The study called ’Anticipated Indirect Land Use Change Associated with Expanded Use of Biofuels in the EU: An Analysis of Member State Performance’ was conducted by researcher Catherine Bowyer, and was part of the work carried out by the Institute for European Environmental Policy (IEEP).

10% of the fuel used in the bloc will be crop-based by 2020, according to the EU plans. They justify the decision saying that this would reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.

However, the study says the EU should review its decision, since increasing the use of agrofuels in this percentage would imply using 69,000 square kilometers of land for agrofuel production, by destroying natural ecosystems and allocating lands that currently provide food to low income people, to feed European cars.

The report also shows that this change in land use will not reduce emissions, quite on the contary, it will increase them in a high percentage.

For this reason it claims that the use of agrofuels cannot be considered part of a reduction policy of climate change.

Five European countries will be responsible for over two thirds of the increase in the emissions as a result of their increasing use of agrofuels: France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK.

Adrian Bebb from Friends of the Earth Europe said: “The scale of the damage that European countries will cause with their biofuels plans is now clear - forests and nature will be destroyed on a shocking scale to fuel our cars”.

“The resulting release of climate-damaging greenhouse gases will make biofuels a worse polluter than fossil fuels. The EU needs to urgently review the sustainability of using biofuels and ensure their use does not lead to more climate change or environmental destruction.”

Photo: http://www.pachakuti.org/