Biofuel sham could worsen global hunger and inequality

Another major source of greenhouse gas emissions is poised to use biofuels to “decarbonize.” The shipping industry has now joined the auto and aviation industries in viewing this “cleaner” alternative to fossil fuels as a means of reducing its emissions, without meaningfully changing its activities. But the benefits of biofuels have often been overstated and their costs underestimated.

International shipping uses more than 300 million tonnes of fossil fuels annually — some 5 percent of global oil production. The industry is responsible for 3 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions — above the level of industrial powerhouses like Germany or Japan.

The UN’s maritime regulator, the International Maritime Organization, is seeking to change this. In 2023, the organization committed to target a 20 percent reduction in shipping emissions (striving for 30 percent) by 2030 and a 70 percent reduction (striving for 80 percent) by 2040. Since then, it has been working with its 176 member states to negotiate a set of measures that would advance these objectives and bring shipping emissions “close to zero” by 2050.

But the April 2025 deadline for a final framework is looming and last month’s negotiations in London produced limited progress. As Constance Dijkstra, of the advocacy group Transport & Environment, noted: “We still do not know how much ships will be expected to reduce their emissions and which fuels and technologies will count as green.” The answers to those questions — including whether biofuels are embraced or rejected — will be the difference between important progress and environmental disaster.

The effects of indirect land-use change would negate any emissions savings from switching away from fossil fuels

Jennifer Clapp and Olivier De Schutter

As matters stand, the International Maritime Organization will implement a “global fuel standard,” which would require ships to use lower-emission fuels during the transition to zero-emission alternatives. Some members — notably Brazil — say that biofuels should be central to this initiative. Brazil, a major producer of crop-based biofuels, would profit handsomely from such an approach. But there is nothing sustainable about it.

One recent study projected that, if included in the International Maritime Organization’s global fuel standard, biofuels could power up to 36 percent of global shipping activity by 2030, 59 percent by 2035 and 76 percent by 2040. Since waste-based biofuels would be able to cover only a small percentage of demand from the shipping sector, production of crop-based biofuels, made from palm oil, soy and maize, would have to increase substantially.

Cultivating these crops would require vast amounts of land — about 35 million additional hectares, equivalent to the land area of Germany or Zimbabwe, by 2030, according to the same study. That could mean razing forested land and thus removing the stores of carbon located there. It could also mean diverting land from food and feed production, though in practice this would likely necessitate the expansion of agricultural land to compensate.

The effects of such indirect land-use change would negate any emissions savings from switching away from fossil fuels. Moreover, as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN has warned, using farmland to fuel ships, rather than to feed people, will drive up food prices and make it harder for vulnerable populations to access sufficient nutrition at a time when hunger and malnutrition are already on the rise. According to the World Bank, a mere 1 percent increase in global food prices could push a whopping 10 million people into extreme poverty.

The economic benefits of biofuel production are disproportionately captured by large-scale agribusinesses

Jennifer Clapp and Olivier De Schutter

Making matters worse, the kind of large-scale monocropping typical of biofuel production uses huge amounts of water and polluting fertilizers. The resulting environmental degradation threatens future food production, meaning that even the “temporary” embrace of biofuels as a transition fuel would lead to greater food insecurity, worse health and increased poverty in the long term. The embrace of biofuels would also exacerbate poverty in another way: the economic benefits of biofuel production are disproportionately captured by large-scale agribusinesses, to the detriment of small farms.

Given all this, it is imperative that the International Maritime Organization exclude crop-based biofuels from its final framework, focusing instead on sustainable alternatives like e-fuels and wind power. Early investments are essential to guarantee a sufficient supply of such fuels, so that the shipping industry can meet the organization’s targets. At the same time, strong fuel standards must be matched by an ambitious carbon levy on shipping emissions, which is necessary to generate revenues to facilitate the industry’s transition toward new energy solutions in an equitable way.

The April deadline for finalizing these measures is fast approaching. While decarbonizing shipping could not be more important, the use of biofuels would fail to advance that imperative and would undermine the health and well-being of people and the planet for years or even decades to come. The shipping industry needs to look beyond biofuels and invest in truly sustainable energy sources — before it sails us into disaster.

• Jennifer Clapp, an expert panel member at the IPES-Food think tank, is Professor and Canada Research Chair in Global Food Security and Sustainability at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
• Olivier De Schutter is UN Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights and co-chair of IPES-Food.

Copyright: Project Syndicate.