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In focus with Sir Bernard Ingham
STOP PRESS: THE EMPEROR HAS NO CLOTHES
The time has come to take stock. Energy policy is in a total mess. Not a single one of its five pillars remains intact with the withdrawal of the German companies, RWE and EoN, from the nuclear element.
It is reported that the new EU Renewable Energy objective involves a
10% minimum use of bio-fuels in transport by 2020. This is being
proclaimed as a benefit for the environment, but the implications for
the farmland and countryside are profound and unpleasant, because
producing fuel in this manner is so inefficient. Almost no European
politicians appear to comprehend the consequences of these gestures,
yet they can be revealed by a few simple calculations.
With oil consumption in the UK about 50 million tonnes per annum, the figure of 10% represents 5 million tonnes. For comparison, barley production in the UK between 2000-04 just over 6 million tonnes, from an average area of just over one million hectares. I.e. an average of 5.5 tonnes per hectare. Wheat and barley exports combined are typically 3 million tons per year.
If the biofuel production process is 50% efficient, only 2.5 tonnes of bio-fuel are produced per hectare. The 10% fuel contribution will therefore require a crop area of 2 million hectares - that is twice the area currently given over to cereal crops and an area of eight average English counties.
Since massive additional areas suitable for cereal growing do not exist, our varied arable farmland would have to be converted to a monoculture crop ocean like the American prairies, but even so, wheat/barley exports would have to give way to imports and the former recipients of our exports will see their food supply disappear into our petrol tanks.
How many millions will be wasted on this scheme before the physical limitations are recognised? Renewables technologies are very land-hungry. The land area of the UK is just not capable of supporting all the biofuels, biomass, organic farming and wind farms that green pressure groups insist are essential.
