News / Battle of the biofuels as shipping takes a stand against using crops

The IMO’s Intersessional Working Group on Greenhouse Gases (ISWG-GHG 18) has become an ideological battleground, with shipping lines taking a stance against crop biofuels, one of few alternatives to fossil fuels available today.

Activist group Transport & Environment (T&E) said today some 34 million hectares – an area the size of Germany – would be needed, along with the deforestation and enormous agricultural carbon emissions associated with that, to cultivate sufficient biofuel to decarbonise shipping.

But ...