Shortly after news comes of the EU introducing sustainability certification for biofuels comes a report that in the USA, farmers might be about to lose the long-held and highly lucrative subsidies they receive for producing corn for ethanol production.

Over the last decade, the percentage of US corn grown for corn ethanol production has risen from 6% to 40% of the crop, raising concerns about the knock-on impact this has had on food prices, especially in the developing world.

Environmentalists have also concluded that using corn ethanol has no environmental benefits, thanks to the large amounts of energy and water that are required to convert corn into fuel-ready ethanol. Bill Freese of the Centre for Food Safety told The Guardian that:

“The research is very clear by now. Turning corn into ethanol is not environmentally sound … It’s really an environmental disaster.”

While Congress have yet to finalise whether the corn subsidies will go as part of the American government’s deficit reduction plan, it seems likely and in fact quite appropriate. Removal of the market imbalance caused by strong government support for corn ethanol should level the playing field for other potential alternative fuels, allowing those offering genuine benefits to gain more support.

However, from a European perspective, what is most interesting is the possibility that this could mark a turning point for the current policy of mandatory biofuel use in regular fuels. So far, any evidence of genuine, whole life-cycle environmental benefits is shaky at best and downright dishonest at worst.

After all, where the USA leads, others, especially the UK, tend to follow. Let’s hope in this case that some of the current half-baked, short-sighted biofuel policies that inflate food prices and don’t provide significant carbon reductions will be phased out and replaced with more meaningful and less prescriptive directives that encourage development of new ideas and reward genuine reductions in environmental impact.