They are clean, natural and carbon neutral. And these days the delegation from Brazil at the COP15 takes the opportunity to try and convince other delegates that biofuels are a sustainable and affordable alternative to fossil fuels.
Brazil is the worlds’s largest producer and exporter of bio ethanol, a fuel made from biomass such as palm oil, corn, sugar cane, soybeans or other plants.
And according to the Inter Press Service, IPS, Brazil claims that its use of biofuels has spared the atmosphere of 800 million tonnes of CO2 so far.
What’s more – people have been able to make a living from being microdistilleries for biofuels.
But these so-called First Generation biofuels are a cure more harmful than the disease, environmentalists warn.
They are to blame for deforestation, because forests are felled to give way to farming crops for biofuels. If you have to grow a huge number of fields to provide a sufficient amount of biofuels, it harms biodiversity as well, experts
warn. And then there is the ethical question of whether it is okay to grow crops for fuel when people starve, just as the growing demand for biofuels has been blamed for the growing food prices.
The concerns over biofuels last year made the EU step back on a decision to promote the use of biofuels.
