Find another planet and plant it with soybeans

Elliot Wilson says there isn’t enough arable land in the world to make plant-based fuels a viable alternative to oil

‘Biofuels?’ Ricardo Leiman gives an imperious snort, his eyebrows wobbling. ‘Bio­fuels?’ he repeats in an offended tone, as if asked to perform a lewd act. ‘There’s about 20 million tonnes of processed edible oil on the planet right now — not enough to fulfil 5 per cent of Europe’s energy needs, let alone any of the huge demand in the US, China, India or anywhere else.’

If Leiman doesn’t believe that biofuels are a viable solution to our energy needs, one wonders why anybody does. As chief operating officer of Noble Group, a Hong Kong-listed trading giant that crushes and refines close to 2.5 million tonnes of soybean and vegetable oil each year — much of it destined to fuel hybrid cars and buses — Leiman has much to gain from the budding industry. Noble posted revenues of £5 billion in the first half of 2007, up 60 per cent on 2006.

These days, everyone seems to have an opinion on biofuels. Broadly defined as any solid, liquid or gas fuel derived from any biological mass — from palm oil and rapeseed to human waste — the biofuel industry has become a subject as divisive as genetically modified food in the 1990s, or crop-spraying in the 1960s.

Proponents view biofuels as vital both to energy security — because it reduces dependency on Middle Eastern oil and Russian gas — and to energy sustainability. Fossil fuels are finite, but the only limitation on biofuels is the availability and fecundity of land. This side of the argument boasts powerful political and industrial backing. In January 2006, President Bush announced in his State of the Union address that America would replace no less than 75 per cent of the oil it imports from the Middle East with biofuels such as corn-based ethanol by 2025 — there are, of course, lots of votes in corn-growing states.