The new report from the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) argues that the UK’s Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) needs a ‘post-Brexit, post-Ukraine refresh’.

When the RTFO was introduced in 2008, decarbonising fuel was seen as key to decarbonising road transport. Yet since then, zero-emissions vehicles have leapfrogged ahead – the UK is now phasing out the sale of new petrol and diesel cars and vans by 2030, the report notes.

In 2022, despite the Russian invasion and global food security concerns, Ukraine was one of the top five countries supplying corn and other feedstocks for UK biofuels. Transport and Environment has calculated that in Europe, 10,000 tonnes of wheat, the equivalent of 15mn loaves of bread, are turned into ethanol for use in cars every day; while the Green Alliance has calculated that if the UK ceased to use crop-based bioethanol, it would provide enough surplus agricultural land to feed 3.5 million people every year.

Moreover, using up agricultural land to grow crops for biofuels means more land must be found for food elsewhere, contributing to environmental degradation overseas and, as a result, the overall carbon benefits for many crops are highly questionable once the full land use change is taken into account. There is also a knock-on effect on food security and food prices, which hits the poor hardest, the report claims.

Although the government has discouraged the use of crops within the RTFO, they still play a large role, particularly in the UK’s bioethanol supply. The report suggests accelerating a move to waste-based biofuels over crop-based alternatives.

The CPS recommends:

• The government should phase out crops entirely from the RTFO as soon as practically possible. This should be by 2030, but ideally sooner.
• The UK should work with allies and partners to come to a common consensus on winding down crop-based biofuels to boost global food security, particularly in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
• The UK must ensure robust verification and monitoring of waste-based feedstocks (in particular used cooking oil) and should consider rigorous database tracking.
• The UK should revisit the main RTFO targets in light of the proposed phase-down of crop-based biofuels.

Dillon Smith, CPS Energy and Environment Researcher and author of the report, comments: ‘The UK government has taken steps to shift our biofuels away from crop feedstocks and towards waste, but we urge them to accelerate the process. With concerns around food security and inflation, as well as the wider discussion of the sustainability of biomass energy, it is difficult to reconcile the use of crops, and land used to grow them, going to biofuels instead of food. Reforming the biofuels mandate and accelerating the move to waste-based fuels will be better for the environment and allow farmers to use their land for other purposes – whether that be food crops or other environmental measures.’

Biomass debate
Meanwhile, Drax has reportedly been told by its own scientific advisers to stop calling biomass ‘carbon neutral’, raising questions about the future of the energy form when its subsidies expire in 2027.

The UK government classes bioenergy as renewable, qualifying Drax for subsidies of around £1.7mn a day for providing about 6% of the country’s electricity. However, scientists have raised questions about whether the impact of biomass really is neutral, and Drax has been told by its independent advisory board to ‘reassess its criteria for determining carbon neutrality’.

A spokesperson for Drax commented: ‘The science that underpins our approach is complicated, nuanced and evolves, and we take our responsibility to continue to develop our explanation of it very seriously.’