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VIDEO – Why are most biofuels worse for the climate than fossil fuels?

June 26, 2017

Today, biofuels are mainly made from food crops and need large areas of land to be produced. Since most agricultural land is already being used to produce food for people, new areas have to be found to meet the ever-increasing demand for food and animal feed. This leads to deforestation and draining of rich ecosystems, releasing tonnes of greenhouse gases.

This butterfly effect is called indirect land-use change (ILUC). The current EU biofuels policy doesn’t take into account these emissions.

The law was meant to reduce climate-change emissions from transport. Not only is it failing to do so, it’s actually set to increase Europe’s overall transport emissions by 1.4% in 2020 (this analysis includes the 7% cap on food-based biofuels). The cure is worse than the disease.