UK Green Party local government leader says “biofuels route is a dead end”

In England, Dr. Andrew Boswell, a Green Party councilor in England, said that “the biofuels route is a dead end,” and predicted massive damage to the environment and social unrest in tropical countries if biofuels were pursued. Boswell has produced a study which, according to Business Week, said that “vast swathes of forest have been felled and burned in Argentina and elsewhere for soya plantations” The study pointed to the release of CO2 from peat bogs and rainforests that have been converted to agricultural use.

Global Green Party policy on biofuels remains inconsistent.

In Australia, a member of the Green Party in the New South Wales parliament said the Greens support alternative energy but not the alternative energy plant at Casino. He said that the use of 200,000 tonnes of grains was excessive use of a scarce resource.

Last last year, a $30 million biodiesel plant in Port Botany, Australia was opposed by the Australian Green Party for proposing the use of Indonesian and Malaysian palm oil.

By contrast, a 10 percent ethanol blend went on sale in New Zealand last August, prompting strong public support from the Green Party, even when the Director of New Zealand’s Advanced Energy and Material Systems Lab called biofuels a “waste of time and money”.

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