Life-cycle assessment impacts are lacking in Government fuels policy - NNFCC report
Thu 03 May 2012
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A new report from the National Non-Food Crops Centre says that policy makers need to be more aware of how to use different life-cycle assessment (LCA) methodologies within regulatory frameworks and how these can impact on the market development of biofuels and other products. The report also says that businesses need to understand how the numbers they get from LCA’s will impact on their procurement practices and product development.
The NNFCC argues that there is "an urgent need" for wider understanding of LCA methodologies and how they differ as businesses are increasingly relying on such data to drive product development and manufacturing.
"LCA's are growing in importance both in terms of helping businesses deliver more efficient products and for policy makers looking to account for greenhouse gas emissions and energy balances," said NNFCC's head of bio-refining, Dr Adrian Higson.
However he warned that more education and training was required to equip business leaders and policy makers with the levels of knowledge needed to make informed decisions around LCA.
The NNFCC's report aims to help to demonstrate the policy implications of allocation procedures on multiple bio-based products within an LCA system using illustrative case studies.
According to the study, the environmental performance of biofuels should be assessed on a case-by-case basis and the findings communicated to a wider audience so that any discrepancy in results is clearly understood.
In a related development, Brussels-based NGO Transport and Environment reports that the EU’s 27 commissioners have recognised that indirect land-use change (Iluc) caused by the EU’s biofuels policy has to be addressed seriously, but that they have failed to reach a decision on how to deal with it. The 27 rejected a compromise proposed by the EU's energy and climate directorates in late-April, and asked them to work out a more ambitious proposal.
Iluc is important because crops grown to make biofuels can indirectly create additional greenhouse gases because of other land cleared to grow crops for food. Evidence has emerged that Iluc can make some biofuels worse for the climate than fossil fuels. As this is especially the case for biodiesel - which makes up around three quarters of the EU’s transport biofuels- the Commission has been in a state of deadlock and has been unable to come up with a way of dealing with Iluc.
T&E has welcomed the call for more ambition, but has criticised this latest delay in finding a solution. For more information, follow the associated link.
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