November 5, 2025 | 06:54 pm
TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Over 100 members of the global scientific community, including representatives from the Union of Concerned Scientists and the World Resources Institute, have signed on to a letter calling on global leaders to limit the dangerous expansion of biofuels. This letter comes ahead of the COP30 climate change negotiations that will run from November 10-21 in Belém, Brazil.
Scientists penned the letter as Brazil seeks high-level support for a leaders’ pledge to quadruple so-called “sustainable fuel” use as a major component of the international community’s response to the climate crisis. This includes the doubling of biofuels consumption.
But mounting scientific evidence shows that, far from being a climate-friendly solution as many governments claim, unrestricted growth of biofuels carries devastating environmental and social risks.
“Unrestricted growth in global biofuel demand without stringent safeguards could derail climate progress, displace communities, degrade ecosystems, and deepen food insecurity,” scientists warn in the letter, as quoted by Tempo.
On average, the energy source is responsible for 16% more emissions than the fossil fuels they replace. It is also estimated that doubling biofuel production would increase net global greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 34 MtCOe annually, the equivalent of putting 30 million new diesel cars on the road.
The letter also warns that such an expansion would have devastating environmental impacts in some of the world’s most biodiverse regions, consume scarce water resources, and contribute to agricultural runoff.
Moreover, the scientists also caution that increased biofuel use will exacerbate global hunger by raising food prices, intensifying food price volatility, and diverting calories from human consumption.
Cian Delaney, a biofuels campaigner at the European advocacy group for clean transport and energy, T&E, urges world leaders to seek “truly sustainable” fuel alternatives rather than pushing for solutions that “do more harm than good.”
“The evidence is clear, burning crops for fuel is a bad idea. We can’t ignore the effects they have on the climate, ecology, and food security,” Delaney added, as quoted from the press release received by Tempo, on Wednesday, November 5, 2025.
Curbing unrestrained biofuels use is not without precedent, the scientists argue. In 2020, the EU agreed to cap conventional (first-generation) crop-based biofuels at a 7 percent share of its transport energy. The regional bloc also limits waste- and residue-based biofuels to 1.7 percent to encourage fuel innovations and reduce land-use impacts.
In biofuel producer nations, like Brazil and Indonesia, local NGOs are calling for a holistic approach to manage negative impacts, including caps on cultivation, better traceability, and investments in community-based governance and decentralized energy.
The scientists warn that Brazil’s push reflects a dangerous resurgence of biofuels as a global commodity that threatens to repeat the mistake of the “biofuels gold rush” in the mid-2000s that prompted large-scale deforestation, biodiversity loss, and human rights abuses.
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