Wagner Nicky: Sustainable Biofuel Bill — Second Reading 
Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume 
Wagner Nicky: Sustainable Biofuel Bill — Second Reading 
[Sitting date: 04 April 2012. Volume:679;Page:1676. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.] 
NICKY WAGNER (National—Christchurch Central) 
: 
 It is very interesting to listen to Kennedy Graham talking about the Sustainable Biofuel Bill because I was part of the small subcommittee of the Local Government and Environment Committee. In fact I did chair it. I reflect on the excitement that people concerned about the environment had in terms of the idea of biofuels. It seemed to answer the twin problems of long-term sourcing of fossil fuels and a way to cut carbon emissions in the face of climate change. As someone who is particularly interested in waste minimisation and recycling there were also lots of exciting ideas of new technologies to turn waste products into energy sources.  
Many countries embraced the development of biofuels. Some introduced subsidies to encourage the growth of biofuel feedstock and some even passed laws to mandate the supply of biofuels. In fact in 2008 Labour passed the Biofuel Bill which placed an obligation on oil companies to sell biofuels as a set percentage of their sales. Biofuels can be made from a variety of biofuel feedstocks including grain palm oil oil crops such as rape and woody growth. Biofuels can also be made from some waste products and the example that we see mostly in New Zealand is used cooking oil or food waste such as tallow.  
 There have been ongoing experiments in New Zealand concerning the growth of algae and very fast-growing feedstock in nutrient-rich environments. Those experiments have been happening in the Blenheim sewage plant and although that work looks promising and they are working in partnership with some people in the US it has not been commercialised yet. And that is one of the problems. Yes we can use waste to make biofuels but to get any economy of scale specific crops need to be grown.  
As the world learnt more about biofuels we learnt that not all biofuels were good for the environment. We learnt that the cultivation and the growth of some crops used for biofuels when we analysed their life cycles were enormously hungry on fossil fuels during the growing process so they did very little to lower carbon emissions.  
Then we discovered that by subsidising the growing of crops many farmers changed from growing food crops to growing fuel crops. The classic example there was the growing of grains in the US. The prices that grain farmers could get with a subsidy forced up the cost of food and many low-income people could not afford to buy the foods that they had always relied on. In fact the cost of tortillas in Mexico went up because of the US Government’s subsidy for biofuels.  
Finally we discovered that when encouraged by a Government subsidy there was a loss of important biodiversity the clear-felling of indigenous forests and the destruction of valuable ecosystems to grow biofuel stocks particularly palm oil. So the excitement about biofuels was tempered by these three major problems and finally the fact that we needed too much fossil fuel to grow some crops.  
So the first problem was that we needed too much fossil fuel to grow the crops. The second problem was that growing biofuel stocks deprived people of food which they could not afford. The third problem was that in some cases we were destroying the very environment we were looking to save by clearing land for growing feedstock so much so that environmentalists became increasingly disappointed and worried about the consequences of increased biofuel production. They felt that subsidising biofuels or placing an obligation on the sale of biofuels such as Labour’s bill was doing in this country would actually cause environmental damage.  
In New Zealand Jan Wright the Parliamentary Commissioner for the Environment was so concerned that she did an inquiry and wrote a report saying: “The Biofuel Bill currently before Parliament should not proceed in its current form. International concern about the sustainability of biofuels and their true environmental and economic impacts have heated up considerably in recent months—which signals a need for caution.” Jeanette Fitzsimons the co-leader of the Greens at the time introduced this bill. This bill was designed to ensure that biofuels imported into New Zealand to meet the obligation would need to pass a sustainability test so that we would not be buying biofuels that could be doing environmental and social damage.  
In 2009 the National Government repealed the biofuel legislation and the obligation for all companies to sell a percentage of biofuels. We repealed the Act in the face of the sustainability issues and because we believed it would force up the price of fuel for consumers. Existing biofuel production continued but it was from local feedstock and mostly waste products such as used cooking oil and tallow.  
When the Sustainable Biofuel Bill came to the Local Government and Environment Committee and we heard the submissions on the bill we concluded that the bill was unnecessary and impractical for several reasons. First there was no available international standard by which to judge whether or not biofuels were sustainable. Secondly as National had repealed the biofuels obligation there was no pressure to import unsustainable biofuels.  
The amount of biofuels being used in the country was low and mostly made in New Zealand. All New Zealand - made biofuels were made from waste products—as I have said from used cooking oil tallow whey or non-edible seeds such as rape. Although there were small amounts of Brazilian sugar cane being imported the sugar cane was sustainable.  
The biofuel industry had a voluntary reporting scheme. Its argument was that people who were buying biofuels were doing it to show their environmental credentials and that the use of unsustainable biofuels would threaten that so companies were very careful as to the sources of their biofuel and finally we could already make regulations to cover any problems.  
Sections 35 and 36 of the Energy (Fuels Levies and References) Act 1989 included regulation-making and information-gathering powers regarding producers and suppliers of engine fuel. These sections could be modified to discourage unsustainable biofuels in New Zealand if it was necessary in the future. Finally we could not find any evidence of immediate concern of unsustainable biofuels being sold in New Zealand. We were pleased that the biofuel industry appeared to appreciate the importance of environmental sustainability and that was part of people’s motivation for using biofuels. So we decided to recommend that the bill did not proceed.  
I like Jeanette Fitzsimons and so many others was hopeful that biofuels could provide an answer to sourcing fossil fuels and cutting carbon emissions but it seems that using sustainable biofuels is a bigger challenge than we first thought. I am still hopeful that biofuels made from waste products will become much more viable and useful in the future. I thank Jeanette Fitzsimons for this bill. It was an attempt to mitigate the environmental hazards of biofuels when we thought we would have an obligation in New Zealand but as time has passed it has proved to be unnecessary. Thank you.