Green standards threaten to postpone fuel quality directive

Attempts to get swift agreement on a law on greener transport fuels are being put at risk by arguments over the environmental merits of biofuels.

MEPs and member states are still aiming to reach an agreement on the fuel quality directive at first reading but a stumbling block is what green safeguards might be inserted into the text.

The fuel quality directive, proposed by the European Commission in January 2007, is an update of a 1998 directive that sets common EU standards for petrol, diesel and gasoil in a bid to cut air pollution.

The proposed directive has become part of the Commission’s efforts to reduce emissions from cars, because it would also oblige fuel suppliers to reduce, by 1% a year from 2011-20, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from the production, transport and use of fuels, ie, the lifecycle emissions.

Even without this requirement, the directive would encourage greater use of biofuels, but amid growing concern that not all biofuels help reduce CO2 emissions, MEPs and many member states have been pressing for tough environmental standards to be written into the directive to ensure that it does not promote unsustainable biofuels.

Dorette Corbey, the Dutch Socialist who is guiding the fuel quality directive through Parliament, is in favour of the addition of such wording to the current text. So too is a majority of member states.

But such a move would upset the Commission’s transport and energy department (DG Tren) which believes that the ‘sustainability criteria’ should be set by the renewables directive, which was proposed only last week (23 January) as part of a package of laws on energy and climate change. The fuel quality directive, on the other hand, is the work of the Commission’s environment department (DG Env). It will be decided by the Council’s environment ministers whereas the renewables directive will be decided by energy ministers, who might take a less critical view of the environmental performance of biofuels.

Slovenia, the current holder of the EU presidency, has the task of steering discussion of the fuel quality directive in the Council working groups. Last week (25 January) the Slovenes postponed until 5 February a meeting of experts from the member states, which was to discuss the directive, apparently at the request of the Commission’s secretariat-general.

The dispute over sustainability criteria has put the chances of a first-reading agreement in doubt.

Speaking at a meeting of the Parliament’s environment committee on Tuesday (29 January), Corbey said that it was "worth trying" to get a first reading agreement "since it looks like the Council is moving in our direction".

One senior official said that it was "a hard call" whether a first-reading agreement would be possible, but added: "The June Council would be a better bet than the March Council."

Claude Turmes, a Green Luxembourgois MEP who will prepare the Parliament’s response on the renewables directive, said that there was a "powerful argument" that the sustainability criteria should be set in the fuel quality directive, adding that it would be "a dangerous precedent" to take a law on environmental standards away from environment ministers.

Member states are divided on the issue, although there is general agreement that one set of sustainability criteria should apply to both directives. Sweden favours setting the criteria in the renewables directive because of its broader scope. Germany favours setting the criteria in the fuel quality directive, rather than wait for the criteria to be resolved through the renewables directive.

This shopping list of concerns may frustrate the Slovenian presidency’s plans for a first-reading agreement. A spokesman for the Slovenian presidency said: "The presidency is still reflecting on the new situation after the climate and energy package."

Attempts to get swift agreement on a law on greener transport fuels are being put at risk by arguments over the environmental merits of biofuels.