cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/6822279

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/9311

Despite their positioning as a green alternative, experts warn biofuels expansion could have catastrophic consequences.

First the plant stalk is harvested, shredded, and crushed. The extracted juice is then combined with bacteria and yeast in large bioreactors, where the sugars are metabolized and converted into ethanol and carbon dioxide. From there, the liquid is typically distilled to maximize ethanol concentration, before it is blended with gasoline.

You know the final products as biofuels — mostly made from food crops like sugarcane and corn, and endorsed by everyone from agricultural lobbyists to activists and billionaires. Biofuels were developed decades ago to be cheaper, greener alternatives to planet-polluting petrol. As adoption has expanded — now to the point of a pro-biofuel agenda being pushed this week at COP30 in Belém, Brazil — their environmental and food accessibility footprint has remained a source of fierce debate.

The governments of Brazil, Italy, Japan, and India are spearheading a new pledge calling for the rapid global expansion of biofuels as a commitment to decarbonizing transportation energy.

Though the text of the pledge itself is vague, as most COP pledges tend to be, the target embedded in an accompanying International Energy Agency report is clear: expand the global use of so-called sustainable fuels from 2024 levels by at least four times, so that by 2035, sustainable fuels cover 10 percent of all global road transport demand, 15 percent of aviation demand, and 35 percent of shipping fuel demand. By Friday, the last official day of COP30, at least 23 countries have joined the pledge — while Brazilian delegates have been working “hand in hand with industry groups” to get language backing biofuels into the final summit deal.

An analysis by a clean transport advocacy organization published last month found that, because of the indirect impacts to farming and land use, biofuels are responsible globally for 16 percent more CO2 emissions than the planet-polluting fossil fuels they replace. In fact, the report surmises that by 2030, biofuel crops could require land equivalent to the size of France. More than 40 million hectares of Earth’s cropland is already devoted to biofuel feedstocks, an area roughly the size of Paraguay. The EU Deforestation-Free Regulation, or EUDR, cites soybeans among the commodities driving deforestation worldwide.

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