News / Biofuels branded a 'terrible climate solution' – higher emissions than oil

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Biofuel, and its variants including sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), bio-diesel and bio-based marine fuels such as fatty acid methyl ester (FAME), are thought to have worse final CO2 emissions than fossil fuels, according to new research by Cerulogy.

Conducted on behalf of activist group Transport & Environment (T&E), the study’s findings corroborate major concerns over the land, water and resource use of crop biofuels.

By far the largest demand for biofuels comes from aircraft SAF. Most green fuels are extremely problematic in aviation, thanks to their low energy content by volume and weight.

Aircraft consumed some 1.9 billion litres of SAF in 2024, a tiny 0.53% fraction of the sector’s overall fuel consumption, according to IATA data.

The research determines that, rather than using land area to grow biofuels, simply turning over these plots to natural forest and plant growth could, ultimately, lead to better carbon sequestration than biofuels, referred to as a “carbon opportunity cost” in the study.

Estimating that some 32m ha of land, primarily in Brazil and the US, was used for biofuel feedstock production in 2023, it determined: “… reversion of this area to forest and shrubland could provide a carbon sink of 428m tonnes CO2/year: significantly more than the 233m tonnes CO2/year that is saved (excluding land use change emissions)” by biofuels.

According to the methodology used by Cerulogy, biofuels emit 16% more CO2 emissions than the fossil fuels they replace. By 2030, it is estimated, biofuels will increase – not reduce – carbon emissions by 70m tonnes a year.

On top of this, Cerulogy determined, solar panels could power the same number of electric vehicles while using just 3% of the land.

Opinion is divided on the use of land for solar panels, particularly while roof space stands unused. But another concern not addressed in the study is soil nutrient depletion. Corn and sugarcane harvests dominate biofuel production; in the US, 30% of corn (aka maize) production is given over to biofuels. In the American Midwest, 40m ha of nutrient-rich topsoil, around one- third, is gone, research finds.

The biofuel refining and supply chain is particularly opaque. In East Asia, areas of old-growth rainforest are cleared to make room for plantations producing energy-dense palm oil, a highly efficient biofuel containing around four times the energy of the next densest, rapeseed (aka canola oil). This makes for an excellent biofuel, but critics say the benefits are entirely mitigated by the land-use changes, replacing diverse forest ecosystems with a palm monocrop.

Cerulogy expects 90% of biofuel feedstocks will be based on food and feed crops – and not the oft-touted waste, residues and by-products – by 2030.

In acknowledgement of this, the EU recently introduced ‘renewable fuels of non-biological origin’ (RFNBOs) into the regulatory lexicon, in order to distinguish green ammonia and green methanol from biofuels.

However, the production chain of green methanol, which relies on combining renewable hydrogen with a biogenic CO2 component, could also be dragged into muddy waters.

“Biofuels are a terrible climate solution and a staggering waste of land, food and millions in subsidies,” said Cian Delaney, biofuels campaigner at T&E.

“Burning crops for fuel only pushes us further in the wrong direction. Using just 3% of the land we currently use for biofuels for solar panels would produce the same amount of energy. That would leave a lot more land for food and nature restoration.

“Governments around the world must prioritise renewables over crop biofuels.”