JEDI 2008 Shook/Winfrey

Shook/Winfrey/Kennedy

Biodiesel Causes Damage to Engines

Biodiesel is less stable than regular fuel and could also damage engines
Barlow ‘07
Peter, Environment and Health Safety Consultant. “What's in your tank? Are biofuels really a wonderful means
of saving the planet, or is there a conspiracy of silence about the risks they pose?”. The Daily Telegraph
(London). 21 April 2007. Date of Access: 25 June 2008. LN.

On the record, motor manufacturers seem to have gone with the flow of promoting
biodiesel because it reduces our dependency on imported oil. Off the record they are more
inclined to hint that the very least that biodiesel will do to the most sophisticated diesel
engines is reduce their expected life. At a recent international conference on biofuels in
Brussels, the motor industry admitted that biodiesel blended into a petroleum-based diesel
produces a fuel which is less stable than conventional diesel, potentially resulting in
injector fouling and power loss, that impurities in the biodiesel cause diesel exhaust catalyst
damage, and that biodiesel causes engine oil dilution, thickening and, if not changed sooner,
engine damage.

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Shook/Winfrey/Kennedy

Continuing to use Biodiesel Will Result in More Starvation

If we continue to increase the use of biodiesel in cars, the demand for fuel will be
met before the need of starving people – empirically proven in the SQ
Monbiot ‘04
Georges, Author/Staff Writer. “Feeding Cars, Not People”. The Guardian. 22 November 2004. Date of
Access: 25 June 2008. http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2004/11/23/feeding-cars-not-people/

To run our cars and buses and lorries on biodiesel, in other words, would require 25.9m
hectares. There are 5.7m in the United Kingdom.(8) Switching to green fuels requires four and
half times our arable area. Even the EU’s more modest target of 20% by 2020 would consume
almost all our cropland.

If the same thing is to happen all over Europe, the impact on global food supply will be
catastrophic: big enough to tip the global balance from net surplus to net deficit. If, as
some environmentalists demand, it is to happen worldwide, then most of the arable surface
of the planet will be deployed to produce food for cars, not people.

This prospect sounds, at first, ridiculous. Surely if there was unmet demand for food, the market
would ensure that crops were used to feed people rather than vehicles? There is no basis for this
assumption. The market responds to money, not need. People who own cars have more
money than people at risk of starvation. In a contest between their demand for fuel and
poor people’s demand for food, the car-owners win every time. Something very much like
this is happening already. Though 800 million people are permanently malnourished, the
global increase in crop production is being used to feed animals: the number of livestock on
earth has quintupled since 1950. The reason is that those who buy meat and dairy products
have more purchasing power than those who buy only subsistence crops.

Continued use of biofuels will result in countries neglecting to feed their own
people
Roper ‘07
Matt, Staff Writer. “Burning need for cheap fuel could be bad for the health; The west needs oil, agrees Matt Roper,
but not at the expense of the poorest”. The Herald. 6 July 2007. Date of Access: 25 June 2008. LexisNexis.

And then there is the prospect that transferring land used for food production to biofuels
will lead to shortages of the crops that poorer countries need to feed their own people. In
short, while the rich world grows fat on cheap fuel, it's possible that the poor could starve.

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Production of Biodiesel Results in Massive Carbon Emissions

Shipping biodiesel to the U.S. is producing unnecessary carbon emissions

Belfast Telegraph ‘07
No Specific Author. “Row Over ‘Splash and Dash’ Biodiesel Heats Up”. Belfast Telegraph Newspaper. 4 May 2007.
Date of Access: 25 June 2008. LexisNexis.

Traders are buying biodiesel on the European market in Rotterdam and shipping it to the
US. There conventional gasoline is added to the biodiesel blend - or "splashed with gas" - to
qualify for the subsidy. Then the cargo is shipped back - or "dashes" - to Europe and resold at a
lower price.

Europe is the world's largest biodiesel market, one that is growing rapidly. Most biofuel
companies are reluctant to exploit the loophole themselves for environmental reasons
because shipping the biodiesel across the Atlantic twice results in unnecessary carbon
emissions.

Clearing land for the production of biodiesel results in excessive emissions of carbon
Roper ‘07
Matt, Staff Writer. “Burning need for cheap fuel could be bad for the health; The west needs oil, agrees Matt Roper,
but not at the expense of the poorest”. The Herald. 6 July 2007. Date of Access: 25 June 2008. LexisNexis.

Indeed, the EU is committed to reducing its carbon emissions by 20% by 2020, partly
through ensuring 10% of vehicles are run by on bioethanol or biodiesel. It certainly sounds
like a good idea. Your exhaust still produces CO2, but it's the same CO2 that the plant (such as
sugar beet or cane) absorbed during its life. So, carry on driving, but in a carbon neutral gear.

Yet there is a cost. And it's high. In Borneo, an area of rainforest twice the size of greater
London has already been cleared for the production of palm oil for biofuel. Some claim
that burning forest during these clearances produces 33 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of
palm oil.

High Prices of Biodiesel are Significantly Decreasing Sales

The high price of biodiesel is resulting in companies who have used the fuel in the past to stop
buying it
New Zealand Press ‘08
No Author Specified. “Green Buses Uneconomic”. The Press (Christchurch, New Zealand). 24
June 2008. Date of Access: 26 June 2008. LexisNexis.

