1.GMO Research Dominates BP-UC Partnership
2.Hundreds of NGOs and thousands of individuals call on the EU Leaders Summit to say NO to biofuel targets
3.Letter to Heads of State on biofuel targets
---
1.News Analysis: GMO Research Dominates BP-UC Partnership
By Richard Brenneman The Berkeley Daily Planet, 6 March 2006
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=03-06-07&storyID=26481
Critics of the proposed agreement between UC Berkeley and BP - the rebranded British Petroleum - should take their best shots now, because once the deal is signed not only Big Oil, but Big Academy and Big Government Lab will mobilize their own PR folks to fire back.
Should a final contract be signed as UC Berkeley proposes, the collective public relations efforts of academia and the corporation will be formally obligated to uphold the project as the world's leading research in alternative energy, implicitly holding up biofuels as the preeminent solution to world energy woes.
What's more, venture capital firms have promised to marshal their lobbying efforts to catch the ears of hesitant legislators and other government leaders.
All these efforts will target would-be critics of a project that proposes nothing less than to re-engineer living plant cells to toil away as microfactories, delivering the raw materials to other living cells toiling away to turn plantstuff into fuel to keep cars and trucks on the road.
These facts - and many more - emerge from a close reading of the 93-page submission, a copy of which was obtained by the Daily Planet, which was used by UC Berkeley, the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the University of Illinois at Champagne-Urbana (UI) to win the promise of a half-billion dollars from the global oil giant,
One commonly understood phrase is missing though omnipresent throughout the first 56 pages of the document and appears only in the final and shortest item in the research program - and then only as a warning that "This research will profit from paying significant attention to the evolving regulatory and societal response to genetically modified organisms at the domestic and international level."
Genetically modified organisms - or GMOs - have provoked political firestorms, and bans in Europe and protests and suicides by Indian farmers have heightened the controversy around their creation and use.
But, as the document makes clear on page 56, "Synthetic biology is a core function with the EBI," with "synthetic biology" being the reframed and university-and-BP-preferred alternative name to GMO.
"Synthetic biology is the design and construction of new biological entities - such as enzyme, genetic circuits and cells - or the redesign of existing biological systems," states the proposal.
Still to be finalized is a basic legal document for the project, which is to be negotiated between and signed by UC Berkeley and BP, with the University of Illinois and LBNL serving as subcontractors to Cal.
BP itself would create a proprietary subsidiary to conduct its own research in separate quarters in the same building.
Designer genes
While some gene-engineered microbes are eating GMO plantstuff and excreting ethanol and other fuels, other microscopic forms of "synthetic biology" could be slaving away deep beneath the earth’s surface, chomping down on hard-to-reach oil and rendering it easier to extract or digesting coal into cleaner forms of liquid fuel.
But most of the emphasis is on biomass - chopped up bits of cropped plants - as the likely source of the energy-creation efforts of the Energy Biosciences Institute, or EBI.
The proposal lists three potential sources of biomass to be used for fuels in addition to corn: fast-growing poplar trees, switchgrass and miscanthus - with the emphasis on the last, a tall, hardy perennial already being used in European pilot programs.
Experiments will focus on developing GMO strains tweaked to overcome biological factors that make it hard for microorganisms to digest.
Tasked with creating the new plants are the Biomass Engineering, Lignin, Feedstocks and Breeding laboratories. The Feedstock Pretreatment, Enzyme Discovery, Enzyme Evolution and Engineering and Biofuels Chemistry laboratories will explore processing the plants, and the Laboratory for Integrated Bioprocessing will focus on treating a single organism that would both produce enzymes to break down biomass and convert the resulting compounds to fuels.
The Pathway Engineering Lab, aided by the Host Engineering Laboratory, will identify the genes that produce critical enzymes and develop organisms that thrive in harsh industrial conditions in the presence of compounds that might otherwise destroy the microbes in their naturally occurring forms.
Several more labs will focus on enzymes.
