Just how ‘bio’ is the EU’s biofuels policy?

One of the many difficult questions besetting the debate on sustainable transport is how to make sure biofuels do not do more harm than good.

As part of a package of measures to reduce carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, EU governments in March agreed to a binding minimum 10% market share for biofuels by 2020 - "subject to production being sustainable".

But a discussion paper from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development on Tuesday (11 September) said that the environmental impact of biofuels could in some cases be worse than that of diesel and petrol. The paper, which was discussed at the OECD’s roundtable on sustainable development, recommended scrapping the 10% EU target and focussing instead on measures such as energy efficiency and carbon taxes.

The European Commission is now drafting sustainability criteria to be included in proposed legislation on the biofuels target, due on 5 December. In May, the Commission launched a consultation on biofuels issues. This discussion paper suggested three sustainability criteria for the production of these plant-based fuels. These would be: achieving a minimum level of greenhouse gas savings - possibly 10% - across the production lifecycle of biofuels; a ban on the use of wetlands or other ‘carbon sinks’ for the cultivation of biofuel crops, and; making sure that switching from food to biofuel crop production does not lead to the destruction of biodiversity.

Ariel Brunner of BirdLife, a conservation group, said that this was not enough. "We agree with the Commission on the issues to be tackled, but not on the level of ambition," he said. The minimum target for greenhouse gas emission reductions from biofuel production should be 60%, according to BirdLife. As well as setting high biodiversity protection standards, said Brunner, sustainability criteria should guard against other risks from the intensive agriculture that many fear would be needed to meet a 10% biofuels target.

"Even if biofuels do contribute to reducing climate change," said Brunner, "we don’t want to create bigger problems, such as a water crisis or biodiversity crisis."

BirdLife says that the EU has tackled the biofuels issue the wrong way round. Setting a biofuels target before working out what was sustainable has made many people believe that a 10% market share is inevitable, explained Brunner, and there is now a rush to make sure criteria are in place to protect the environment.

"It’s about getting the market message right. Instead of sending out a message that it makes sense to invest in biofuels," he said, "we should be sending a message that it makes sense to invest in clean technologies."

But Rob Vierhout of eBio, the European bioethanol fuel association, warned against placing an unfair burden on the biofuels sector. "We are absolutely in favour of sustainability criteria, there is no question about that," he said, "but there must be a level playing-field."

He argued that traditional fossil fuel producers face no binding sustainability rules and that farmers only have the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) cross-compliance rules imposing environmental safeguards.

Vierhout said that the need for new criteria could be reduced by applying the same CAP compliance rules to biofuel crops as to food crops.

Together with the oil and fertiliser industries, farmers representatives and other biofuel groups, eBio is now working with the Commission’s transport and energy department to decide the best way of calculating biofuel CO2 emissions across the whole production cycle.

Vierhout said that his group had no proposal for a minimum target for greenhouse gas emission reductions from biofuel production, but that it had to be "more than zero".

He said that fears that a greater production of biofuels would push food prices up had been exaggerated. In the EU, according to Vierhout, only 10% of the price of a loaf of bread - or 1% of a glass of beer - is linked to the cereal from which it is made. The rest depends on other costs such as advertising and packaging.

To calm fears that the market would be flooded with biofuel imports from non-EU countries with lower environmental standards, eBio suggests that imported biofuels should not count towards the 10% target unless they are in line with the EU sustainability criteria. This is likely to encourage other parts of the world to follow the EU’s lead, said Vierhout.

But if global environmental biofuel criteria are one day applied, the EU risks finding itself at a disadvantage because of its opposition to genetically modified (GM) crops, according to Vierhout.

"You can be sure that the US and Brazil will be producing GM biofuel crops," he said. "If the rest of the world is using GM crops, how on earth can we compete with them?"

One of the many difficult questions besetting the debate on sustainable transport is how to make sure biofuels do not do more harm than good.