No consensus on biofuel certification

Submitted by Jason Fisher

The BBC News website has reported that the G8 nations and five important developing nations have been unable to craft a consensus policy on biofuels following meetings in held in Brazil this month. The nations held the meetings to try develop an international certification system for biofuels, which would hopefully result in a review of tarriffs put in place to block imports of biofuels into the US and EU.

Although no binding decision was reached, the parties were able to agree on some of the fundamental principles that should be employed in any test for certification, such as requiring that biofuels not be made from materials grown on land with "recognized value for biodiversity", and requiring that GHG emissions from the production and use of biofuels "should be significantly less than those produced by fossil fuels".