Your Say

19/07/2005
Tallow biofuel ban will send UK back to Dark Ages
Western Mail

While the rest of us celebrate New Year's Eve, Welsh farmers will be counting the cost of the UK government's inconceivable decision to ban tallow fuels.

From January 1, the UK government is to prohibit the use of certain types of animal fat, known as tallow, as a fuel in steam raising boilers even though there is no suggestion that it is unsafe.

The additional cost to the UK meat and agricultural industries would be about £25 per tonne of raw material. The question is, why ban it? Tallow is a carbon neutral fuel and burns with considerably lower levels of emissions than heavy fuel oil. Twenty-two other EU member states will continue to burn tallow after the UK bans it.

The UK currently produces about 250,000 tonnes of tallow per year of which about 100,000 tonnes is used as a fuel in steam raising boilers, essential in slaughterhouses and rendering plants.

This is another nonsensical piece of legislating by the British government. The Commission recently sent formal notice to the UK that it is falling well short of the EU's 2% biofuels target and yet their response is to pull another biofuel off the market.

The EU's Environment Commissioner has intimated that the UK could continue to use tallow as a biofuel like 22 other member states, yet ministers in the UK will not listen. Tallow has a value of £130 per tonne as fuel at present, but that would drop to about £20 per tonne. The industry will replace tallow with expensive heavy duty oil which sends harmful emissions into the environment.

The Government is sending the entirely wrong signal on biofuels. While the rest of Europe is moving forward with environmentally- friendly alternatives, the UK is heading back to the Dark Ages.

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