In a vote on fuel quality and renewable energy legislation held yesterday (19th June), Energy Committee MEPs said the EU should boost the use of advanced types of biofuels by setting mandatory targets but a reliable model for measuring indirect land use change (ILUC) must be found before including it in legislation.

Environmental NGO T&E has criticized the outcome, highlighting that it allows biofuels that increase emissions compared to conventional diesel and petrol to count towards the 10% renewable energy target in transport by 2020. 

T&E’s transport fuels manager Nusa Urbancic, said: ‘It is baffling that Parliamentarians in charge of the EU’s energy policy want to make energy dirtier and more expensive and, at the same time, turn a blind eye to the wealth of scientific evidence on the indirect land-use change effects of today’s biofuels. MEPs voted to increase the limit on food-based biofuels, trash ILUC factors, and prolong the failed policy of quantity-based targets for biofuels after 2020.’

MEPs voted to cap at 6.5% the use of food-based biofuels that are eligible to count for carbon reduction targets, with T&E adding that this will lead to a one-off release of up to 300 million tonnes of CO2 compared to the 5% limit proposed by the Commission in October last year – equivalent to Poland’s total CO2 emissions in 2010. They also set a post-2020 target of 4% for “advanced biofuels”, whereas the best policy to stimulate better biofuels would be to drop such quantity targets entirely and replace them by a greenhouse gas based one, like in the fuel quality directive, according to T&E.

The Environment Committee of the European Parliament, the other leading committee on this file, will vote on 10^th July. The vote in the Plenary will take place this September.

‘The task of the Environment Committee is straightforward. MEPs need to set the environmental record of this proposal straight and introduce ILUC factors, set a cap on food-based biofuels below 5% and replace post-2020 volume targets with a greenhouse gas target. Otherwise, Europe will keep fostering the production of biofuels that do more harm than good to the environment,’ Nusa Urbancic concluded