We knew the government's plans on biofuels were a bit of a mess, but figures released today by the Renewable Fuel Agency show just how bad the situation is.

First off, the agency reports that 80 per cent of biofuels used in the UK don't meet government sustainability targets. In fact several companies, including BP and Esso, admitted that they didn't produce a single litre of biofuel that met the government's qualifying environmental standard.

The Lego replica of Kingsnorth power station complete with 'Stop Climate Change' banner © Hans Bricks

Not one, not two but at least three climate change-related happenings popped up around the country yesterday, many of them carried out by Climate Camp attendees. Although the camp is primarily focused on coal and the proposed new power station at Kingsnorth, today's activities also highlighted other climate threats such as aviation and biofuels. Here is just a taste of what's been happening:

From today's Guardian:

"Less than a fifth of the biofuel used on UK roads meets environmental standards intended to safeguard human rights and guarantee carbon savings, figures released today show.

"The Renewable Fuels Agency says just 19% of the biofuel supplied under the government's new initiative to use biofuel to help tackle global warming met the green standard. For the remaining 81% of the biofuel, suppliers could not say where it came from, or could not prove that it had been produced in a sustainable way."

But even this "green" standard is misleading, as it ignores the side-effects of biofuel production such as massive deforestation:

"The standard does not include carbon emissions from indirect effects such as changes in land use caused by biofuel planting, which experts have warned could cancel out their environmental benefits."

Not so long ago biofuels were billed as a silver bullet that could cut greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector. But, as recent studies have confirmed, many are worse for the climate than the fuels they replace and they are also contributing to price rises for food. This week the government-commissioned Gallagher review on the indirect impacts of biofuels has been released and confirms that chasing current EU and UK biofuels targets is unsustainable. You may think that the government would have been more prudent before setting mandatory targets for the use of biofuels, but in fact currently there is no sustainability criteria attached to them, leading to the use of highly questionable fuels.

Offshore wind - 3,500 new turbines by 2020?

Although the PM has taken a few verbal pastings from us over the past few months on key climate issues like airport expansion and new coal-fired power stations, in a new speech today he did much to redeem himself by announcing an ambitious plan to ensure Britain generates 15 per cent of its energy from renewable sources by 2020.

To be sure, the government has promised as much in the past and failed to deliver, but there seemed to be something different about today's Renewable Energy Strategy Consultation - some meat on the bones which indicated that the plan might just be more than empty rhetoric. The government is consulting on ambitious plans designed to allow the UK to meet its share of an overall EU target to generate 20 per cent of energy (electricity, heat and transport) from renewables within 12 years.

We made it, version two. Ok so it's not exactly fortnightly (it's not at all fortnightly), so we're going for the classic monthly format. In this episode I head down to Google's headquarters in London to hear Sir David Attenborough speaking about the access to information we have about the natural world through programs like Google Earth and the responsibility that comes with that knowledge. Bex talks to Fish (if you speak Mandarin that's peng yo gan tongshi) from Our office in Bejing about their chopsticks campaign, and Jamie speaks with our chief scientist about biofuels and the threat they pose to the climate. The podcast is presented by our very own James Turner (who lies, I have never been nor will be a fan of Jason Donovan).

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Problems at the pump as new biofuel law draws closer »
Biofuels: green dream or climate change nightmare? » Read more »

So, today the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation (RTFO) comes into effect and we'll all be using more biofuels as a result. Regular readers will know that this exciting piece of legislation will see 2.5 per cent of our petrol and diesel coming from food crops, and that we have been asking everyone to send emails to transport secretary Ruth Kelly asking her to postpone the RTFO. Now we need to see that she abandons so if you haven't expressed your concern about this already, you can still do so.