EU destroys 700,000 hectares of rainforest for biofuels

To: the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the governments of the EU member countries

“Tell the EU to abandon its misguided biofuels policy now.”

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Every year, 14 million tons of so-called biofuels are blended with gasoline and diesel in the EU. This is slated to increase to 30 million tons by 2020, enough to replace ten percent of the fossil fuel share. Ever-increasing quantities of biofuels, or resources such as palm and soybean oil required for their production, are being imported from overseas. In South America, rainforests and savannas are being burned to make way for the cultivation of sugarcane for ethanol and soy monocultures for biodiesel.

In Southeast Asia, rainforests are being felled, above all for palm oil plantations. With a market share of nearly 90 percent, Malaysia and Indonesia are the two largest palm oil producers – and are also responsible for the most extensive destruction of rainforest. The horrific consequences of the EU biofuels can be seen in Malaysia and elsewhere. On Borneo, the state-owned Yayasan Sabah Group is clearing 70,000 hectares of rainforest to make room for oil palms.14 of Borneo's endangered pygmy elephants were poisoned there because they inconvenienced the plantation companies.

These plantations are certified by the “Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO)”. The palm oil they produce is thus classified as “sustainable” by the EU and can be added to biodiesel. Six million tons of palm oil, by far the cheapest vegetable oil, are flowing onto the European market annually.

The European Union accepts the cheap palm oil because it has been labeled sustainable - although deforestations can be linked directly to the production of palm oil. Biodiesel that is blended with palm oil is about 30% cheaper than the use of rapeseed oil would be.

The Finnish corporation Neste Oil and the US-based corporations ADM and Cargill have already constructed palm oil plantations in South East Asia, partly in cooperation with companies such as Wilmar and IOI. Finnish Neste Oil has even built two palm oil diesel-refineries in Singapore and Rotterdam, which are only producing biofuels for the European market. The refinery in Rotterdam has imported 400,000 tons of palm oil in 2012 for this purpose.

Raw materials for the production of EU biofuels in 2012 (total volume: 9.4 million tons):

Rapeseed oil: 5.4 million tons (57%)

Palm oil: 1.9 million tons (20%)

Soybean oil: 0.5 million tons (5%)

Sunflower oil: 0.1 million tons (1,1%)

Tallow and grease (slaughterhouse waste): 0.5 million tons (5,3%)

Recycled oils ("chip fat"): 1 million tons (10,6%)

Palm oil usage for biofuels in the EU

2006: 0.4 million tons

2012: 1.87 million tons

Increase: 365%

Source: IISD 9-2013: The EU Biofuel Policy and Palm Oil: Cutting subsidies or cutting rainforest?

To: the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the European Parliament and the governments of the EU member countries

Ladies and Gentlemen,

To my great consternation, I have learnt that the European Commission plans to uphold its policy of promoting “biofuels” – despite the fact that they not only lead to more hunger in the world, but also have catastrophic consequences for the environment and the climate. Worldwide, industrial monocultures are spreading at the expense of natural ecosystems and destroying biodiversity.
Environmentalists, human-rights activists, scientists, development experts and even international organizations such as the United Nations and the OECD have demanded for years that the EU put an end to its harmful biofuel policy.

Even the findings of scientific studies undertaken on behalf the European Commission show that biodiesel from palm, soybean and rapeseed oil causes more greenhouse gas emissions than fossil diesel fuel.

Because palm oil is so much cheaper than any other vegetable oil, exports into the European Union are increasing. Palm oil plantations are the main reason for the destrction of the rainforest, despite the labels issued by the RSPO.

Moreover, biofuel production also consumes huge quantities of water, as well as fertilizers and pesticides that pollute the environment and adversely impact human health. Even here in Europe, farmland birds are disappearing because their habitat is being lost to rapeseed monocultures.
None of these serious problems can be solved by setting a limit of five percent for biofuels derived from foodstuffs and counting the volumes from biofuels from waste and cellulose in quadruple, as the Commission is proposing now.

Please abolish the mandatory blending of biofuels and eliminate all related tax benefits, subsidies and imports immediately.

The human right to food, the preservation of biodiversity and the protection of the environment must take priority over the one-sided business interests of the biofuels industry.
Yours sincerely,