UN tackles sustainable
bioenergy growth

UNITED NATIONS — The United Nations unveiled guidelines on Tuesday to tackle the rapidly growing bioenergy industry, which it warned could threaten the availability of adequate food supplies.

As environment and development ministers from around the world prepare to meet on Wednesday for the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development, UN-Energy released its report "Sustainable Energy: A Framework for Decision Makers."

The report said the development of new biofuel industries could provide clean energy services to millions of people who currently lack them, while generating income and creating jobs in poorer areas of the world.

"But the rapid growth in first-generation liquid biofuels production will raise agricultural commodity prices and could have negative economic and social effects, particularly on the poor who spend a large share of income on food," it said.

UN-Energy, which was created to promote consistency on energy developments throughout the United Nations system, said biofuel production had already appeared to have driven up the price of maize in 2006 and 2007.

"The availability of adequate food supplies could be threatened by biofuel production to the extent that land, water and other productive resources are diverted away from food production," UN-Energy said.

But equally "modern bioenergy could make energy services more widely and cheaply available in remote rural areas, supporting productivity growth in agriculture or other sectors with positive implications for food availability and access."

Biofuels – energy squeezed from all kinds of living matter, such as sugar, corn or rapeseed oil – burn cleaner and are fast gaining popularity around the world amid high oil prices and a battle against global warming.

Global production of biofuels has doubled in the past five years and was likely to double again in the next four years, UN-Energy said.

In March, the United States, China, India, Brazil, South Africa and the European Commission, announced the creation of the International Biofuels Forum, which aims to increase global production and use of biofuels.