International Energy Forum calls for urgent review of biofuel policies

4 March 2010

An urgent review of global biofuel policies is needed, with current targets over ambitious or unsustainable, according to a report by the International Energy Forum.

The report, titled Biofuels: Potential and Limitations, said there is potential for biofuels to contribute usefully to energy security and climate protection, but is critical of first generation biofuels.

‘Within the first generation of biofuels, there is a clear consensus that only one is acceptable…this is ethanol produced from sugarcane in Brazil,’ it said.

The authors of the report, Claude Mandil, former executive director of the International Energy Agency and Adnan Shihab-Eldin, former acting secretary general of OPEC, said first generation biofuels and most seriously those that use corn as feedstock, offer only marginal benefits to energy security and greenhouse gas mitigation.

‘There is an urgent need to review existing biofuels policies…to protect the poor and safeguard against food insecurity,’ the report said.

Mandil and Shihab-Eldin said they see potential in second generation technologies but warn that the commercial realisation of these methods may be decades away.

The report also calls for a standardisation of life cycle assessments to aid in the analysis of biofuel development globally.

‘Most of the initially established biofuel production targets, which remain generally applicable, are either too ambitious or unsustainable over the long term,’ it said.

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Tags: biofuels

This story was published on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 1:01 pm and is filed under Asia, Australasia, Europe, Latin America, North America, biomass/biofuel, policy. You can follow any responses to article entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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