THE government’s policy of promoting biofuels for transport will come under harsh attack this week from one of its senior science advisers.

Roland Clift will tell a seminar of the Royal Academy of Engineering that the plan to promote bioethanol and biodiesel produced from plants is a “scam”.

Clift, professor of environmental technology at Surrey University, sits on the scientific advisory council of Defra, David Miliband’s environment department.

Clift said: “Biodiesel is a complete scam because in the tropics the growing demand is causing forests to be burnt to make way for palm oil and similar crops.

“We calculate that the land will need to grow biodiesel crops for 70-300 years to compensate for the CO2 emitted in forest destruction.”

“We would need to plant a land area twice the size of Britain to get enough biofuel crops to halve our emissions,” said Kemp, professor of engineering at Lancaster University. “The numbers simply do not add up.”