Palm oil has not been mixed with biofuel in this country since January 1st. Federal Environment Minister Steffi Lemke (Greens) now also wants to force agrofuels made from soya, corn, rapeseed, sugar cane, sugar beets and wheat out of the market. The argument: Intensive agriculture causes land use and loss of biodiversity.
This means that Federal Transport Minister Volker Wissing (FDP) has one less option to achieve his climate goals. So far, biofuel has been “the most important means of reducing CO₂ emissions in traffic”, writes the mirrorand asks rhetorically: “Does the good goal of climate protection fail because of the perfect claim of ecological, sustainable interaction with nature?”
The debate sounds familiar, for example from wind power: How many dead birds is one megawatt hour of wind power worth to us? Or more generally: What collateral damage are we responsible for avoiding x tons of CO2 ready to accept? Such a debate is necessary and must be held.
Does biofuel actually do anything for the climate?
In the case of biofuels, however, the situation is different. The debate here is not about weighing benefits against disadvantages. It’s about whether biofuel is of any use to the climate at all.
Gregor Honsel has been a TR editor since 2006. He believes that many complex problems have simple, easy-to-understand, but wrong solutions.
It is true that figures are repeatedly rumored that the use of agrofuels would have so many tons of CO2 avoided. But these numbers are on shaky ground. You are ignoring two factors. First, the “indirect change in land use”: Even if no rain forest is directly cleared for energy crops, these may displace the cultivation of food, for which valuable forest is then destroyed. This effect has been known for a long time, but to date it has not been possible to put a serious figure on it. However, the climate balance stands or falls with this.
Second, the “opportunity cost”: Every decision to use a particular resource for a particular purpose must consider whether that resource could not be used for a much more useful purpose. Applied to biofuel, this means: Wouldn’t it make more sense for the climate to renaturate one hectare of arable land and use CO2-Using the sink than growing energy crops on it? Researchers at the Heidelberg IFEU Institute have examined this question and answered it in the affirmative.
However, if there is reasonable doubt that biofuel contributes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions at all, then the debate about what disadvantages one is willing to accept for this becomes superfluous. Unless you resign yourself to the fact that the drop is only on paper.
(grh)
