WWF: Brazil's biofuel plan is unsustainable

Brazil's president Lula recently wrote a short essay summing up the benefits of biofuels for his country (earlier post). He spoke of a new development paradigm, based on biofuels production, which not only brings energy security and environmental benefits, but social development to the many rural poor as well. Through biodiesel and ethanol, the state reduces its fossil fuel import bills (money which can be spent on poverty eradication and reducing social inequalities) and recognizes the productive capacities of the poor instead of viewing them as mere recipients of aid. Lula added that such a paradigm can be applied elsewhere in the South, notably in Africa.

Giulio Volpi of WWF-Brazil later responded to the President's vision and partly disagrees. He says the Brazilian government is promoting the use of biodiesel produced from soya beans to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, by clearing large areas of Amazonian rainforest to grow soybeans. This is too high an environmental price for this policy to be sustainable.

Volpi: Brazil's President Lula rightly recognises that one of the greatest challenges of the 21st century is reducing our dependence on climate-polluting fossil fuels, such as coal and oil. Currently Brazil's per capita greenhouse gas emissions are less than half the world's average, but this is largely due to its historic focus on energy efficiency, hydropower and sugar-based ethanol.

While President Lula said that Brazil has responded to the future energy challenge by "using clean, renewable, alternative energy sources to an ever-greater extent", Brazil seems to favour increasing fossil-fuel power generation. For example, coal, diesel oil and natural gas-fired thermoelectric plants will supply about two-thirds of the 3,200 megawatts of new electric power which was put out to bidders by the Brazilian government last December. Once built, these plants will emit over 11 million tonnes of CO2 per year - an 11% growth, which is not only bad for the global climate but also for the national economy.

Research shows that if Brazil was to implement an aggressive energy efficiency policy it could reduce the growth in power demand by as much as 40%, achieve energy savings of more than US$37bn per year, and stabilise its power-sector related CO2 emissions by 2020. This may seem radical, but in 2001, under the threat of power blackouts, Brazilians slashed electricity demand by 20% in a couple of months, without reducing their quality of life:
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President Lula said biofuel "is significantly less polluting than conventional petroleum-based diesel". But Brazil is set to produce most of its biodiesel from soya beans, which have virtually no advantage over conventional fuels in terms of overall greenhouse gas emissions, let alone the millions of hectares of tropical forest that have been cleared for large-scale soya plantations.

Automatically classifying biofuels as renewable energy regardless of how they are produced is dangerous. We cannot afford to address climate change while creating another environmental problem, deforestation - itself the source of 80% of carbon emissions in Brazil. The world must promote only those biofuels which offer the greatest environmental benefit, such as sustainably produced forest and wood products in temperate countries, and sugar-based bioethanol in tropical ones.

A mandatory eco-certification scheme for biofuels must be established, applying to all biofuels regardless of where they are produced. This system must be based on environmental and social criteria, and be easy to apply and flexible enough to meet local conditions.

Lula says that through investment in ethanol and biodiesel, Brazil is determined to "plant the oil of the future". But for biofuels to play a key role in a new carbon-free energy future, policy makers - both in the North and South - must ensure that biofuels are produced in an environmentally and socially friendly way. In Portuguese we have an expression which sums this up: Biocombustíveis sim, mas não de qualquer jeito! This means: yes to development but not to any development, yes to biofuels but not to any biofuels!

The Guardian: Soya is not the solution to climate change