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Biofuels Updated: 11 Dec 2007

Is biofuel sustainable?

Critics say producing biofuel on a mass scale isn't feasible, because land that's used for producing food will be diverted to producing fuel feedstock.

That's true of the ethanol produced in the US from corn: corn prices have risen because of the demand for ethanol feedstock and so tortilla prices have gone up in Mexico. There are other reasons for rises in corn prices - such as greater demand in China and India and poor harvests because of drought.

In Brazil, sugar-cane feedstock is easy to grow and can return eight litres of ethanol for every one litre of fuel used in producing it. They're not felling the Amazon rain forest to grow sugar cane - the rain-forest areas have the wrong climate.

Palm oil is often used to make biodiesel and this is produced in some areas where rain forest is felled. Oil produced by members of the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil is not from rain-forest areas.

Whey ethanol from New Zealand's dairy products is a start. But on its own, it can't significantly reduce our imported fuel bill. So the longer-term focus is on sustainable ways of producing biofuels, like harvesting willows planted where farm run-off contributes to lake water pollution, converting cellulose from forestry waste to ethanol and using other renewable sources such as sewage algae.

EECA says it's developing a sustainability "mark" for biofuels so consumers can identify those that are produced sustainably.