The Microbial Enhanced Oil Recovery and Fossil Fuel Bioprocessing labs will concentrate on petroleum and coal, respectively, while the Biological Carbon Sequestration lab will seeks ways to trap more carbon and keep it from the atmosphere.
Another lab will focus on harvesting, transport and storage.
The remaining labs will focus on marketing, social and environmental implications, and developing tools to implement, evaluate and regulate the emerging GMO-derived fuel industry.
Construction sites
The proposal sites the main offices and labs in a purpose-built facility at LBNL. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has pledged $40 million in state funds for the structure, and the university has lined up $15 million in private contributions and $30 million in state lease revenue bonds, based on revenues anticipated from BP.
The structure, envisioned as a three-story building, will be located next to a planned new parking lot with 150 spaces - the same number as the anticipated number of staff positions.
Initially, the program would operate in two existing structures, Hildebrand Hall, a research building, and the Calvin Laboratory, a structure scheduled for demolition to make way for a new office and meeting complex joining the university’s law and business schools.
Initial plans call for a three-story building at LBNL with special containment labs designed to prevent release of any of the organisms created at the lab. The lab rated Biohazard Safety Level 2 on a scale from one to four, with four covering the most lethal agents. BSL 2 is the level mandated for handling the HIV, influenza and hepatitis viruses.
The proposal accepted by BP last month declares that UC Regents are scheduled to approve the structure this month, with detailed design work to start by summer.
That schedule is dependent on approval of the Environmental Impact Report for LBNL's Long Range Development Plan, now the subject of public hearings, including an upcoming joint meeting of the city's Planning, Landmarks Preservation, Transportation and Community Health commissions. The session begins at 7 p.m. Mar. 14 in the North Berkeley Senior Center, 1901 Hearst Ave.
The City Council will add its own comments the following Tuesday.
The deadline for all public comments is March 23. A copy of the draft EIR is available on the lab's website at www.lbl.gov/LRDP/.
A smaller, 6,748-square-foot lab will be housed in an existing building at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana in the Institute of Genomic Biology building.
The project will use a variety of other facilities and scientific equipment at LBNL and will occupy some of the space in a new 11,600-square-foot Biomolecular Nanotechnology Center.
Plans also call for use of the university’s Oxford Tract and Growing Field and yet another university-own site three miles from campus.
In addition to controlling all of the research conducted by its own scientists, BP has the right to review all research conducted by faculty and students at the institute to make sure no trade secrets for corporate research leak out.
In addition to testing crops at sites provided by UI, the Biofuels Markets and Networks and the Biofuels Evaluation and Adoption laboratories will seek out test sites in Europe, China and Africa and field research sites in the U.S., Europe, China, India, Africa and Latin America””looking at both growing conditions and the political and regulatory climates.
PR and outreach
The public relations push is mandated on page 56 of the proposal, which calls for the combined PR efforts of BP, the two universities and the lab "to ensure that the EBI maintains national and international visibility as the world's premier energy research institute."
Implications of this massive PR push for other forms of energy research, including solar, wind, tidal and even nuclear, aren't mentioned. The universities have committed to pushing biofuels as the premier solution to the world's energy crisis - and as a lab representative told the Berkeley Planning Commission, the primary purpose of the fuels is to keep transportation moving.
The proposal also recruits the extension services of the two university systems to sell the institute to students at the universities and in public schools, and to grant access to both forms of academia to BP engineers and scientists to encourage the young to pursue careers in the field.
Scientists will also get to work on marketing their work with the help of MBA. students from UC Berkeley's Management of Technology Program, a joint effort of the Haas School of Business, the College of Engineering and the School of Information.
Senior industry executives and venture capitalists have pledged to support the program by:
*Investing in BP spinoff companies and other businesses needed to solidify the emerging industry.
*Bringing in new corporate partners in line with BP's interest.
*Mentoring EBI graduate and post-doctoral students looking for jobs in the industry.
*"Advocating for" federal and state policies supporting EBI and the biofuel industry.
