Biofuels at Avonmouth Rejected by City Council - but the company will appeal...

A company (W4B) lodged a planning application to set up a biofuel plant in Avonmouth - it's actually already set up. It was good to see that the city council threw out the planning application on 24th February. All parties on the council officially opposed it (although the two Tories on the planning committee - one of whom was the chair - along with one Labour member, voted in favour).

However, it is certain that the company will appeal the decision, so the battle to stop it is a long way from being over. The council officers often put pressure on the councillors not to block applications: apparently after the planning committee meeting one council officer complained to a councillor who had objected to the application that they had just cost the city council thousands of pounds because the company would appeal the decision!  You sometimes wonder where these council officers heads are! It just shows you that the council officers have too much influence over the elected councillors.

The Avonmouth plant documents relating to the plans are here. 

Biofuels need land to grow the biofuel crops, which is madness when there are so many starving people in the world who need food rather then oil.

And of course that's not to mention the deforestation caused by tearing down rainforests to plant palms for palm oil. In South East Asia the last refuges of the orang utan are being destroyed as we speak to make way for palm oil plantations. The orang utan only lives in Borneo in Indonesia and is nearly extinct in the wild. And then of course there's the terrible CO2 emitted by burning forests and the consequences for global warming......