Observations on energy

Biofuel is moving up the political agenda. Far less controversial than nuclear energy, it is now routinely included in the government's mix of painless fixes for resolving the environmental crisis. "By 2010, 5 per cent of all the UK's fuel will come from biofuels," says the Secretary of State for Transport, Alistair Darling. "By then it will be saving us around one million tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions a year."

But hang on a minute. Biofuel is fuel from crops: where will they all be cultivated? If we grow them here, we will have to plant almost half of our arable land with oil crops, largely rape, by 2010. And that's only the start - the idea is to increase biofuel use until it powers 40 per cent of our cars, buses and lorries. The conclusion is inescapable: the fuel will have to be imported. But from where?

Step forward Brazil. It has the expertise, since it is already the world's most successful biofuel producer, with most Brazilian vehicles running on a mixture of petrol and ethanol, made from sugar cane. And, as the world's fifth-largest country, it has the land.

This month, President Lula da Silva of Brazil comes to Britain on a state visit. He will be the Queen's guest at Buckingham Palace and will also meet Tony Blair, with whom he is on friendly terms. The two men have a common goal: to jump-start the world trade talks that made such feeble progress in Hong Kong last December. Both believe that promoting trade is the solution to global poverty. "2006 is the year when the world decides whether or not it's going to be ambitious on trade," said Blair last month. "There are huge implications for action on world poverty."

There are, indeed, huge implications, but not the ones Blair had in mind. Even before it starts exporting biofuels, Brazil's headlong rush into agro-exports, particularly soya (fed to cattle and chickens in Europe and Asia), is ravaging precious ecosystems. The Pantanal, the biggest wetland in the world, located near Brazil's border with Bolivia, is expected to disappear by 2050. The Amazon forest is near to the "tipping point", after which rainfall patterns will be permanently disrupted, fires will proliferate and the forest will begin to die.

Adding a vast biofuel industry to this picture, which is what the British government's energy ambitions imply, would be catastrophic. It may appear environmentally responsible to switch to biofuel, but growing huge quantities of sugar cane or maize or soya for the purpose will actually hasten the global environmental crisis.

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