Lagos — Nearly 100 scientists are calling on world leaders to halt the unchecked expansion of crop-based biofuels due to their potentially devastating environmental and social impacts.
They issued an open letter ahead of the COP30 Climate Summit in Belém, where Brazil is expected to unveil a global pledge that would double “sustainable” biofuels use, as a central part of its climate agenda.
Why it matters: The expansion of land for crop-based biofuel production could have devastating environmental impacts with severe repercussions on the climate crisis.
Scientists warn that, once land-use change, deforestation and other indirect effects are taken into account, expanding crop-based biofuels could increase overall greenhouse-gas emissions rather than reduce them. Large-scale production also risks degrading ecosystems, displacing communities and putting additional pressure on global food supplies.
The experts say that expanding crop-based biofuels to meet rising demand from sectors, like the shipping regulations under discussion at the UN, could undermine global net-zero goals.
Already, growing crops for fuel uses 32 million hectares of land, an area about the size of Italy, to meet just 4% of transport fuel demand. By 2030, this could rise to 52 million hectares, roughly the size of France.
Despite being branded “green,” crop-based biofuels emit on average 16% more CO2 than fossil fuels once land use change impacts are included. These same crops – soy and palm oil, in particular – could otherwise feed up to 1.3 billion people. Today, about a fifth of the world’s vegetable oil supply is burned in cars instead of being used for food.
