Growing pains: the problems and possibilities of biofuels
This recent report cautions that the production of biofuels is fuelling poverty, human rights abuses and damage to the environment. Includes case studies of communities which are growing biofuels on a small scale to supply their own energy needs.
This report reviews the evidence and concludes that biofuels are not the silver bullet for cutting carbon emissions, and offer only limited savings in certain circumstances. Large-scale production of biofuels complicates and even worsens a number of environmental and social problems (including deforestation, both legal and illegal) and offers mixed and unclear prospects for economic growth and job creation. The increasing pressure that biofuels place on land means there is a fundamental limit on the expansion of production