But ECan is now turning away from biodiesel buses as the cost of tallow skyrockets and
environmentalists raise fears over the sustainability of other crop-based biodiesel sources.

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Tallow - a sustainable by-product containing fats and other wastes from the meat-
processing industry - has more than doubled in price from $500 a tonne to $1085 a tonne
since the trial began, making it uneconomic.

In March, tallow reached $1300 a tonne compared with about $300 a tonne five years ago.

ECan assistant manager passenger services David Stenhouse told The Press the $86,000
trial would probably carry on purely as a data- collecting exercise.

"We have all but decided not to pursue the use of biodiesel in the bus fleet due to cost and
sustainability factors. (But) we will obviously comply with the Government's biofuels sales
obligation."

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The high price of biodiesel is resulting in a significant decrease in sales and driving up the price
of food worldwide
Gonzalez ‘08
Angel, Staff Writer. “Biofuel Backlash: High Prices, Pollution Worries Hit Consumers”. The
Seattle Times. 12 June 2008. Date of Access: 26 June 2008. LexisNexis.

When King County, Wash., Metro Transit signed a one-year contract last June to buy 2
million gallons of biodiesel made by Seattle-based Imperium Renewables, the agency didn't
mind paying a few extra cents a gallon for the privilege of being green.

By running all its buses on a blend with 20 percent biodiesel, Metro Transit would
radically cut its greenhouse-gas emissions and help lessen U.S. dependence on foreign oil.

But in the last year, the promise of renewable fuels has lost a lot of its luster. Prices of
biodiesel have almost doubled to about $6 per gallon, and many experts blame biofuel
production for driving up food prices worldwide. Prominent scientists have questioned
whether growing crops for biofuels produces more greenhouse gases than it prevents.

Now Metro Transit, the region's largest consumer of biodiesel, is "taking an indefinite
pause" in buying the renewable fuel, said general manager Kevin Desmond.

The soaring prices of biodiesel are significantly slowing demands for the fuel
UPI ‘08
No Author Specified. “Biofuel Backlash Feared Amid High Prices”. UPI. 8 June 2008. Date of
Access: 26 June 2008. LexisNexis.

The price of biodiesel has almost doubled to about $6 per gallon, and some experts blame
biofuels for at least part of the rise in global food prices, The Seattle Times reported Sunday.

Biodiesel retailers in Washington say soaring costs and slowing demand are eating into
their bottom line.

"Business is down at least by half," said Dan Freeman of Dr. Dan's Alternative Fuelwerks in
Ballard, Wash.

In Washington, sales of biodiesel, which is made from the oils in soybeans and other crops,
fell by almost two-thirds from July to March, to about 520,000 gallons, state figures show.

The newspaper said the rush to produce biodiesel assumed skyrocketing petroleum prices would
soon make biofuels reasonably cheap by comparison. But the cost of making biodiesel has
outpaced the rise in fossil fuel prices.

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A gallon of nearly pure biodiesel retails for close to $6. Conventional diesel, meanwhile,
currently sells for about $4.80 per gallon.

As a result, many U.S. biodiesel plants "are running at partial capacity or not running at
all," said Pavel Molchanov, an analyst with investment bank Raymond James.

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U.S. Subsidies on Biodiesel Hurting Europe

United States subsidies on biodiesel are hurting production in the UK

Farmers Guardian ‘08
No Author Specified. “UK Biodiesel Market Faces a Tough Future”. 18 April 2008. Date of Access: 26 June 2008. LexisNexis.

D1 Oil said it will withdraw from its operations in the North East, with 90 staff set to lose their jobs.

The news signals tough times ahead for the home-grown biodiesel sector where the high price of
home-grown rapeseed has already forced refineries to source raw materials from abroad.

Cheap US imports are at the heart of the problem. "Huge subsidies are killing home
production," said John Seymour from Northeast Biofuels.

the US Energy Act of 2004 offers fuel processors a tax break of around 11
He explained that
pence per litre on biodiesel production.

A spokesman from D1 Oils said the biodiesel arrives at the pumps in the UK with a £ 150
per tonne price advantage over UK produce.

Under US regulation, processors are given a tax break if they mix biodiesel with
conventional fossil fuel. The greater the density of biodiesel in the mix, the greater
incentive, so a 99 per cent mix of biodiesel to fossil fuel - B99 - gains the greatest reward.

American subsidies are being used unfairly, hurting Europe’s biodiesel industry
Europe Energy ‘08
No Author Specified. “Complaint Against US Biodiesel”. Europe Energy. 15 May 2008. Date of Access: 26 June 2008. LN.

An American mix called B99', containing 99% biodiesel, can benefit from subsidies of
around E200 per tonne in the USA. Once this mix is exported to the EU, it is then eligible for
EU subsidies. This is what urged the European biodiesel industry to submit a complaint
against this unfair competition from doubly subsidised American biodiesel to the European
Commission, on 25 April.

In the middle of the European debate on the place of biofuels, exports of American biodiesel to
the EU have seen a steep increase since 2007, delivering "a severe blow to the European
biodiesel industry," argues the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) in a press release.

"The European biodiesel industry is asking the European Commission to initiate an anti-
dumping and anti-subsidy investigation, in view of imposing measures, as quickly as
possible, against American exports of B99 into the EU," specifies the EBB.

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Before turning to the World Trade Organisation to lodge a complaint against the USA, the
Commission will have to examine this request and decide if there is cause to open an
investigation.