Media guilty of demonising biofuels, says UK expert

Clare Wenner, head of transport biofuels at the Renewable Energy Association, says that, “it really isn’t helpful to have exaggeration in the media by people who have an agenda, rubbishing the progress that’s been made and demonising biofuels.”
Her comments follow a report published by Just-Auto.com, which forecasts that biofuels will only account for around 3% of the market for transport fuel by 2020.

Preseverance
Wenner says that quoting percentage forecast for biofuels market share risks disincentivising not only the public, but also the industry. She says regardless of what the share might be, the challenges of reducing emissions from transport fuels are too big to turn back.
“Whatever the issues with the current generation of biofuels are, we have to work through them and keep progressing. It’s only through persevering through any problems with first generation biofuels that we will ever achieve commercially and environmentally viable second generation ones,” says Wenner.

Part of the mix
Even if biofuels themselves are not the solution, she says, they need to be part of the mix, helping to produce sustainable hydrogen, for example.
“The EU agreed a 10% biofuels target at the summit last March. That will be tight. Current technologies might get us to 10%, but they won’t take us much further. By that stage, though, market momentum should be strong enough to give the private sector enough confidence that biofuels is a market worth investing in,” says Wenner.