"Sustainable" biofuel ads ruled as misleading

A complaint by environmental journalist George Monbiot that advertisements in the national press by the Renewable Fuels Association (RFA) misrepresented biofuels as "sustainable" has been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) this week.

The ASA ruled yesterday that large text at the bottom of the adverts stating referring to biofuels as a "sustainable answer to OPEC's oil" was misleading, and banned the ads from appearing again in their current form.

THE RFA said it believed biofuels met the Oxford English Dictionary definition of sustainable as "able to be sustained" and "avoiding depletion of natural resources".

It argued that the feedstocks commonly used for biofuel production, such as grains, vegetable oils and sugarcane, were renewable, plant-based resources which could be grown and harvested or collected each year.

The RFA went on to say there was considerable evidence to suggest biofuels were not primary contributors to the global food crisis and that it was also not correct to suggest that biofuels were responsible for an expansion of agricultural land into wildlife habitat and the loss of biodiversity.

The organisation cited research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the US Department of Agriculture, which showed that there was significant global capacity to expand agricultural land use without jeopardising land use for forest or other sensitive environmental ecosystems.

The advertising standards authority accepted these arguments but countered that the UK government's Gallagher Review considered biofuel production would result in net greenhouse emissions and loss of biodiversity through habitat destruction in the period to 2020 unless improved policies were put in place to ensure biofuel production targeted idle or marginal land.

The EU is currently working on the development of such land use policies, but the ASA concluded that until they are in place and fully adopted the impact of increased demand for energy crops on deforestation and food production meant it is misleading to refer to them as sustainable.