Action Aid calls for abandoning of EU target for renewable transport fuels
Thu 26 April 2012
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A report by Action Aid calls for Europe to drop its target of sourcing 10% of its transport fuels from renewable sources by 2020 because of what is says are the impacts of biofuels policy on people living in some of the poorest parts of the planet, with impacts on hunger and human rights. Meanwhile, a separate report, commissioned by Transport and the Environment (T&E), recommends a new approach to dealing with indirect land-use change (Iluc).
In a response to RTCC (Response to Climate Change) an EU spokesman said that the EU will stand by its commitment to biofuels.
“The EU Commission will not abandon the EU renewables policy and continues to believe that biofuels can make a positive contribution toward the EU’s climate and energy objectives if all issues, including indirect land use change impacts, are properly addressed,” said the spokesperson.
Speaking at the launch of the report, Laura Sullivan, ActionAid’s Head of European Advocacy said: “If it continues to ignore the impacts of its biofuels policy on people living in some of the poorest parts of the planet, the EU will effectively be sponsoring hunger and human rights abuses on a massive scale”.
“Instead of pumping money into this fool’s gold, the EU needs to drop its targets and subsidies, and invest the money in truly sustainable alternatives, that support local farmers to produce food not fuel,” she added.
The Commission is currently investigating the effects of changing land use on the carbon emissions associated with biofuels. A spokesperson said: “The Commission is currently finalising its impact assessment [on land use] and will, if appropriate, present legislative proposals for amending the existing EU Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and the Fuel Quality Directive (FQD).”
The FQD is targeting a 6% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from road transport fuels while the RED's aim is to source 10% of EU transport energy demand from renewable sources by 2020. Although this does not exclusively mean biofuels, ActionAid claims that 88% of this renewable transport energy will be from manufactured biofuels.
In a related report commissioned by Brussels based NGO T&E with EEB and Birdlife says the EU can deal successfully with the troublesome issue of indirect land-use change (Iluc) in biofuels production by taking a more enlightened approach to the principle of ‘grandfathering’.
The report, ‘Assessing grandfathering options under an EU Iluc policy’ by the renewable energy consultancy Ecofys, comes at a significant time in the European biofuels debate.
Up to now, T&E says, all the focus has been on getting the Commission to recognise the role Iluc plays, despite overwhelming evidence that without taking Iluc into account, some biofuels will emit more greenhouse gases than petrol and diesel. The Commission’s reluctance to recognise Iluc’s importance is believed to lie in the fact that most of the EU’s current biofuel is conventional biodiesel, a very ‘high-Iluc’ fuel. Therefore, T&E continues, an EU policy on Iluc has the potential to end large parts of the biofuels industry that has been encouraged by EU energy policies.
This is why the Ecofys report, says T&E, could be a breakthrough, as it provides a potential way out of the Commission’s dilemma on Iluc.
Grandfathering is a means to exempt existing biofuels installations from future Iluc measures.
The Ecofys report recommends a grandfathering option based on freezing biofuel production at the volumes in the period 2010-12 until 2020, with all additional production to be subject to an EU Iluc policy. This would effectively cap high-Iluc biofuels at current supply levels, and if they are then gradually phased out by 2020, the three NGOs say this will amount to a measure that will combine environmental effectiveness and a clear framework for new low-carbon investment with fair treatment of past investment and current activity.
T&E policy officer Nusa Urbancic said: "We have commissioned this report to look into the options that could create the political compromise to enable science-based Iluc measures to be adopted.
"The main finding of the report is that most of the sector, notably farmers and ethanol producers, will not be affected by an EU Iluc policy, while producers in the biodiesel sector could deal with the introduction of an Iluc factor if a smarter grandfathering policy was in place. This would lead to a shift from high-Iluc to low-Iluc biofuels, and we would finally steer the EU biofuels market towards fuels that have a better carbon footprint than their fossil fuel equivalents."
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