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Monday, April 28, 2008

Letter to David Drew MP - to ask for parlimentary question on biofuels


Dear David,

An article in the Energy Business Review reports that Tesco's biofuels are made entirely of Palm Oil and Soya.

This flatly contradicts the assertions that I received over a series of email communications with Tesco. Initially Tesco claimed their biofuels were sustainable, and then they said their biofuels contained a small part of palm oil. Clearly, they are lying.

During the correspondence I had with them, they stated that biofuels helped their customers reduce their CO2 footprint. After further correspondence they admitted that the science was not clear and they would commission further research which would be made publicly available. However, they gave no dates when this research would be completed and no copy of the remit. Eventually, we were told that as government policy now mandated biofuel they would not change their current policy.

It is also clear in the correspondence that they have done no environmental impact assessment and are behaving a reckless manner by ignoring all the current scientific opinion. My correspondence with Tesco is available on my blog.

I would therefore like you to ask the following question in parliament to Ruth Kelly, "Given the report in Energy Business Review which demonstrates that Tesco use significant quantities of Palm Oil and their demonstrable lack of environmental impact assessment, does the transport secretary now recognise that the 2.5% target in the RTFO simply encourages companies such as Tesco to place compliance with policy ahead of taking the correct environmental decisions and thereby gives them a mandate to pillage our food supplies and destroy the tropics."

This letter has been copied to Terry Leahy.

Regards,
Kevin Lister

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