MEPs vote to impose new limits on food-based biofuels
Wed 25 February 2015
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MEPs on the European Parliament’s Environment Committee have voted to limit at 6% the use of land-based biofuels that can count toward the 10% renewable energy target in transport by 2020. MEPs also approved the accounting of indirect emissions (ILUC) arising from the production of biofuels under the Fuel Quality Directive, with a review clause to put them in all pieces of legislation after 2020.
The vote will reduce the growth in consumption of so-called first generation biofuels and those which are made from food crops.
Parliament has widened the scope of the 6% cap to not only cover food-based biofuels but also energy crops, meaning inedible crops that still compete for land with food crops.
MEPs also agreed a new target for so called 'advanced biofuels' – which are sourced from seaweed or certain types of waste – which must now account for at least 1.25% of energy consumption in transport by 2020.
The decision has provoked a mixed response, with some biofuel industry leaders saying the cap will put jobs at risk. But environmental groups said that the limits do not go far enough.
Nusa Urbancic, of Brussels-based environment group T&E, said: “We welcome MEPs’ determination to limit the amount of bad biofuels the EU will blend in its petrol and diesel.
"Although in some respects weaker than the original proposal from the Commission, this vote send a clear signal that the European Parliament wants cleaner, alternative fuels that actually reduce emissions.”
T&E said this decision correctly identifies land use, not the type of crop, as the key environmental challenge of biofuels. The group added that it would mean that member states could not subsidise or mandate this type of biofuel after 2020.
The European renewable ethanol association (ePure) also welcomed the vote, which it says while “not perfect”, is an “important step forward in the process of reforming Europe’s biofuels policy.”
Robert Wright, ePure Secretary General, urged the Council “to remain firm on a minimum 7% cap for conventional biofuel while allowing the process to move forward.”
“The industry needs a policy outcome that will provide us with certainty and a longer-term perspective beyond 2020,” he said.
Kenneth Richter, biofuels campaigner at Friends of the Earth said: “MEPs are right to call for changes to the EU’s disastrous biofuels policy, but the proposed reforms don’t go far enough.
“Current biofuels policy is destroying forests, sending food prices soaring and may even be causing an increase in climate-changing pollution.The UK Government must now make sure that the proposed reforms of EU biofuel legislation are not watered down further in the European Council.”
Dr Jeremy Tomkinson, CEO of NNFCC, a specialist Bioeconomy consultancy, said he “welcomed” any new legislation “that helps us better define good from bad biofuels.” However, he said that it was “difficult to understand why we need a cap for fuels that demonstrate sustainability; either we have ILUC factors and a GHG saving threshold or a cap on usage, having both makes no sense as we are by definition then limiting the best performing biofuels.”
The challenge of long-term renewable fuels policy, of which biofuels are a key component, is the focus of the joint LowCVP/DfT Transport Energy Task Force which is now nearing its initial conclusions and will shortly report to Government.
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