At the COP30 Leaders’ Summit on November 7, Brazil announced the Belém 4X Pledge on Sustainable Fuels, a commitment to quadruple production and use of ‘sustainable fuels’ by 2035. Italy was among the promoters, along with Japan and India, and others. As of November 14, another 19 countries have joined, including Canada, Mexico, and the Netherlands. The fuels mentioned in the pledge include hydrogen, biogases, biofuels, and e-fuels. The pledge cites a new report by the International Energy Agency (IEA) that envisions a quadrupling of these fuels by 2035, including a doubling of biofuel production.
While countries are right to transition away from fossil fuels, they also need to ensure their plans don’t trigger unintended consequences, such as more deforestation either at home or abroad. Doubling biofuel production would have significant implications for the world’s land, especially without guardrails to prevent large-scale expansion of land dedicated to biofuels, which drives ecosystem loss.
Already today, at least 40 million hectares of cropland are used globally to grow biofuel feedstocks, an area the size of Paraguay. And the world’s land is under pressure to provide more food and wood products for a population that will grow toward 10 billion by 2050. At present rates of cropland expansion, an area nearly the size of India would be converted from nature to food production between 2020 and 2050. Increasing biofuel mandates—including for “hard to abate” sectors like aviation and maritime shipping—would create significant extra pressure for land conversion.
WRI’s global research shows that expansion of land dedicated to biofuel production is likely to have serious negative impacts on food security, nature, and climate because it competes with food production or natural ecosystems. Biofuel production on agricultural land implies trade-offs with both food production and restoring land to nature.
Agricultural products are commodities in global markets, and policies that increase demand for these products will raise prices and likely lead to expansion of new cropland. Both responses are likely to have negative impacts on climate, food security, and nature. Furthermore, many models and carbon accounting frameworks undercount biofuels’ land carbon cost or miss it entirely.
That’s why both the land and the types of biomass used for fuels matter. The pledge says that efforts to scale up fuel use must be environmentally and socially responsible. But it does not include critical caveats from the IEA report: that biofuel expansion should not further increase cropland use, and that waste and residue-based biomass potentially offer a more sustainable pathway than feedstocks grown on dedicated land—although the amounts are limited, making scalability challenging. National policies should account for these important nuances.
All countries should develop a strategy for how best to use their limited land to advance prosperity and meet people’s growing needs for food, while achieving climate and nature goals. These strategies should align with national pledges to halt deforestation and preserve existing ecosystems. Any mandates that intensify pressure on land risk undermining those commitments. More locally grounded research is needed to inform these strategies.
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