Commentary Biofuels


Fuel for thought


Legislation has put the UK ahead of the curve in pushing forward the sustainable business agenda. And, says Dr Keeley Bignal, in the biofuels industry it’s lead to accountability and significant turnover too


ot all biofuels were born equal. There are those with impeccable credentials that yield significant carbon savings, bring social and economic growth to the com- munities that produce them and do little or no harm to the wider environment.


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And there are those with the less enviable reputation that have tended to grab the head- lines in the past; those that lead to deforesta- tion, biodiversity loss, poor labour conditions for the workforce and a net increase in green- house gas emissions – those that are, in short, worse for the environment than fossil fuels. Against this backdrop, the Government implemented its Renewable Transport Fuels Order (RTFO) to tap into the carbon savings that could be delivered while taking steps to encourage the use of the ‘good’ biofuel in the UK – that which met sustainability criteria. It was a trail-blazing piece of law making, the first of its kind anywhere. And while the rest of the world has been playing catch up, the Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) has been administering the Order and learning lessons about sustainability that could be valuable to any organisation with complex supply chains. A CSR professional looking to address the impacts of the procurement choices being made by their organisation might benefit


26 | Sustainable Business | October 2010


from looking at how the biofuel industry has evolved and adapted to investigate, monitor and report on its impact.


To put things in context, it’s worth looking at the structure of the RTFO. In a nutshell, it puts an obligation on large oil companies to supply a certain amount of their road fuel as biofuel. This is set at 3.5% of their total road fuel with the legislation including mechanisms to see incremental increases up to 5% by 2014. These rules apply to those importing or refin- ing more than 450,000 litres of petrol or diesel each year – the big players.


Almost 1.6B litres of biofuels were reported, accounting for 3.33% of the total of the UK’s road transport fuel


These obligated suppliers must also report on the carbon savings of their fuel, data cap- ture to ensure the fuels can be tracked back to source and whether or not the feedstocks were grown according to the criteria laid down by one of a number of recognised environmental standards. These standards are benchmarked against the RTFO ‘meta-standard’ and must match a minimum number of its criteria


before they are given approval. Suppliers can also choose to use this meta standard itself, rather than use those administered by third parties, and it is encouraging to see that two major players – Shell and Greenergy – have begun to do this for some of their feedstock. Although they are duty bound to report their performance against these criteria, hit- ting the targets set out by the order is volun- tary. And as with any voluntary scheme, there are those companies that choose to embrace it and those who demonstrate less enthusiasm. But voluntary does not mean toothless. Such schemes can, and do, work – still with- in the sustainability arena, for example, the Corthauld Commitment saw retailers agreeing to address packaging waste while the Carbon Disclosure Project seems able to persuade an ever-growing number of companies to report on their greenhouse gas emissions. So how is the RFA making progress in this area? This July we reported provisionally on the volumes and sustainability of biofuel sup- plied to the UK in the second full year of the RTFO. Almost 1.6B litres of biofuels were reported, accounting for 3.33% of the total of the UK’s road transport fuel, exceeding the Government’s target of 3.25%. This has resulted in carbon savings of 51% compared


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