Biofuels for transport are developing fast and there is every reason to expect UK farmers to benefit from the surging interest in the sector, explains the NFU’s new biofuels and climate change policy advisor Jonathan Scurlock in the current issue of Crops.
There are powerful reasons why the UK needs biofuels, the main drivers being climate change and energy security. Indeed, the government's chief scientist, Sir David King, has asserted that climate change is a more serious threat to the nation than terrorism.
Former DEFRA minister David Miliband stated many times that our future energy supply needs to "decarbonise and decentralise" to tackle this problem. The NFU firmly believes agriculture is part of that solution, and is lobbying hard to ensure farmers benefit, Dr Scurlock explains.
But messages must be managed with care to ensure opportunities are not lost. In particular UK farming must show it can meet new EU renewable energy targets with UK-grown crops.
The EU's targets, agreed by heads of state in March, require member states to achieve 10% biofuel use in road transport by 2020. That is a much-needed signal which has encouraged the market to invest in processing.
The NFU has concerns that unduly strict methodologies for determinining carbon savings and sustainability may put UK-grown feedstocks at a disadvantage. Farmers can read more on the NFU web-site
Significantly, the NFU estimates that the UK has sufficient land available to meet the RTFO (Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation) target for 2010. About 5% of UK petrol supply would be provided by the bioethanol equivalent of 3m tonnes of wheat, about the same amount as we export. We also need about 5% of diesel use, which could be met by 2.7m tonnes of oilseed rape, roughly equivalent to reserves of set-aside and fallow land.
But feedstocks do not all need to come from the UK; just as the UK is 60% self-sufficient in food production, and imports where overseas producers have a clear advantage, Dr Scurlock explains. Imported feedstocks for processing and blending in Britain will have some role to play.
Transport fuels, in the form of fodder for draught horses, used to be grown extensively in Britain, and biofuels are their modern equivalent. It is down to the whole industry to ensure that farmers have the chance to recapture that market, where contract prices are right. It would be a tragedy if bioenergy development, which has so much to offer, were stymied by an absence of balanced information.