The closest the proposal comes to a watchdog body is the Social Interactions and Risk Laboratory, which is staffed by two economists, a biologist, an MBA and a Harvard-trained lawyer. There is no provision for lay membership or an ombudsperson.
Rights
Patent rights to inventions and discoveries fall into two classes: BP-only and open research.
The first category involves the work of BP scientists in the half of the building they lease from the university, a space from which university staff are "excluded entirely in performance of their university activities."
However, BP will also contract with faculty and do research jointly with faculty members, resulting in more complex financial relations.
University-only research would belong to the university, but profits from discoveries by joint teams would be shared, as would the fruits of research by BP scientists using university or LBNL facilities.
[for more on the controversial Berkeley BP biofuel tie up see http://www.lobbywatch.org/archive2.asp?arcid=7601 ]
---
2.Hundreds of NGOs and thousands of individuals call on the EU Leaders Summit to say NO to biofuel targets
Press Release, 6 March 2007
On Thursday and Friday this week, the EU Summit will decide whether to endorse plans for high mandatory biofuel targets. Over 230 organisations and prominent individuals from across the world have asked European politicians to say no to biofuel targets [http://tinyurl.com/2vgtke]. Over the last ten days, more than 7,000 European citizens have emailed heads of states and ministers with the same message (see [item 3 below] letter to Heads of State).
Almuth Ernsting of Biofuelwatch says: 'If the EU Summit says yes to mandatory biofuel targets, they will be giving the green light to plans to convert millions of hectares of rainforest, grasslands and traditional farmland across Latin America, Asia and Africa into biofuel monocultures. This will be a disaster for forests, for the climate, for local communities, and for food security. The greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation, peat drainage and from intensive agriculture will far outweigh any apparent carbon savings from using less fossil fuels. Far from slowing down global warming, biofuel targets are set to accelerate it.'
NASA have just published evidence that 2006 saw the second worst fire season on record in Indonesia. The only worse season was 1997/98, when carbon emissions from those fires were as high as 40% of global emissions from fossil fuel burning that year. Peat drainage and land clearance by plantation owners are the main causes of those fires. Annual emissions from Indonesia¹s peatlands far exceed all the emission savings which the Kyoto Protocol sets out to make globally from 1990 levels. The Indonesian government is now planning to convert another 20 million hectares to oil palm plantations, which will probably spell the end for most of South-east Asia's remaining rainforests and peatlands [http://tinyurl.com/33lb7r]. Those plans are a direct response to Europe's biofuel plans. This could double Indonesia's carbon emissions yet Europe classes palm oil biodiesel as carbon neutral, simply because the emissions are taking place outside Europe.
A recent study by Wetlands International, Delft Hydraulics and Alterra showed that producing one tonne of biodiesel from palm oil from South-east Asia's peatlands is linked to the emission of 10-30 tonnes of CO2 [http://tinyurl.com/3cqjhr]. Total emissions linked to a tonne of palm oil biodiesel from South-east Asia are estimated to be 2-8 times as much as from the equivalent of fossil fuel diesel [http://tinyurl.com/2q2lwl].
Biodiversity losses, human rights abuses and high food prices have all been linked to biofuel production. Stella Semino, member of the Grupo de Reflexion Rural in Argentina, says: "The impact of soybean monocultures in the South America region has already been devastating. The expansion has been, and still is, at the expense of ancient forests and other biodiverse ecosystems. Rural communities are forced off their lands and into cities, either by violent means, or due to the loss of their traditional food production. Soybeans require large amounts of pesticides and fertilizers resulting in massive topsoil erosion, surface and groundwater pollution and harm to people's and animal's health. Europe's growing demand for biofuels will exacerbate the problem further, as soybean cultivation becomes more lucrative. Pressure to introduce other crops for ethanol production will push the agrarian borders even further into the forests. If the EU fuel obligations are imposed, the resulting expansion of intensive agriculture will create ecological and social havoc across Latin America".
Soya prices are expected to rise, not just because of greater demand for soya biodiesel, but also because other vegetable oils are increasingly used for biodiesel and because US farmers are increasingly switching from soya to corn for ethanol, thus pushing up the market price for soya.
