Motorists will be able to fill their
tanks with greener fuels when a new initiative comes into force in the
UK from tomorrow.
The move is known as the Renewable
Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) and requires 2.5% of all road fuels
sold to come from biofuels, rising to 5% by 2010. Motorists will fill
their vehicles as normal, but the change is expected to save 2.5million
tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2010.
It is part of a package of measures
being taken to reduce the impact of transport on the environment.
The UK has gone further than any other
country to give fuel suppliers a real incentive to produce sustainable
biofuels that do not harm the environment. Suppliers are required to
produce sustainability reports including information on where their
biofuel crops come from and the level of carbon savings they will
achieve. The Renewable Fuels Agency will publish these reports and
compare the performance of transport fuel suppliers.
Alongside this, a review into the
indirect impacts of biofuels has already been announced by Ruth Kelly to
ensure that the full economic and environmental impacts of biofuel
production are taken into account in the formation of UK policy beyond
2010.
The Government has also recently
published a body of research as a contribution to the debate on the
wider sustainability impacts of biofuels.
The first, a review of work on the
environmental sustainability of international biofuels production and
use, commissioned by Defra, is an appraisal of the current evidence of
the opportunities and threats from biofuel production. The second
considers the possible impact of the RTFO on users of tallow. It
suggests that turning tallow into biodiesel does not deliver any net
environmental benefits compared to the current uses of tallow.
