While the Organic Consumers Association (OCA) supports the production of biofuels from recycled waste (such as used vegetable oil, manure or sewage) and biomass sustainably grown and harvested for the benefit of local communities, the current focus on subsidizing big-agribusiness with billions of dollars of funding for inefficient fuels, while ignoring energy conservation, is a recipe for disaster.These misguided funding priorities have taken tens of billions of dollars of funding away from essential greenhouse gas reduction policies, such as energy conservation, solar and wind power, fuel-efficiency technologies, and mass transit. Many of the current methods of industrial-scale biofuel production are also causing food shortages and worsening global warming by increasing deforestation and degradation of peatlands and soils.
Increasing fuel efficiency by just 3% would reduce US dependence on foreign oil more than all of the agrofuels combined, yet more than 500% more taxpayer money is spent on subsidizing ethanol than energy conservation, mass transit, solar, wind, and fuel-efficient technologies combined.
Read a thought-provoking fact sheet on biofuels here.
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