessible land is used up, driving farmers to exploit forest or grassland.
Modest benefits
Timothy Searchinger, a professor at Princeton University, was one of the first researchers to argue that policymakers had to take indirect land-use change into account when considering whether to encourage the uptake of biofuel. His interpretation of the data in the Commission study is that beyond 4.6%, the benefits from biofuel are at best modest. "What you learn from this study is that, once you have used up the free land, the emissions either don't get savings right away or you get increases," he said.
But the Commission's trade department finds that even where as much as 9.6% of transport energy comes from biofuel, there will still be some greenhouse-gas savings, though the savings are, on average, greatly reduced.
Searchinger said that the researchers were making a mistake in mixing up the average emissions with the marginal rate in moving from 4.6% to 9.6%. "After 4.6% they are going to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, but only by a modest amount...remember, the whole theory of biofuels is not that they reduce emissions a little, but that they reduce emissions a lot."
He also criticised the assumption that spare land is always free. "Nobody else treats this land as free and I don't think it makes economic sense."
"You always need reserve land. If we needed half the food that we need today we would need to have reserve land and if we needed twice as much food for biofuels and for other reasons, we would still need reserve land. These are your buffer lands."
Others questioned the trade department's starting-point, that only 5.6% of transport energy will come from biofuel. Nuša Urbanc?ic? at Transport and Environment (T&E), a campaign group, said that the Commission had chosen to base the study on 5.6% because "at that modest level biofuels still look environmentally reasonable". T&E believes that a target of 7%-10% is more realistic.
'Unscientific' assumptions
The 5.6% figure is based on an assumption that one-fifth of all new cars sold will be electric by 2020. The 5.6% figure "underpins the concerns we have that the Commission would base [policy] on unscientific assumptions to show that biofuels are still good," Urbanc?ic? said.
The Commission said that its study "makes progress towards a better understanding of the environmental and economic effects of biofuels and contributes to the Commission's decision making process on this topic".
More openness needed about scientific data
Biofuel was once seen as the 'green gold' 
answer to climate change, but increasingly it is a problem policy for the European Union. Not only because certain types of biofuel may cause more environmental problems than they solve, but also because they have not cast a favourable light on the EU's policymaking machine.
The history of the EU's biofuel policy is one in which ambition has run ahead of the evidence.
The EU's leaders decided at a summit three years ago that the Union should get 10% of transport fuel from biofuel by 2020, as long as it came from sustainable sources. This 'sustainability' caveat was a necessary catch in the weave, but it has gradually led to a slow unravelling of the policy.
By the time the EU got around to agreeing the renewable energy directive in 2008, the stand-alone biofuel target had mutated into a goal to get 10% of EU transport fuel from renewable sources. A study published last week shows how far the Commission's thinking has moved on – an internal study from the trade department assumes that biofuel will have only a 5.6% share of road transport fuel by 2020.
The reduction in ambition comes from two concerns. First, that growing crops for fuel might compete with food production, although the evidence is mixed. Second, that policymakers neglected to count the indirect effects of biofuel on how land is used. Here, the evidence is still emerging, but suggests that biofuel cultivation has a domino effect. Expanding biofuel production in one area could lead farmers to plough up forests or grassland to grow food in another. What is known by academics as indirect land-use change has caused problems in the Commission.
The Commission has three more studies on indirect land-use change still to publish, so the study from the trade department is not the final word, but it has something useful to say about the relationship between biofuel crops and land-use patterns.
That the Commission is starting to publish its work is a welcome step. To date it has not been transparent enough. It has failed to respond to MEPs' questions about its work on indirect land-use change, allowing deadlines to lapse. It has also delayed publication of critical reports on biofuel, including a study by its own research unit in 2007-08. More recently, one independent contractor was so unhappy with how the Commission represented its work that it drafted a footnote disclaiming the conclusions on biofuel. One Commission department has argued against publishing critical studies, because they give ammunition to critics of biofuel.
A number of green campaign groups have begun legal action against the Commission for not providing documents about biofuel policy in line with a legal deadline on freedom of information. The Commission acknowledges that it has not met some deadlines, but says it is struggling to collate all the information.
It is hard to escape the impression that the Commission can be its own worst enemy. By ignoring Parliamentary questions, it has given the impression that it does not want to have an open debate about biofuel.
Commission officials face genuinely difficult problems, with evidence emerging after the policy has been set. But a reluctance to be fully open will damage the policy and the Commission's reputation. For some groups, biofuel will always be the wrong answer, just as genetically modified crops or the Common Agricultural Policy will always have enemies. But as climate- change scientists have found out, public trust is lost when evidence and data are hoarded like a weapon.
The experience reinforces the case for the Commission to have its own chief scientific adviser, an idea proposed by European Commission PresidentJosé Manuel Barroso last year and endorsed by the college of commissioners last month. An independent scientific adviser will not be a panacea for better climate policies or transparency, but promoting a more open culture in the use of scientific and policy evidence would help both those causes.
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Biofuels are a wide range of fuels which are in some way derived from biomass.
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