Way back in the autumn of 2005, then Transport Secretary Alistair Darling announced new measures to make road fuels greener. The Renewable Transport Fuels Obligation, he said, would start in April 2008 and, by 2010, would require 5% of fuel sold at UK forecourts to come from renewable sources.
Last week, just three weeks before the RTFO was due to begin, pressure groups, including Oxfam and Greenpeace, ramped up their opposition, writing to the Department for Transport demanding a delay until a review of the sustainability of biofuels has been published.
Such groups have long opposed this technology, citing the impact of biofuels on food supply and prices, and concerns over habitat destruction and carbon release from ploughing virgin land. On their own, these objections are unlikely to throw the government off track at this late stage.
But things took a more serious turn when DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser, Robert Watson, had his say, calling for a delay until the results of a government inquiry into the sustainability of biofuels are known.
Prof Watson is no sensationalist. Ministers might well take note when he says biofuels policy may have run ahead of the science, and that some thinking time is needed to ensure the RTFO does not have the opposite effect to that intended.
He has a point. It’s difficult to see how the figures stack up for some biofuels; for example, those grown on virgin land in developing countries, then refined and exported halfway across the globe.
And work still needs to be done here on the most carbon-efficient ways to produce crops for biofuels. But without a commitment to RTFO, the biofuels industry could stagnate altogether. The government must not waver.
We were never going to have all the answers by RTFO’s launch date. EU and UK guidelines on sourcing biofuels from sustainable sources already exist. And the RTFO can always be amended to take account of robust certification schemes to ensure the most efficient biofuels are encouraged, without damaging the environment or harming the world’s poor.
The principle remains sound. We have to develop alternatives to fossil fuels quickly. We’ve already waited nearly two-and-a-half years for the RTFO to get off the ground. Further delays are unacceptable.