Terry Macalister
Tuesday June 26, 2007
The major oil companies have been trumpeting their involvement in biofuels while warning that it will not be possible to meet rising world energy demand without fossil fuels well into the middle of this century.
BP will outline its expansion plans in the biofuels sector today while Shell described yesterday the work it has been doing on more “sustainable” sources such as wood chips and animal waste.
Environmentalists and human rights activists have pointed to the dangers of crops being grown for fuel in sensitive areas or competing against crops being grown for food. Shell, which claims to be the biggest marketer and distributor of biofuels in the world, appears to accept that sugar cane, palm oil and other such products cannot be sustainable in the long-term as a car fuel.
Changes next week to the tax levied on makers of biofuels in Britain could lead to an explosion of mini-producers and the development of a significant “home-brew” market, some suppliers have argued.
But Shell also warned yesterday that the world needed a “reality check” if it thought it could meet rising demand from developing countries with renewables.
Shell’s chief executive, Jeroen van der Veer, said that even with major technological breakthroughs, renewables could account for only 30% of energy supply by the middle of the century. “Contrary to public perceptions, renewable energy is not the silver bullet that will soon solve all our problems,” he wrote in a letter to the Times.
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2111330,00.html
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