Report: EU biofuel targets could make 100 million hungry

Up to 100 million more people could go hungry if member states agree to increase the consumption of biofuels in line with EU targets, a new report from development charity ActionAid has warned today.

Depite long-standing concerns that increased demand for biofuels made from food crops has contributed to food shortages and deforestation, the EU currently has a target to increase the share of biofuels used in transport fuel to 10 per cent by 2020.

However, according to the ActionAid report, the targets will lead to a four-fold jump in biofuel consumption, with two thirds of all biofuels used in the EU being imported from the developing world.

It calculates that if all global biofuel targets are met, food prices could rise by an additional 76 per cent by 2020, forcing an extra 600 million people into hunger.

It also argues that biofuels are already affecting the amount of available agricultural land for food production, noting that EU companies have acquired or are in negotiations to acquire at least five million hectares of land in developing countries to produce biofuels. It adds that in just five African countries, 1.1m hectares – an area the size of Belgium – have been given over to industrial biofuels marked for export.

The report echoes the views of the European Commission's official advisors, the European Environment Agency, which last year called for the 10 per cent target to be suspended amid concerns over the policy's environmental impact.

ActionAid estimates the EU biofuel industry has already received €4.4bn (£3.8bn) in incentives, subsidies and tax relief, and predicts that support will have to treble to more than €13.7bn if the EU is to meet its 2020 target.

ActionAid's biofuels expert Tim Rice said the expansion in industrial biofuel use must be halted immediately if the sector is not to have a potentially disastrous impact on global food supplies. "To meet the EU deadline, the governments are now writing their national action plans which will set out their strategy for renewable energy for the next 10 years," he said. "These plans must not commit member states to any further increase in industrial biofuels."

However, the report comes as a potential means for limiting the environmental impact of biofuels emerged from the unlikeliest of quarters: the Pentagon.

According to reports in the Guardian, the US government's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has said that it is just months away from developing a biofuel made from algae that will be cheaper than conventional fossil fuels.

Barbara McQuiston, special assistant for energy at Darpa, said the agency had already successfully extracted oils from algae and was preparing to begin refining algae-based biofuels at a cost of less than $3 (£1.91) a gallon. She said that a plant capable of producing 50 million gallons of low-cost biofuel could come online as early as 2011.

Advocates of algae-based biofuels claim that they have a lower environmental impact than traditional biofuels, as the algae can be grown in industrial plants and as a result should not affect agricultural land or food supplies.