The Price of Bio Fuels

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Once, bio-fuels were seen as the answer to global warming and dwindling oil stocks. Today, many who took that line, believe instead that they increase pollution and are behind worldwide environmental havoc, rising food prices, and worsening hunger and poverty.

The first official hint of changing attitudes came in the Gallagher Review of 2007, which expressed concerns that bio fuels - renewable liquid fuels derived from plant or animal material – not only didn’t help climate control, but were making poor people in the developing world even poorer.

Once, bio fuels were seen as the answer to global warming and dwindling oil stocks. Today, many who took that view, believe instead that they increase pollution - and are behind worldwide environmental havoc, rising food prices, and worsening hunger and poverty.

Then, bodies as diverse as the World Bank and major charities defined bio fuels as "a crime against humanity" and "a silent tsunami". And then some alarming facts emerged – for example, that the grain required to fill the tank of a Range Rover with ethanol is sufficient to feed one person for a year, and that American land turned over to bio fuel production every two years alone would fill 250 million mouths.

But that is not the whole story. Governments and multi-nationals fight what they see as a simplistic black-and-white approach, insisting that bio fuels remain our best hope for the future - despite some damaging side-effects. Scientists, meanwhile, working on ‘a second generation’ of bio fuels which, they believe, could eradicate those side-effects.

For this two-part documentary, investigative reporter Gerry Northam finds out exactly how much bio fuels cost and who is paying for it.

First broadcast on 3 May 2010