Biofuels: ethical issues

Apr 2011

Biofuels are not a new technology. Rudolf Diesel ran an engine on peanut oil at the World‘s Fair in Paris in 1900, and liquid fuels made from sources such as food crops have been researched for more than a century. For most of that time, interest in biofuels was confined to rather specialist research projects, largely unnoticed by members of the public (with the exception of Brazil). However, towards the end of the 20th century, a number of challenges to the modern way of life combined to bring biofuels to national and international attention. Increasing worries over energy security in the face of growing demand, dwindling supplies of oil, and international conflicts and wars drove countries dependent on energy imports to look for alternative, home-grown sources. Interest in biofuels further intensified with the search for new opportunities for economic development, especially in agriculture. This was particularly relevant in emerging economies such as India and China; however, creating new jobs and a new industry are also attractive prospects in the developed world, where many established sectors such as agriculture and manufacturing are increasingly precarious. And, most recently, the growing awareness of the dangers of global climate change reinforced the challenge to find alternatives to fossil fuels as the dominant form of energy.
However, important problems with their large-scale production began to emerge. The claims that biofuels produce significantly lower GHG emissions compared with fossil fuels were contested. Concerns were also raised over the competition that biofuels pose to food production, and their consequent effects on food security and food prices. Moreover, many worried about infringements of the rights of farmers, farm workers and land holders, particularly in vulnerable populations in the developing world. There were also reports of severe environmental consequences, including pollution and the loss of biodiversity, for example through the destruction of rainforest, following large-scale biofuels production. In addition to possible direct land use change (dLUC), biofuels
were implicated in the ‗knock-on effect‘ of indirect land use change (iLUC), where the displacement of other activities also led to deforestation and depletion of scarce water resources.
At present, it is almost impossible to predict exactly whether a technology will emerge as a successful biofuels pathway that avoids causing harmful consequences. What can be said with confidence is that the lessons learned from the problems of established biofuels must be integral in the development of new ones in order not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Meanwhile, it is clear that established biofuels will continue to play a role while new products emerge, but mechanisms to mitigate their negative effects are imperative.
This report seeks to provide a framework of evaluation on the basis of which more ethical production of current biofuels and the emerging biofuels production systems can be established. In Chapters 4, 5 and 6, it offers such an ethical framework and use it to point out where current policy can be improved. It also makes recommendations regarding the direction of future policy development. While taking a necessarily global perspective, it applies a specific focus in many instances to the EU, and particularly to the UK.

By: Nuffield Council on Bioethics

 
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