After the European Commission’s counsel in October, this week Parliament is discussing modifications to the directives in question. There are many discrepancies and they risk nothing coming of it.
The debate on biofuels has reached a bifurcation after years of involving NGO’s, public institutions, think tanks and citizens. Modifications of the two directives created in 2009 to regulate production and consumption are
being discussed in Brussels: the directive on renewable energy and the one on the quality of biofuels. The topic is key to the internal European strategy to battle climate change since the EU imposed an ambitious objective upon itself – to have substituted 10% of fossil fuels with renewable ones in the transport sector (those that produce 22% of gas emissions with global greenhouse effects) by 2020.
Everyone agrees on the objective – the problem is how to reach them. The 1st step is to use first generation biofuels – the ones made from food products: rapeseed, palm oil, soy, oleaginous (biodiesel), cereal, brown sugar, beet sugar (ethanol). But efficiency of many of these is questionable.
Mainly there are 2 problems.
On one hand the calculations of actual emissions for which biofuels are responsible. Everyone knows you cannot consider only emissions associated directly with production. You must count indirect emissions as well, which are linked to change in destination of land used (Indirect Land Use Change – ILUC). Increasing the area cultivated is harmful to forests and other carbon-rich lands and has the complete opposite effect of the one desired: an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. According to studies, currently biofuels would cause emissions equal to that of adding between 14-29 million more cars on European roads by 2020.
The social aspect is another factor being discussed. The majority of raw agricultural material used to produce biofuels is being imported from non-European countries. The old country doesn’t have enough land to sufficiently respond to the demands for biofuels: hypothesizing a limit of 5% of the first generation ones – they would need 21 million hectares (more than 2/3 of the Italian area). So the request for land, above all in Sub-Saharan African countries, continues to increase and Land Grabbing (hoarding land without permission from the people who live there and in violation of Human Rights) is increasing. Not considering the need for food products required to produce biofuels is provoking a consistent increase in food prices.
So it’s no surprise that discussions concerning the procedures for legislative norms that must regulate this sector are heated! Until a few months ago European policy was not even being discussed. However in October 2012, the European Commission intervened (on the same renewable energy directive mandate) to try to find a solution to the issue of indirect emissions. Among the main objectives of the EU council is the proposal to draw the line at a 5% limit on using first generation biofuels with a target of 10%. In this way the Commission thinks they would be addressing the problem of increasing demand for food for fuel compared to dietary needs. But on the ILUC issue, the Commission refuses to insert amounts of indirect emissions in calculating the threshold defined by sustainability criteria – inasmuch as calculation methods don’t yet guarantee an exact quantification: instead an annual reporting on factors is sufficient.
This proposal doesn’t satisfy environmentalists and humanitarian associations. “The proposal of a 5% limit – notes Roberto Sensi, ActionAid Policy Officer – is a positive sign but the cap proposed is slightly higher than the current average of European replacement which is around 4.5%.” To propose this ceiling, which means “wanting to limit a future risk that is actually already present:” in essence in the short term European countries can continue to use first generation biofuels beyond the limit that must be guaranteed for 2020.” Regarding not counting indirect emissions, even if a method doesn’t exist yet to calculate them exactly, “we should adopt a principal of precaution,” suggests Sensi. And thus: until there is an exact scientific theory, we can use the ILUC factor because “not counting it, one assumes that there are no indirect emissions and this is certainly wrong.”
Another important milestone for the directives on the subject (that should make it to the plenary session in September) will occur in a few days when the European Parliament Committee on the Environmental will vote on the proposal of the European MEP, Corinne Lepage (Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe). Her text tries to mediate between the need to make biofuel production sustainable and not jeopardize investments already made by companies. Lepage’s proposal introduces ILUC in counting emissions and foresees a sub-target even for electrical energy from renewable sources in the transport sector to encourage use. The vote in chamber is scheduled for July 11th but it is already well-known that the proposal will not likely pass. On the other hand, if the Socialists lean in this direction, there is a strong opposition above all from the part of the European People’s Party (EPP) MEPs, who presented amendments that would radically change the direction. “We risk an insufficient solution” warns Sensi: “If the EPP’s compromising proposal passes – he explains – it would be the equivalent of not doing anything because the structural principles are not touched.”
A borderline case, but in theory it could happen if the proposal discussed is modified so much, it forces Lepage not to sign. Also in this case it would mean blocking everything – warns ActionAid: in 2020 we would still need to discuss how to face a problem that by that date should have been – if not resolved – at least confronted.
Lena Pavese
