07/07/2010 (Better Generation) - Behind closed doors, the biofuels debate has been raging. The dialogue between lobbyists, scientists and high-ranking European civil servants has been intense and their opinions often disparate. Emails, leaked letters and research reports -- released after Reuters and environmental lobbyists excised the Freedom of Information laws -- expose a huge rift in Brussels over biofuels policy, undermining Europe's ambition of using alternative fuels to wean the continent off oil. Beyond this, they raise serious questions about whether some European Commission officials have deliberately skewed the findings of scientific studies to fit their policies and show, to an alarming extent, the way in which vested interests have influenced the science behind a cornerstone of the continent's clean energy policy.

One of the mails calls the evolving science of biofuels "misleading"; another "arbitrary". In one, sent last November, a European civil servant calls an attempt to quantify the damage from biofuels "completely flawed and incomplete". Lobbyists pick holes in the evidence, using graphs, charts and tables. A worried official warns against "financial consequences" for farmers.

Most damaging for the European Commission is a leaked letter from the head of its own agriculture unit, Jean-Luc Demarty, in which he refers to mounting evidence that biofuels do serious harm to the climate. Unless handled carefully, Demarty writes, that scientific perspective could "kill biofuels in the EU".

EU member states recently submitted their plans to meet the EU's Renewable Energy Directive, which demands that 10% of transport fuel comes from renewable energy by 2020 -- 70 percent from biofuels -- thus creating a new $17 billion-a-year market.

The reality is that the life-cycle energy costs of biofuels must factor in fertilizers, herbicides and pesticides; ploughing; harvesting; drying; transport; chemical transformation etc. - all of which detract significantly from the overall energy yield. Besides, much of Europe is unlikely to meet its limits for NOx (nitrous oxides) under the EU National Emission Ceilings Directive, a problem set only to worsen as nitrogen fertilizers are pumped into this biofuel monoculture.

Pressure to meet emission targets has encouraged EU companies to acquire or request 5 million hectares of land in developing countries - an area greater than the size of Denmark. Environmentalists warn that promoting these actions might encourage farmers to rip out food crops or burn and clear forests to grow the cash-crops that could be turned into biofuels, leaving the world's poor with even less food and actually. David Barisa Ringa from ActionAid Kenya voices his concerns saying; "EU countries are only thinking about filling their fuel tanks yet over a billion people around the world cannot find enough food to fill their stomachs".

The effects of this ‘indirect land use change' -- where the burning of forests to clear that land results in vast quantities of emissions being released -- could be enough to cancel out many of the theoretical benefits the biofuels are supposed to bring in the first place. EU sources say an upcoming report will point to a one-off release of around 200 million metric tons of carbon due to land-use change from biofuels, paid back slowly as the fuels do their job over the following centuries. That one-off release is roughly the annual fossil fuel emissions of Germany.

An aerial view shows a cleared forest area under development as a palm oil plantation by palm oil companies in the Ketapang district of Indonesia's West Kalimantan province July 5, 2010. A report, published in 2008 by the EU's Joint Research Center, said that if just 2.4 percent of European biodiesel came from palm oil grown on former peatlands, the entire climate benefits of EU biodiesel would be wiped out.

One of the EU's main safeguards against the unsustainable use of biofuels are the European Commission's sustainability criteria, as outlined this June by new Energy Commissioner, Guenther Oettinger. Unfortunately, a large part of criteria remains voluntary, and the environmental effectiveness of the rest of the policy has been question.

The picture is now becoming clear, as more and more revealing documents have come to light over the past several months; people have started asking whether the EU had committed itself to biofuels before the science on them was settled. Rumours have started circulating among environmentalists and in the European Parliament, of officials meddling with research. Examples include emails released on June 18, showing how agriculture officials had been instrumental in cutting sections of the report that showed that biodiesel from soy beans could be four times more damaging to the climate than standard diesel or petrol.

Most discomforting of all was the news that a major report drawn up by the prestigious International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) -- predicted to be the final word in the debate -- was found to contain numerous errors and questionable projections. The author of the report, David Laborde, was subsequently dragged to a meeting in Brussels, where, in front of room of EU Commission officials, he claimed he was "relatively optimistic" the policy would have a "slightly positive" effect on climate change.

The use of biofuels is likely to have huge implications not just for the way we tackle climate change, but for everything from the price of land, chemicals and commodities to foreign aid. With so much at stake, is it really a goal worth pursuing? And for what -- just a measly 10-20% additive to our otherwise entirely unsustainable petrochemical counterparts? Uncertainly and misinformation have no place in a post-oil era, particularly should we wish to accurately assess fossil-fuel alternatives and make progress to the radical changes necessary to ensure environmental sustainability.