EC Refutes U.K. Biofuels Report

January 21, 2008 // Published as a news service by IHS

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Andris Piebalgs, European Commission (EC) energy commissioner, issued a statement disagreeing with the recent report of the U.K. House of Commons calling for a moratorium on biofuels.

Piebalgs said, "The Commission strongly disagrees with the conclusion of the Environmental Audit Committee of the British House of Commons report, where it says that the overall environmental effect of existing biofuel policy is negative. On the contrary, it is delivering significant greenhouse gas reductions, compared with its alternative, oil."

The energy commissioner contends that there are currently only three ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the transport sector:

• Shifting from polluting modes to more energy-efficient ones, such as rail, short sea shipping and collective transport.
• Encouraging road vehicles to use less gasoline by establishing CO2/km targets.
• Promoting the use of biofuels.

The EC is already actively promoting the first two strategies, but Piebalgs said that biofuels should also be supported because "this is the most immediately feasible way of significantly slowing the worrying growth of greenhouse gas emissions from transport. This is of critical importance in a context where rising transport emissions are wiping out the hard-earned reductions of greenhouse gases achieved in other sectors."

Piebalgs pointed out that the U.K. report failed to mention that until other technologies, such as hydrogen fuel, became competitive, the only alternative to biofuels is oil. This means a shrinking source of energy with serious environmental concerns in the regions where it is extracted, refined and used.

The commissioner also said, "The key contribution of biofuels to the sustainability of the transport sector should not make us forget its other benefits, which are as important as the environmental ones, namely reducing our dependency on imported oil; providing a development opportunity for poor countries and paving the way for second-generation biofuels."

The commissioner acknowledged that the EC shares the House of Common's concern that biofuels have to be sustainable, and that this sustainability has to be guaranteed by robust sustainability standards and mechanisms to prevent damaging land use change.

However, Piebalgs stated, "This is precisely why the new directive for the promotion of renewable energy sources will call for the promotion of only sustainable biofuels, i.e., those that can ensure a substantial CO2 saving compared to the oil that would be consumed instead. Besides this, the directive will include, as a key element, a robust sustainability scheme that not only prevents damaging land use change, but also other environmental damages, such as the destruction of rain forests."

Biofuels are now traded in the European Union (EU) with no EU standards or sustainable schemes. According to Piebalgs, "The renewables directive will establish, for first time in history, such a scheme. In this sense, it will be a first step in catalysing the development of international sustainability standards for agricultural production in general."

Source: European Commission.