The Open Letter is calling for strong measures which will reduce Europe's greenhouse gas emissions not biofuel targets, but real cuts in energy and fuel use, and support for truly renewable forms of energy, like wind and solar power. As ethanol demand grows, higher world corn prices will also provide an incentive for countries like Brazil and Argentina to expand their corn production, thus putting further pressure on land and ecosystems.
Contacts:
Almuth Ernsting, Biofuelwatch, Tel +44-1224-324797 or +44-1224-553195 Anthony Jackson, Munlochy Vigil, +44-1381-610740 Stella Semino, Grupo de Reflexion Rural, +45-46325328 Andrew Boswell, Biofuelwatch, T: +44-1603-613798, +44-7787127881;
Joint Press Release from:
Rettet den Regenwald : http://www.regenwaldorg <http://www.regenwald.org/> Munlochy Vigil : http://www.munlochygmvigilorg.uk <http://www.munlochygmvigil.org.uk/>
GRR Argentina : http://www.grr.org.ar <http://www.grr.org.ar/>
Biofuelwatch : http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk <http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/> Watch Indonesia : http://home.snafu.de/watchin/Index-engl.htm
Further Notes:
In November 2006, more than 100 groups from and individuals from across the world submitted a petition entitled Biofuels: A Disaster in the Making¹ to the United Nations [http://www.wrm.org.uy/actors/CCC/Nairobi/Disaster_Making.html] .
In January 2007, hundreds of Latin American groups which are part of five large networks wrote to the EU to demand 'We Want Food Not Biofuels' [http://tinyurl.com/26ed49].
The Indonesian NGO Sawit Watch submitted their own declaration to the EU warning Palm oil for biofuels increases social conflicts and undermines land reform in Indonesia.
For evidence that global oilseed demand is growing rapidly and pushing soya expansion in South America, see http://www.fao.org/docrep/009/j8126e/j8126e05.htm
For evidence that the rate of deforestation in the Amazon correlates with the price of soya, see http://news.mongabay.com/2006/0919-amazon.html
---
3.As sent by over 7000 people
from http://www.regenwald.org/
[You can do the action alert at:
http://www.regenwald.org/protestaktion.php?id=138 ]
Dear Head of State or Minister,
At the EU Summit on 8th/9th March, you will be asked to support proposals for mandatory biofuel targets of 10% by 2010. I urge you not to support these proposals, and use any veto that you can to prevent the proposals becoming mandatory across the EU. Reasons for not supporting a mandatory EU biofuel target are given below.
Large opposition from civil society in the global South
Well over 200 organisations from North and South have signed an Open Letter (available at web address: http://tinyurl.com/2vgtke) to call on the EU to abandon biofuel targets, because of the serious threats not just to the climate and rainforests, but also to food security, human and land rights and biodiversity. Recently the poor in Mexico have seen staple food prices rise steeply leading to civil unrest because of US ethanol production, and world grain reserves are now at their lowest level for over twenty years. Rising food prices and diverting land from food to ‘energy crop’ production undermine the EU’s commitments with regard to the UN Millennium Goals. Please read this Open Letter that represents million of people from the Southern nations.
Biofuels are not a proven technology for climate change mitigation
The energy and carbon saving balances of biofuels are disputed by experts. Most studies are flawed in not covered the full production life-cycle and produce over optimistic estimates of gains. An increasing number of reports, looking at the full lifecycle, show the savings for carbon emissions to be minimal or even negative. Biofuels are then diluted with conventional fossil fuels to create the final blend at the pump any minimal savings are further diluted. For example with 5.75% of biofuel in the blend, a raw biofuel saving of 17% of carbon emissions will be reduced to less than 1% in the fuel sold/dispensed at the pump. A study done for the European Commission in 2002 found that converting all 5.6 million hectares of set-asides to the highest-yield energy crops could reduce the EU's emissions by no more than 0.3%, whilst having a devastating impact on biodiversity.
