The UK government’s renewable fuels watchdog, the Renewable Fuels Agency (RFA) has published its first monthly report into UK biofuel usage.

The main conclusions of the report seem to be:

• Usage is up to 2.14% – slightly below the government’s 2.5% RTFO target
• Only 19% of fuel met ‘environmental standards’ – below the target of 30%
• 50% of biofuel came from an unknown country
• 58% of biofuel was produced on land whose previous use was unknown

Given the number of unknowns, it seems plausible that much of the biofuel we are merrily consuming is coming from the kind of rain forest-destroying, food price inflation-related sources that have got environmentalists hot under the collar.

The RFA hopes that data provision will be improved in the future and that they will soon work out how to compensate for the knock-on effects of biofuel production. These can of course include increased carbon emissions, so this could have a severe effect on the impressive 42% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions claimed in this first monthly report…

You can read the full report here.