Biofuels: 'Irrational' and 'worse than fossil fuels'
The UK's "illogical" use of biofuels will cost vehicle drivers around ₤ 460 million over the next 12 months, a think tank says.
A report by Chatham House, external says the growing dependence on sustainable liquid fuels will also increase food prices.
The author states that biodiesel made from veggie oil was even worse for the climate than fossil fuels.
Under EU law, external, biofuels are set to comprise 5% of the UK's transportation fuel from today.
Since 2008, the UK has required fuel providers to add a growing proportion of sustainable products into the gas and diesel they supply. These biofuels are mainly ethanol distilled from corn and biodiesel made from rapeseed, utilized cooking oil and tallow.
Deep fried fuel
But research study carried out for Chatham House says that reaching the 5% level indicates that UK drivers will have to pay an additional ₤ 460m a year due to the fact that of the greater expense of fuel at the pump and from filling more often as biofuels have a lower energy material.
The report say that if the UK is to fulfill its commitments to EU energy targets the cost to drivers is likely to rise to ₤ 1.3 bn per annum by 2020.
"It is difficult to discover any great news," Rob Bailey, senior research fellow at Chatham House, informed BBC News.
"Biofuels increase costs and they are a really expensive method to decrease carbon emissions," he said.
The EU biofuel requireds are also having extremely distorting effects in the market. Because utilized cooking oil is considered as among the most sustainable types of biodiesel, the price for it has increased quickly. Rob Bailey says that towards completion of 2012 it was more costly than refined palm oil.
"It produces a monetary incentive to buy refined palm oil, prepare a chip in it to turn it into used cooking oil and after that sell it at profit,"
"It is crazy but the rewards exist."
There are also frets that taking EU land out of production to grow rapeseed oil in particular is developing more climate problems than it solves. The more fuel of this type that is taken into cars the bigger the deficit produced in the edible oils market. This had caused increased imports of palm oil from Indonesia, often produced on deforested land.
"Once you take into consideration these indirect impacts, biofuels made from veggie oils actually result worldwide in more emissions than you would obtain from using diesel in the very first place," stated Rob Bailey.
"Plus you are asking drivers to pay more for the fuel - it makes no sense, it is an entirely unreasonable strategy."
Biofuel benefits
The European Biodiesel Board (EBB), which represents the market, external across the EU, said it was conscious of the issues triggered by the required. But it thinks that biofuels have many positives.
"Blaming biofuels for all the difficulties in the world is a bit too overstated," said Isabelle Maurizi, job manager at the EBB.
"It has actually brought lots of advantages. It has improved the security of our diesel; it has actually decreased EU dependency on animal feed imports, thanks to the rapeseed we grow for biodiesel."
"If there was no biodiesel farmers would just make their land idle - no food, no feed!"
As the UK strikes the 5% of liquid fuels mark, the federal government deals with some hard choices on how to move on on this issue as it faces tripling the expenses for motorists by 2020.
Insiders suggest its preference would be to try and get contract in Brussels on the impacts of indirect expenses which may constrain what counts as biofuel. However getting arrangement from nations with effective farming sectors who take advantage of the present plan will be hard.
"When you have a lobby which includes the farming sector and the oil sector it is extremely difficult for Governments to make a U-turn," said Rob Bailey.
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