{"id":158,"date":"2008-06-05T18:39:02","date_gmt":"2008-06-05T17:39:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=158"},"modified":"2008-06-05T18:40:27","modified_gmt":"2008-06-05T17:40:27","slug":"charities-weigh-in-to-biofuels-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/158","title":{"rendered":"Charities Weigh In To Biofuels Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A leading charity has joined the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/124\" target=\"_self\">calls<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/93\" target=\"_self\">top scientists<\/a> for compulsory EU biofuel targets to be reconsidered.<\/p>\n<p>Barbara Stocking, CEO of Oxfam GB said that &#8220;Recent estimates suggest that increased demand for biofuels accounts for 30% of recent food price rises, while mounting scientific evidence shows biofuels are having an overall negative impact on climate change.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The UK government has already promised to review their target of making 5% of transport fuels biofuel within two years. However, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/137\" target=\"_self\">EU has continued discussing even more ambitious targets<\/a> &#8211; despite the widespread evidence that the carbon footprint of biofuels can be larger than that of fossil fuels.<\/p>\n<p>Stocking said that &#8220;the urgent review of compulsory biofuels targets in rich countries to stop their inflationary impact&#8221; was &#8220;a priority&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been writing articles on the unwanted side effects of increased biofuel use for some months now and over that time the case has only got stronger. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.renewableenergyworld.com\/rea\/news\/reinsider\/story?id=50616\" target=\"_blank\">Environmentalists<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.oxfam.org.uk\/resources\/policy\/conflict_disasters\/bn_time_is_now.html\" target=\"_blank\">poverty campaigners<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.guardian.co.uk\/environment\/2008\/mar\/25\/biofuels.energy1\" target=\"_blank\">scientists<\/a> all agree that we need to take a step back and look at the bigger impact of biofuels.<\/p>\n<p>So what does the EU do? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/137\" target=\"_self\">Plough onwards with plans to make increased use of biofuels compulsory<\/a>&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A leading charity has joined the calls by top scientists for compulsory EU biofuel targets to be reconsidered.<\/p>\n<p>Barbara Stocking, CEO of Oxfam GB said that &#8220;Recent estimates suggest that increased demand for biofuels accounts for 30% of recent food price rises,&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[139],"tags":[1958,141,223,202,226,225,142],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}