Commission wants switch to biofuels

By Emily Smith

Date: 26/01/06

The European Commission is to promote the use of car fuel made from sugar beet and palm nuts, in a bid to reduce European dependence on oil.

Fears over the reliability of traditional, imported supplies of oil and gas are encouraging the EU to look for alternative energy sources and debates are intensifying over the merits and viability of various energy sources ranging from nuclear to wind power.

A strategy to be adopted by the Commission on 8 February would commit Europe to investing more heavily in biofuels, a substitute for traditional petrol and diesel, made from reprocessed farm crops.

"The timing is right for this," said a Commission spokesman for agriculture. "Fears over security of energy supply, the price of oil, reform of EU agricultural policy and the Kyoto climate change protocol all argue in favour of biofuels."

A draft of the strategy says governments should start to consider "setting national targets" for biofuel consumption. Existing non-binding targets laid out in a 2003 biofuels directive have not been met.

More than half of oil imports into the EU are used to power transport. Energy demand from the transport sector is expected to rise over the next decade and the development of biofuels was recommended by the high-level group of politicians, interest groups and EU officials, which produced last December's CARS 21 roadmap for the next ten years of transport.

But several observers suggest that the idea of setting mandatory targets later this year may run into last-minute opposition from the Commission's transport and energy department.

The fuel industry refused to sign up to the part of CARS 21 recommending the increased use of biofuels, before the results of an ongoing impact assessment are known.

"The key question is not so much the question of biofuels per se, as the question of prioritising them, and, of course, of whether specific targets are realistic," said Peter Tjan, secretary-general of the European Petroleum Industry Association. "First things first, let's see what the impact assessment tells us."

He said the Commission would have to show it was not proposing the strategy to protect farm jobs, following recent reforms of the EU Common Agricultural Policy, notably to sugar import quotas.

"We have to ask: are we doing this because of problems to do with energy or because of problems in the agriculture sector?"

The biofuels communication will box green groups into a tight corner. Despite offering a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions, biofuels could raise a number of environmental dilemmas.

One green source said increased production of sugar and palm oil - the prime sources of biofuels - in poor countries would not necessarily be sustainable.

Sugar farming requires a lot of fertiliser, which is both energy intensive to manage and emits large amounts of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide (CO2).

Palm oil is already in great demand for food use and there are fears that existing sustainable growth agreements could not take the extra strain.

Pieter de Pous of the European Environmental Bureau, however, said his organisation welcomed the strategy's interest in cutting CO2 emissions from transport.

But he cautioned against seeing biofuels "as some silver bullet wonderful solution".

"The fight to reduce CO2 emissions must not be allowed to overshadow other environmental issues," de Pous said.

He said that green groups would want proof that "products produced for energy will meet higher environmental standards than those grown for food".

Article anticipates the adoption of a Communication on 8 February 2006 in which the European Commission was planning to present the result of reflections on the question of measures to promote the production of biofuels, including such production in less developed third
countries.

• Primary Source

European Commission: DG Energy and Transport: Energy: New and Renewable Energies: Biofuels for Transport http://ec.europa.eu/energy/res/legislation/biofuels_en.htm

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