Washington seeks laxer EU biofuels rules

The US will push the EU to relax policy on biofuels production at a meeting of high-level politicians in Washington next week (9 November).

EU delegates attending the first session of the newly-formed Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC) will be encouraged to promote the use of a "miracle crop" called jatropha for the production of biofuels.

"The way EU biofuels are now regulated limits the [type] of feedstock that can be used to make them," said C. Boyden Gray, the US ambassador to the EU. "It [EU regulation] tends to favour rapeseed. It would not, for example, permit the use of jatropha, which has huge potential for Africa and the developing world."

Jatropha, said Gray, could turn out to be a "miracle crop". The drought-resistant crop is grown in Asia, Africa and the Americas. The crop is said to have the potential to revolutionise the energy sector, but at a cost - in India, for example, 11 million hectares have been earmarked for jatropha, a development that has sparked fears that the plant could replace much-needed food crops.

Biofuels standards will be a major focus of the talks, which are aimed at bringing the two sides closer together on a range of regulatory issues. "What we’re asking is that the specifications be standardised so fuels can be traded easily throughout the world," said Gray.

He also suggested that the EU should follow Sweden’s lead on biofuels targets. Current EU targets aim to increase the share of biofuels used for transport to 10% by 2020. Sweden, however, is pushing for total conversion to biofuels. "It’s a very ambitious, very interesting project that gets almost no publicity in Brussels, which is really unfortunate," said Gray of Sweden’s targets.

Gray defended the US’s emissions policy, citing the 20/10 plan to reduce conventional fuel consumption by 20% by 2017. "That is a very ambitious proposal," he said. "It is more ambitious than anything the EU has yet adopted." The growth in transport emissions, the US asserts, could mean the EU fails to meet its Kyoto commitments to cut emissions by 8% by 2012.

TEC meetings, signalled Gray, will as a rule steer clear of environment-related issues unless there is a specific regulatory angle, as in the case of biofuels standards. "This thing is ambitious," he said of the transatlantic initiative. "But it’s not so ambitious as to try to solve the climate change problem."

The US will push the EU to relax policy on biofuels production at a meeting of high-level politicians in Washington next week (9 November).