Member state envoys to draw up green biofuels safeguards

A specially convened group of officials from EU member states will meet for the first time on Friday (29 February) in an attempt to draw up green safeguards for biofuels.

Last week (Friday 22 February) member states agreed to set up an "ad-hoc working group" to work out the core elements of sustainability criteria that will be common across European legislation. The EU is currently debating two laws on green transport fuels, but has been split about where to insert environmental safeguards.

The decision to set up the group is a rebuff for the European Commission's line that sustainability criteria should be drafted only in the renewables directive, a draft law that aims to boost the use of biofuels to 10% of all EU transport fuels by 2020.

The European Parliament and a majority of member states (22 out of 27) wanted to see sustainability criteria written into the fuel quality directive, an earlier proposal that aims to set common standards for diesel and gas-oil. The fuel quality directive is being considered by environment ministers and the Parliament's environment committee, whereas the renewables directive will be considered by energy ministers and the Parliament's industry committee.

The special working group, composed of representatives from member states, is expected to meet three or four times in March and is charged with producing a report by the end of that month. The group will use the sustainability criteria drafted in the renewables proposal as a basis for their work.

A spokesman for the Slovenian presidency of the EU, which steered through the compromise, said: "We will work towards a first-reading agreement [on the fuel quality directive] based on the wish of the member states." Slovenia hopes to wrap up the fuel quality directive in June.

Dorette Corbey, a Dutch Socialist MEP who wrote the Parliament's opinion on the fuel quality directive, said that she was "quite optimistic" about a first reading agreement. "The differences between Council and the Parliament are not so wide," she said.

Next week (4 March) Corbey will host an expert workshop at the Parliament on the sustainability criteria for biofuels. "We need a sustainability criteria, but we also should decide on a system for monitoring the sustainability criteria that is credible and reliable," said Corbey.

Ariel Brunner, an agriculture policy officer at the campaign group Birdlife International, said that the EU needed to go a long way to strengthen the current proposals on the sustainability criteria, which he described as "very, very weak". He said that the sustainability criteria should set a target that biofuels contribute a greenhouse-gas saving of at least 60%. "We have to send a very clear signal to industry that renewables are good if they save emissions. Being slightly better than oil is not good enough," he said.

The current Commission proposal is for greenhouse-gas savings of at least 35%.

But the green credentials of biofuels have come under attack in recent months, as a flurry of scientific studies have suggested the indirect impacts of biofuel production (on land use and biodiversity) have not always been taken into account in the past.

Last week (22 February) the UK government announced a review of the economic and environmental impacts of biofuels. Ruth Kelly, the British transport minister, said: "We are not prepared to go beyond current UK targets for biofuels until we are satisfied it can be done sustainably."

Speaking to European Voice earlier this month (14 February), Stavros Dimas, the European environment commissioner, said: "Whether the sustainability criteria are sufficient or not will be discussed...we have environmental criteria, which is the first time in the world that this is happening. I hope that what science is telling us will be taken into account."

A specially convened group of officials from EU member states will meet for the first time on Friday (29 February) in an attempt to draw up green safeguards for biofuels.