EU’s sustainability standards set agenda for biofuels debate

The debate about how to encourage the most sustainable forms of bioenergy will focus in coming months on a proposed European directive aimed at promoting renewable energy use.

The document proposes rules for the 27-nation bloc that will, among other things, define how the region reaches its target of having biofuels account for at least 10% of transport fuel in 2020. Overall, the EU has set a renewable energy target of 20% by 2020. The new directive represents a shift from setting purely quantitative targets to defining qualitative levels in the form of sustainability criteria.

The proposed directive states that biofuels must achieve greenhouse-gas savings of at least 35% and must not be obtained from the conversion of natural forests, wetlands, permanent grassland or any protected area. They must also meet Europe’s minimum requirements for good agricultural and environmental conditions. Biofuels that don’t meet these criteria won’t be counted as part of the 10% goal, according to the proposal.

"Our mission, indeed our duty, is to provide the right policy framework for transformation to an environment-friendly European economy and to continue to lead the international action to protect our planet,” said EU Commission President José Manuel Barroso in presenting the “Integrated Proposal for Climate Action”, adopted on 23 January by the Commission. “Our package not only responds to this challenge, but holds the right answer to the challenge of energy security and is an opportunity that should create thousands of new businesses and millions of jobs in Europe."

However, the proposed measures were criticised by a group of NGOs and environmental groups as not going far enough. Seventeen organisations including Friends of the Earth Europe, Greenpeace and Oxfam International wrote to the Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs saying the text ignored important indirect environmental effects of biofuel production and that it didn’t deal with social sustainability. The EU’s proposed greenhouse-gas calculator was simplistic and unreliable while EU member nations may be impeded from imposing stricter rules in their territories, the groups said.

An internal scientific body of the European Commission, the Joint Research Council (JRC), has also produced a report concluding that, by using the same EU resources of money and biomass, significantly greater greenhouse-gas savings could be achieved by imposing an overall target on biomass use instead of one solely for biofuel use in transport. The report questioned the potential benefits of biofuels in terms of greenhouse-gas savings, security of supply and job creation. Piebalgs’s spokesman said the JRC report was an internal document used as part of the commission’s consultation process.

In presenting the overall climate package, Barroso and commissioners including Piebalgs insisted that renewable energy sources would reduce carbon emissions and strengthen security of supply while at the same time developing jobs and growth in a high-tech sector.

 

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