Word: biofuel
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Like much of the rest of the world, Europe has invested heaps of money and even more hope in the promise of biofuels to provide secure supplies of environmentally friendly energy. But now rising food prices, trade tensions and social unrest are prompting a rethink of the E.U.'s ambitious hopes for running its cars and trucks on biofuel...
...latest call for a change of course came from economist Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who this week urged the European Parliament to scrap the E.U.'s much-touted target of increasing biofuel's share in Europe's diesel and gasoline consumption to 10% by 2020. Last year, E.U. governments spent an estimated € 3.7 billion ($5.2 billion) on subsidising biofuel production...
...only one blow in the pummeling biofuels have taken recently, not least in a TIME cover story. In April a World Bank report accused biofuel production of pushing up feedstock prices, and Jean Ziegler, the U.N. Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food, called biofuels production "a crime against humanity" because of its impact on global food prices...
...Even business has got into the act. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, head of Nestlé , the world's largest food and drink company, said the enormous biofuel subsidies being proffered by Brussels and Washington are "morally unacceptable and irresponsible." And environmental groups, which championed biofuels just a few years ago, have warned that they might even be worse than fossil fuels. "Biofuels are no green panacea," says Adrian Bebb, a spokesman for Friends of the Earth. "They can damage the climate and wreck rainforests. The public is being conned if it thinks they are a green solution...
...case, the Commission plans to tighten the criteria to ensure that biofuel production is sustainable, including a stipulation that it represent a 35% carbon saving compared to oil. Fischer Boel sets much store on the shift from first wave of biofuels (made from wheat, maize, colza, sugar beet etc) to second generation (leaves, straw and pond algae). If she's right, it could maintain the initial promise of biofuels. But as the chorus of critics grows louder, Europe's ambitious goals for filling its tanks with the fruits of the fields are looking more and more like pipedreams...