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Ethanol will destroy rainforests Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/11/nbio11.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/11/ixhome.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/11/nbio11.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/11/ixhome.html Green fuel plan 'will destroy rainforests' By Charles Clover, Environment Editor (Filed: 11/11/2005) The destruction of the world's rainforests will be hastened by a Government pledge to ensure that five per cent of fuel should come from "green" sources, conservationists said yesterday. Proposals to force oil companies to include five per cent of bio-fuels in all petrol and diesel by 2010 were announced by Alistair Darling, the Transport Secretary, in Birmingham. Mr Darling said the renewable transport fuels obligation would save around one million tons of carbon dioxide emissions - the equivalent of taking a million cars off the road. The changes will not make any difference to the performance of cars or lorries but the main controversies are likely to be political. The new obligation is likely to stimulate imports and some fuels are not very efficient at saving carbon when their life cycle is taken into account. They involve burning crops that some might say should go to relieve famines. Most biofuels come from oil seed rape and wheat, which can be mixed with petrol and diesel. In the future they are likely to come from waste and even hydrogen. The amount of fossil fuels needed to grow crops such as wheat is so great, that when fertiliser and tractor use is taken into account, experts claim that the carbon savings will be marginal. The other danger is that the new requirement will draw in more imports of bio-ethanol from Brazil, produced on land that was formerly rainforest. Roger Higman, of Friends of the Earth, said: "We live in a global market place and the worry is that some of these fuels will be imported. It could be genetically modified crops or palm oil from freshly cleared rainforests. There is also a concern that British farmers could flatten the countryside in order to grow biofuels.

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