‘Backsliding’ threat to green fuel future
FUTURE investment in Teesside’s emerging biofuels industry could be seriously jeopardised by a backsliding government.
That was the conclusion following a packed meeting of biofuels bosses yesterday in London, who were told that if further studies concluded that the world’s green fuels were pushing up food prices their market would effectively be frozen.
Yarm-based Ensus chief executive Alwyn Hughes, who is heading up a £300m investment said he stood by his comments that investors would question whether the market was ‘real’.
But, having heard a detailed presentation of the arguments behind the controversial Gallagher Review, published earlier this week by the Renewable Fuels Association, he remained convinced that the Ensus 1 project would deliver on its bottom line targets. “I’m still optimistic. There is something in here we can work with,” he said.
Others were more blunt. Graham Hilton of the Ultra Green Group of biofuels companies summed up the 92-page Gallagher Review, saying it could have shortened its message to the industry ... “to goodbye”.
Co-author Greg Archer said he fully understood the frustrations of the industry which had only just started to operate to the Renewable Fuels Transport Obligation that introduced a guaranteed market for biofuels in the UK in April only to find that the government “had changed the targets” by July. But he added: “That’s an inherent risk in a new industry which is justified on its environmental terms and for which new evidence will emerge for its positive and negative effects.”
Many in the audience for the hastily convened presentation at the Institution of Mechanical Engineers questioned the fundamental conclusions of the report, which recommended the government adopt land-use change as the principle measure of a biofuel’s sustainability.
Backers behind the Ensus plant at Wilton, including the farmer/processor alliance, North East Biofuels, have consistently argued that it goes way beyond any current or future definition of sustainability because it does not force a change of land-use. Rather it gives farmers a premium alternative market for their wheat, while also producing high protein animal feed as a byproduct.
Paul Temple, an advisor with the National Farmers’ Union, said the government’s decision to adopt the recommendations of the report and consider a three-year delay in ramping up its biofuels targets would put Britain’s biofuels industry on the back foot.
“The US has risen to the challenge of (biofuels) production, exporting more last year than it was using. Technology drives this and Europe is woefully lagging behind. When you go to a US city that’s putting $700m into plant genetics, I cannot see anywhere in Europe that has that incentive.”
An observer from the European Commission added that the EU, which only this week also agreed to slacken its overall target for energy from biofuels, was in danger of giving away a global lead on carbon reduction.
Review chairman Ed Gallagher said the report was “not a rule book” for biofuels policy but a framework on which the government could base future decisions.
PAGE TWO: COMMENT FROM EVENING GAZETTE BUSINESS EDITOR SUE SCOTT
