A new government study from the National Centre for Biorenewable Energy, Fuels and Materials (NNFCC) has posited that the UK needs significant investment in a new generation of biofuels to meet its renewable transport targets.

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New technologies – like gasification and pyrolysis – allow biofuels to be made from a wide range of sustainable materials, including household rubbish and energy crops. Until recently these technologies were confined to laboratories but the NNFCC report claims scientists are beginning to unlock their huge potential.

Dr Jeremy Tomkinson, Chief Executive of the NNFCC, commented on the report’s release, “Electric cars offer a sound long-term solution to our renewable road transport needs, but biofuels are currently the best way to decrease our carbon emissions from transport.”

“The UK has ambitious carbon reduction plans and this report highlights the necessity for increased investment in advanced biofuels, which could meet almost half of our renewable transport needs by the end of the decade.”

According to government targets, by 2020, 10 per cent of the energy used in UK road and rail transport must come from renewable sources; advocates claim this would be the equivalent of replacing 4.3 million tonnes of fossil oil each year.

Currently, most renewable fuel comes from vegetable oils. However, limited availability and competing demands for sustainable vegetable oils, which has led to criticism that biofuels are produced at the expense of food production and cause rises in food prices, mean conventional biofuels are likely to produce just 3.7 to 6.6 per cent of the energy needed in road and rail transport by 2020, according to NNFCC.

The NNFCC report therefore concludes there is a real need to use sustainable feed stocks, which are not in competition with food industries, to produce biofuels. The centre suggests advanced biofuels could meet up to 4.3 per cent of the UK’s renewable transport fuel target by 2020. This would require around 1 million tonnes of woody biomass and 4.4 million tonnes of household, commercial and industrial wastes, but would still require 2 million tonnes of wheat (butanol)

Nevertheless, criticism from environmentalists persists; critics maintain that focus on biofuel has resulted in land grabs, as the rapidly emerging new industry has seen peatlands drained and forests cut down in order to grow crops. Critics state that using crops which could otherwise feed people and land which could be used for growing food is unacceptable, given problems of food security a growing global population would bring.

According to the Earth Policy Institute, “the grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol will feed one person for a year.”