EU imports of energy crops from tropical nations threatens the global climate
The EU doesn't have the capacity to grow sufficient crops to meet a 10% target within Europe, and proposes to import crops from tropical countries where production is known to damage rainforests, peatlands and other ecosystems. The proposals before the EU Summit will do nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions but will instead threaten to further accelerate global warming by speeding up the destruction of tropical rainforests that are crucial in regulating the global climate.
Indonesia's biofuel plans, linked directly to Europe’s policy, are set to expand Palm Oil production 43-fold (see report available at: http://tinyurl.com/33lb7r) and destroy 20million hectares of rainforest. If you allow this expansion to happen, most of that country's remaining rainforests and peatlands would be destroyed, releasing up to 50 billion tonnes of carbon. This is the equivalent of over six years of global fossil fuel burning and could well be enough to push us beyond the 2oC warming which the EU are officially committed to avoid.
A recent TV news item on the UK Channel 4 network explained how drained peatlands create these absolutely massive carbon emissions that add significantly to the global total of carbon in the atmosphere and hence contribute to climate change. The video clip uses simple graphics to explain these issues very clearly, and may be viewed at : http://tinyurl.com/yv3bj7. Please view this news clip that clearly shows the risks to the global climate from mass-scale biofuels production in the tropics.
Devastating for biodiversity
Within Europe, biofuel plans require the abolition of compulsory set-asides. The European Environment Agency has warned that this will seriously reduce biodiversity in Europe. Many bird and insect species now only survive because of set-asides. Many of the pollinators are already in steep decline, and a further increase in intensive agriculture across Europe could have a disastrous impacts on those species on which much of agriculture depends. Habitat loss and intensive agriculture are amongst the main drivers of biodiversity losses worldwide, and Europe’s biofuel plans are likely to drastically reduce biodiversity not just here but across the global South. Those plans will make it impossible for the EU to achieve its goal of ending biodiversity losses by 2010.
Second generation biofuels will be too late and not acceptable to consumers
Second generation biofuels based on ligno-cellulosic technology are still at the research stage and do not yet offer a viable commercial route to meeting the EU Biofuels target for 2020 either. These fuels are likely to be based on genetic engineering technology, both in the crops and their processing. The biotech industry hopes that consumers will accept GE food and feed crops when and if they are used for biofuels. However, it is unlikely that European consumers will accept the wide risks associated with GM technology and the potential threat of contamination to European food crops and biodiversity.
Biofuels should not be used to trade for reduced car emission standards
The EU Energy strategy from the Commissioners in January called for car manufacturers to make innovative gains in fuel efficiency. This was a good policy - stringent emission standards are one of the key measures needed to tackle transport emissions! I was shocked to learn that the industry has been lobbying the EU for higher biofuel targets to avoid making these stringent, but perfectly realistic, gains in fuel efficiency that would save significant carbon emissions. For every additional gram of carbon dioxide that European cars are allowed to emit per kilometer, hundreds of thousands of hectares of energy crop monocultures and grasslands will displace virgin rainforest, peatlands and indigenous croplands in the tropics, releasing massive additional CO2 emissions.
Strong demand reduction measures are needed in the EU transport sector
Europe needs strong measures that will truly reduce our greenhouse gas emissions: targets to increase energy efficiency, including in the transport sector, and significant reductions in overall energy use, plus policies which promote clean, decentralised and renewable energies, such as wind and solar power.
Your support against the EU Biofuels targets is essential to protect the South and future climate stability
I strongly hope that you will stand up against lobbying from both the car industry and biotech companies, and speak against EU Biofuels targets. This is the right decision for stabilising the climate, the global environment and the needs of those local communities the global South, whose livelihoods and food security are threatened by expanding biofuel monocultures.
Your veto of the biofuel target at the EU Summit will be crucial not just for the future of South-east Asia’s rainforests and peatlands, and for the future of forests throughout Africa, Asia and Latin America, but also, critically, for the future stability of the climate.
Yours